A World to Win: Turf wars at No. 10

The war raging inside New Labour, around attempts to replace Tony Blair as prime minister sooner rather than later, is a reflection of the deep-going rejection of the government displayed at the local elections on May 4. These elections also confirmed a serious disillusionment with the existing political process on the part of voters.

Those MPs manoeuvring to oust Blair in favour of Gordon Brown believe that a new prime minister will act as a miracle cure and – most importantly of all – enable them to retain their well-paid jobs at the next general election. That’s about the sum total of principles involved in the struggle between Blair and Brown supporters.

But a change of leadership will do nothing to answer the fact that the electorate has found New Labour out. On issues like housing, education, health, pensions, transport and jobs, New Labour simply imposes market, capitalist “solutions” that favour the well off at the expense of the rest. Brown is the architect of many of these policies and is a fervent supporter of the alleged virtues of global capitalist markets.

To keep people under the thumb of the authorities, the government has constructed a police-state scaffold of surveillance, ID cards and DNA files alongside the criminalising of political views. New Labour demonises asylum seekers and refugees to divide communities and thereby plays into the hands of racist parties like the BNP. Its corporate-friendly policies have served to deepen the ecological crisis.

New Labour’s unswerving support for US policy has produced a disaster for the Iraqi people and a whole swathe of cover-ups and lies at home. The reluctance of Jack Straw to endorse plans to attack Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons, was behind his sacking as foreign secretary.

There are no obvious, easy political solutions to hand. . Only the thinnest of margins distinguishes the major parties from each other. The main alternatives, in parliamentary terms, are the reactionary Tory Party or rightward-moving Liberal Democrats. Of course, handing back power to the Tories is a time-honoured function of the Labour Party in Britain and demonstrates its historic inability to provide a "third way" forward.

Just over a third of voters stirred themselves to cast a ballot at the local elections, and only one in four of these summoned up the conviction to put a cross next to New Labour. Part of the low turn-out was because local councils have lost most of their powers to central government in any case.

In truth, we have arrived at a critical moment in the long history of the mass struggle for rights and representation. The existing democratic process is deeply flawed, with essential power residing not in parliament but in the hands of corporate and financial power brokers. Politicians like Blair and Brown are merely their political voice. The rest of us have no say in the shape of the future.

In these circumstances, it is the right of the disenfranchised to act on their own behalf. A World to Win has sponsored the Rights for a 21st century Democracy campaign as a way of gathering support for a new political and economic framework. If you haven’t already lent your support to the campaign, follow the link and join the growing numbers who have.

9 May 2006