>From the very beginning, from the day he became leader in 1994 if not
before, Tony Blair made it clear that he accepted the Labour party on
sufferance; he had no enthusiasm for it, let alone affection. He saw
it as a problem to be got around, not part of any solution. One former
aide candidly admits that "he's never seen the party or its members as
a resource that might be valuable", the way John Prescott or Gordon
Brown have. The Labour party was, at best, "an electoral machine,
useful for knocking on doors".
Of course Blair's first instinct was to look outside Labour for help, even keeping the party's own treasurer in the dark. He has dedicated much of his career either to fighting the Labour party or bypassing it, whether by neutering the annual conference or attempting to overrule members' democratic decisions and impose his own: remember Alun Michael in Wales and Frank Dobson in London. Seeking to win elections without Labour money was the logical destination of a road he had taken long ago.
The same is true of his choice of benefactors. No one who followed Blair in the 1990s can be surprised that he chased the favours of plutocrats. The stories are legion of Blair's personal admiration, even awe, for men who have made serious money. Nearly 10 years have passed since I was first told that Blair tended to go "dewy-eyed" and starstruck when in the company of wealth. Ideologically, too, the fit was natural: Blairism holds that market mechanisms contain a solution for almost every problem. When he demands that a public service reform itself, it usually means he wants it to behave more like a private company.
Which brings us to the latest wave of the honours affair: the charge that donations to city academies were lured by the promise of gongs and ermine. This too feels more organic than accidental.
Once again, there is the enduring Blairite faith in the magic of the private sector. If a man has made a mint selling cars or carpets, he will automatically, says Blairism, be better at running a school than a local education authority. So much better, in fact, that in return for less than one thirteenth of the capital budget - a mere £2m compared to the £25m invested by the government - this business wizard gets control over the curriculum, the ethos and even the name of his chosen academy.
Now, I'm all for philanthropists doing their bit for public institutions like schools. I also like the idea that not every common good has to be provided the same way: academies run by, say, a university or a charity have some appeal. But that's not, predominantly, what the government has in mind. When it says it wants to look beyond the traditional providers, it means business.
The same logic applies in both the party funding and city academy cases. The Labour party, the public sector and the civic worthies of local education authorities are, in the eyes of Blairism, all of a piece. They are members of a single tribe, best pushed out of the way, since their various roles - whether funding election campaigns or running schools - are bound to be performed better by the geniuses of private enterprise.
As for paying these benefactors in the currency of honours, that makes Blairite sense too. Unlike John Smith, or now Gordon Brown, Blair has never strongly seen the need to reform the constitution: he is not affronted by the undemocratic nature of the House of Lords. Instead he has seen it as a pool of patronage from which he can usefully draw.
Now we can see that the elements were all there long ago: impatience with the Labour party, an awe for business, a readiness to abuse the deformations of our political system for his own ends. That they have come together now is no accident. The last few years have been the chronicle of a scandal foretold.
full: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/comment/0,,1756414,00.html
--
Colin Brace
Amsterdam