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              Alistair Darling και η κατάρρευση της κυβέρνησης εργασίας
Σάββατο, 6η Σεπτεμβρίου 2008 Από Chris Marsden | 30 Αυγούστου Φύλακας η συνέντευξη με τον καγκελάριο Alistair Darling της Μεγάλης Βρετανίας ήταν εξαιρετική από πολλές απόψεις. Κατά πρώτο λόγο μπορούν να υπάρξουν λίγες περιπτώσεις που τόσο εντυπωσιακά αποκαλύπτουν την αίσθηση της βαθιάς κρίσης μέσα στην απόφαση των κύκλων στη Μεγάλη Βρετανία. Αγάπη που αναγνωρίζεται σε Decca Aitkenhead ότι οι οικονομικοί χρόνοι που αντιμετωπίζουμε «είναι αμφισβητήσιμα οι χειρότεροι ήταν σε 60 έτη… Και σκέφτομαι ότι πρόκειται να είναι βαθύτερο και μακράς διαρκείας από τη σκέψη ανθρώπων.» Μέσα σε 24 ώρες, κατηγορήθηκε για την υπονόμευση της εμπιστοσύνης στην οικονομία της Μεγάλης Βρετανίας σε τέτοιο βαθμό ώστε η λίβρα χτύπησε ένα αρχείο χαμηλό ενάντια στο ευρώ και διετή έναν χαμηλό ενάντια στο δολάριο. Το FTSE 100 μετοχές δεικτών έπεσε επίσης αισθητά. Η αγάπη είχε δεσμεύσει τη βασική αμαρτία να δηλώσει ανοιχτά, εάν ακόμα guardedly, ότι οικονομικά τα πράγματα είναι πραγματικά κακά και πιθανό να πάρουν χειρότερα. Η επιλογή 60 ετών του ήταν κάπως αυθαίρετη. Δεν θα μπορούσε να αναφέρει τη δεκαετία του '70 δεδομένου ότι πολλοί έχουν κάνει χωρίς αύξηση του φάσματος των μαζικών κυκλοφοριών των εργαζομένων που ρίχνουν τις κυβερνήσεις. Και οι αναφορές στις πεινασμένες δεκαετίες του '30 ήταν ομοίως πέρα από το χλωμό. Αλλά ακόμη και μια τέτοια μερική αναγνώριση ως δικοί του εξετάστηκε ότι ένας σοβαρός διαπράττει σφάλμα, ακόμα κι αν μόνο την προηγούμενη εβδομάδα ο αναπληρωτής κυβερνήτης τράπεζας της Αγγλίας, Charles Bean, είχε προειδοποιήσει ότι η οικονομία αντιμετωπίζει μια περίοδο «τουλάχιστον όπως προκλητική» ως δεκαετία του '70. Ο Ian Stannard, ένας ανώτερος στρατηγικός νομίσματος σε BNP Paribas, είπε τον Τύπο, «οι περισσότεροι άνθρωποι εθεώρησαν ότι τα πράγματα επιδεινώνονταν πιθανώς γρηγορότερα στο UK από η κυβέρνηση αναγνώριζε, αλλά το γεγονός ότι έχουμε δει τον καγκελάριο να βγεί και να αναγνωρίσει ότι τα πράγματα είναι πολύ χειρότερα έχουν βάλει εξαιρετικό σε πίεση.» Η αντίδραση ήταν γρήγορη και από την κυβέρνηση και από τα μέσα. Ο πρωθυπουργός Gordon Brown καθοδήγησε την αγάπη για να κάνει μια ταπεινωτική εξήγηση για το πώς εήταν παρερμηνευμένος και εστίαζε στην πραγματικότητα στα «μοναδικά προβλήματα» αντιμετωπίζοντας τη «σφαιρική οικονομία.» Την καφέ ομιλία στη συνομοσπονδία της βρετανικής παραδοθείσας βιομηχανία Πέμπτης διέρρευσαν εκ των προτέρων, στην οποία πάλι υπογράμμισε ότι τα προβλήματα που απασχολούν τη Μεγάλη Βρετανία είναι διεθνή στην προέλευση, στην πιστωτική κρίσιμη στιγμή, και ότι η Μεγάλη Βρετανία ήταν στην πραγματικότητα καλά τοποθετημένη για να ξεπεράσει οποιαδήποτε μείωση. Ένας ανώτερος αριθμός εργασίας που δηλώνεται baldly Φύλακας, «ο Alistair πρέπει να είναι παράφρων. Δεν υπάρχει κανένας έμμετρος λόγος, ούτε λόγος για τον οποίο θα ήθελε να μιλήσει όπως αυτόν.» Financial Times declared scathingly that his “prognosis” on the economy “is too bleak,” whereas his fretting about the state of the Labour government “is nowhere near bleak enough.” The ferocity of the reaction to Darling’s comments itself belies such efforts to belittle his estimation of the gravity of the economic crisis. Even as they were being made, reports were published that the British economy was at a standstill in the second quarter of the year, after a revision of figures wiped out the 0.2 percent growth reported earlier. The number of permanent jobs available had also plunged to its lowest level since 2001, with unemployment rising by about 70,000 this year and predicted to hit two million by Christmas. The manufacturing sector shrank for the fourth month in a row. Mortgage approvals fell to 33,000 in July, the lowest since data was first collected in 1993, with the number of new mortgages issued down 71 percent in a year. House prices fell in August for the eleventh consecutive month and are now falling at an annual rate of over 10.5 percent. Even as Darling was being decried for his candor by the Telegraph, the newspaper published an estimate by one of Britain’s foremost economists and former Bank of England policymaker, Charles Goodhart that “Britain is now facing a severe recession which will last for a year or longer and a worse housing crash than in the early 1990s”. Two days later, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicted recession for Britain, even while the other G7 countries will see either modest growth or a standstill. If all that Darling’s interview confirmed was the dire state of the economy it would be interesting enough. But the chancellor’s comments provided a revealing glimpse into the deep sense of crisis gripping a Labour government that is on the verge of implosion. His interview reads like a cry of despair by someone who does not want to carry the can for Labour’s failure, but apart from this sees no way out.
Labour’s worship of the market The government’s mantra, echoed here by Darling, that it is merely the victim of an unfavourable international situation should be opposed on many fronts. New Labour earned its place in power by breaking with reformism and embracing Thatcherite economic nostrums. It was the political vehicle through which big business set out to impose a discredited economic and political agenda on a hostile population. With the Conservatives hated and unelectable after 18 years in power, it was Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that came in to continue where Margaret Thatcher and John Major had left off. Labour insisted that capitalism was not only triumphant, but that there was also no alternative to it. It was the best of all possible worlds, provided only that government abandon all attempts at national regulation and recognise the economic and political imperatives of globalised capitalist production and the need to be internationally competitive. To this end old-style reformism must give way to government in partnership with corporate management, wholesale privatization of state assets and public services and unbridled speculation by the City of London presided over by a Bank of England set free from governmental control. Above all workers should heed the message from the government and their allies in the trade union leadership—that the class struggle was a thing of the past and participation in creating a globally efficient economy would raise all boats. For ten years, this provided the ideological justification for Labour facilitating by every possible means a historically unprecedented transfer of societal wealth to the super-rich. With the actual wages and purchasing power of working people in constant decline, and vital social services being gutted, Labour became ever more alienated from its former working class supporters. But it was able to maintain power to the extent that a speculative boom in house prices and a flood of credit allowed people to live well beyond their actual means. Once this speculative boom burst internationally, it was inevitable that it would hit the British economy hardest of all and would signal the end of the Labour government. The biographical material on Darling contained in Aitkenhead’s interview is sketchy, but revealing in painting a portrait of someone who was an ideal New Labour apparatchik. She notes that while “A blaze of glitzier New Labour stars have since fallen… Darling survived, accumulating five ministerial posts on a stainless ascent to the exchequer last year. His career had been distinguished by an almost freakish absence of failure. He has never lost an election, he joined the front bench after just 12 months in parliament, and 20 years later he has never left. Only two other members of that first cabinet, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw, are still in government with Darling today.” This rise to prominence is incredible because Darling’s own statements make clear that he is a political zero—someone with no connection to the Labour Party, old-style reformist socialism or the working class. Both his grandfathers were Liberals, his great-uncle a Tory MP in Edinburgh, and his father, a civil engineer, voted Conservative. He was educated at a private boarding school before studying law at Aberdeen where he stood for election in the student union, “but not for a party.” He only joined the Labour Party 1977. This was a year during which Labour was in coalition with the Liberals and imposing IMF-dictated austerity measures that met with fierce resistance from the working class and ended with the 1979 “Winter of Discontent” and the election of the Conservatives. Darling’s response? “The Labour government in 1977 was in a terrible mess, and I was getting fed up looking at all these things on the television, and thinking, God, surely we can do better than that. I wanted to do things. But I was never really interested in the theory of achieving things, just the practicality of doing things.” Later he tells Aitkenhead, “He doesn’t call himself a socialist—‘There’s nothing wrong with the term, it’s just not one I use’—and feels uncomfortable with political labels. Class envy is a mystery to him; he sees no point in raising taxes for the super rich, because, he says, it wouldn’t raise much revenue. ‘I’m not offended if someone earns large sums of money. Is it fair or not? It’s just a fact of life.’ Asked to define his politics, he offers, ‘Pragmatic’.”
The party’s over Like his colleagues, it was precisely Darling’s “pragmatism,” his hostility to socialism, absence of “class envy” and relaxed approach to fabulous private wealth that made him so successful for so long. He was ideal material for government as far as the Labour Party and its backers were concerned because was ready to do whatever he was told, unencumbered by any extraneous ideological baggage. He was in effect a true and unalloyed believer in capitalism. That is why, as he states, “For 10 years as a minister, by and large I had a charmed life.” And that is also why all this changed by the time of that fateful day in June last year when he was appointed chancellor by Brown, as Labour was attempting to distance itself from the Iraq war and the sordid record of Blair’s premiership. Instead, as his wife states, his life has been “a crisis a week.” In an extraordinary passage, he states that although “we knew the economy was going to slow down”: “he hadn’t the faintest inkling of the financial crisis about to unfold before him. ‘No, no one did. No one had any idea’.” “He can clearly recall the day last summer when alarm bells first began to sound. The chancellor was on holiday with his wife and their two teenage children in Majorca. ‘I remember I picked up the FT in the supermarket, as you do, and it had the European central bank starting to put money into the economy. I phoned the office to ask why they were doing quite so much. It didn’t surprise me that money was going in—there was concern going around—but it was the sheer scale of it. I said, what about our institutions? This was when Northern Rock started to figure.” “Even then,” Aitkenhead continues, “the gravity of the credit crunch was still not fully clear. ‘No one knew how serious it was yet’,” she quotes Darling saying. What then is the future for a party that was so enamoured of capitalism that the man it appointed as chancellor was apparently so blissfully unaware of an unfolding financial disaster sweeping the world economy? Aitkenhead states that today, “the mood is so febrile, it’s even possible he won’t be chancellor by the time this interview appears.” As for Darling, he doesn’t want a cabinet reshuffle that may see him replaced—“Frankly, if you had a reshuffle just now, I think the public would say, Who are they anyway? You name me a reshuffle that ever made a difference to a government, actually.” Nor does he want a leadership challenge against Brown, even though he makes clear he has little hope of winning the next election. “This coming 12 months,” he declares, “will be the most difficult 12 months the Labour party has had in a generation, quite frankly. Both the general economic situation, and in terms of the politics. In the space of 10 months we’ve gone from a position where people generally felt we were doing OK to where we’re certainly not doing OK. We’ve got to rediscover that zeal which won three elections, and that is a huge problem for us at the moment. People are pissed off with us.” Whatever Darling might wish for, there is little chance that Brown will survive the next months unscathed, less chance still that Labour will win an election under any leader whatsoever, and a distinct possibility of the party imploding. As if to underline such political realities, even as the government was attempting to recover from the damage inflicted by Darling the former home secretary Charles Clarke was busy telling the BBC that Labour is facing “utter destruction” at the polls and insisting that Brown must either improve the standing of Labour within a few months or resign as prime minister. Have Your Say: Alistair Darling and the implosion of the Labour government Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. 2 Responses to “Alistair Darling and the implosion of the Labour government”
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Well done Mick. I was just about to…..
It deserves the front page.