Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 11:02:00 +0000 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com, revo-readers at egroups.com From: James Heartfield <James at heartfield.demon.co.uk> Subject: Blair, Europe
The WEEK ending 10 February 2002
BLUE SKY THINKING
'In business, if you see someone ringing up consultants, you sell the shares' (Chris Haskins, New Statesman, 11 February 2002). Chris Haskins, the former chair of Northern Foods, is one of the hundreds of consultants the British government has called upon.
The government has called upon a vast array of the great and the good to come up with new solutions they call 'out-of-the-box,' or more latterly 'blue sky thinking'. Former BBC Director John 'Dalek' Birt must have been delighted to find his reputation for wrecking the corporation overlaid with his new status as a 'blue sky thinker'. But other grandees, like veteran Labour and Liberal politician Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and architect Lord Rogers have been disappointed to find their grand schemes for constitutional reform and urban regeneration tossed aside once they no longer fitted the government's increasingly febrile preoccupations.
While right-wing commentators see the burgeoning army of government advisors as evidence of a new, soviet-style nomenklatura, radical critics have attacked New Labour for selling its soul to big business. Doubtless there is some truth in both allegations, but the real reason for Blair's dependence on consultants is more alarming.
New Labour's addiction to consultation arises less from an interest in new thinking than it does from an anxiety about where to go next. As a political clique that owes its existence to rubbishing ideological positions, the government is dangerously short on ideas. An absence of strategy leaves New Labour floundering from one chance issue to the next. So-called 'crises', from fuel protests to foot and mouth, from inner city riots to the MMR vaccination scare disappear as suddenly as they engulf the media and political establishment. As a rule, New Labour manages to exacerbate whatever the issue of the day is with a flurry of contradictory statements.
This week the government blew hot and cold on the MMR vaccination, first coyly refusing to say whether the Prime Minister's son had had the vaccine, then - equally coyly suggesting that, yes, of course he had. At the same time Ministers attacked 'wreckers' in the public services, in a context that could only mean members of public sector unions, only to backtrack and insist that such workers were the salt of the earth. Not surprisingly, press and people alike are having trouble getting the message.
'RECESSION-PROOF' EUROPE?
European Community boasts that the continental economy is 'recession-proof' are looking less believable as Germany's unemployment levels pass the four million mark. European anxieties are focused on the poor performance of the new single European Currency, the Euro, which has continued to drift downwards against the dollar since it was launched. Greater transparency in European currency exchange has only served to reveal the underlying weakness of the European economy.
Officials at the European Commission used to insist that with European markets absorbing the greater part of European goods, the community was less susceptible to recessionary pressures from East Asia and, more latterly, the US. Now they concede that they overlooked other transmission belts than trade, such as European investments abroad. If these perform poorly, it was argued, then that will affect investment in Europe. What the Commission seems less able to grasp is that Europe has its own, homegrown problems, as indicated by Germany's many years of low growth. Visibly irritated by the European Central Bank's warning that Germany risked missing targets for managing its debts, Chancellor Schroeder was left demanding yet more flexibility from the country's workers - though successive Economic Reports from the European Commission have cited years of wage restraint as the basis of Europe's economic promise.
Sources at the European Central Bank told the WEEK that they were concerned that Portugal's economy would follow the path of Argentina, albeit more slowly. The official ECB line is that Britain risks relegation to the second division of economic powers, like Poland and the Czech Republic, for its failure to join the European currency. Privately, ECB officials concede that Britain's unwillingness to join at the present is readily understandable.
-- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org