Totally agree. And they failed to implement proportional representation, which would have been a much fairer and accurate system than what we currently have.
New Labour's Legacy?
- Thread starter esmufc07
- Start date
Actually it wasn't relevant for 99% of the 5% unemployed either. Benefit fraud is such a tiny percentage of claims. Public perception of it is always higher than the reality. Ads like this helped to build that misconception and laid a foundation for where we are today.
Yeah, for sure. I just meant that <5% of the population would feel unfairly maligned. And the fact that this is such a tiny % makes it a bizarre bit of footage to choose to epitomise that era.
Something else that’s funny about the New Labour bashing in this thread is the idea that it was them that dragged politics to the right, in preparation for the current Tory cnuts. When, you know, the country voted in a more right wing government before and after then. Doesn’t that show they actually managed to push the needle to the left, against the longstanding preferences of the British public?
It's not important how many people it explicitly targeted, it's that it's part of a pattern New Labour followed of bigging up minor issues (false benefit claims, false asylum claims) to legitimise and gain political capital from enforcing pointlessly cruel policies. The same pattern we've seen from the Tories over the last 10 years.
Faie enough. Bizarre that it was created and aired under a Labour government. Stigmatising the working classes.
I've always liked you and I have no desire to bicker with you, or frankly anyone, about this shit anymore.
Clearly New Labour was the best UK government of my life time. Yes, they did some good. They, however, drifted to the right on many matters that mattered a lot to me at the time and Labour lost me after years of active support.
I'm not a total naive, and the combative and patronising tone used when lots of people deal with anyone callow enough, or so much of an ideologue, that we're not fecking delighted that the only way you can get elected in the UK is to basically turn into what the Lib Dems were meant to be is becoming very difficult to take.
Policies that were mainstream are now seem as extreme left. However, what mattered to me in the 90s still matters now. I have not drifted right, or matured as you doubtless may see it Pogue. I still believe in education free at the point of use, a proper welfare state and so many other things that are now seen, apparently, as SWP Bolshevik pipe dreams. It's absolutely fecking demoralising.
So yes, they were better than the absolute cnuts before them and destructive shits that followed. They also symbolise the death of Labour in my country, the collapse of free higher education, the savaging of Social Care, the alignment with crazy theological American politics and so many other negative aspects that I cannot remember them fondly in any sense that is different from me remembering my bout of chronic diarrhoea with more affection than I do my case of Dengue fever.
So Labour aren't the party for me now. That's fine. There's no-one else though. I tend to vote Green but they'll never win. It's Democrats vs Republicans. I don't find that pragmatic just a little depressing.
sorry, WTF? Is this real?The continued glorification of Blair's authoritarian rule is really something quite bizarre to me.
He wanted to screen working class children's DNA to assess their risk of growing up into a criminal ffs
There's just no substance to this argument whatsoever. If you have a two party political system which is characterised by a broadly 'left 'party and a broadly 'right' party, and the left-wing party abandons left wing arguments in favour of centre/right wing ones, obviously that has an effect on the political landscape, and one that brings harder right-wing arguments closer to the mainstream.
Taking the specific example of New Labour. When they, in government, decided to outflank the Tories on immigration, it created a mainstream immigration debate that was bereft of pro-immigrant voices (save the Greens), and one where the sitting 'centre-left' government was spouting the exact same rhetoric and advocating the same policies as UKIP were at the time, and which Johnson's Tories are now. The points-based immigration system Farage touted constantly on Question Time, and which Priti Patel is bringing through the Home Office right now was literally a New Labour policy announced prior to the 2005 election. The rhetoric on clamping-down on asylum claims Priti Patel is announcing now is identical to that which Blair used following the 2001 elections (he literally stated that clamping down on asylum claims was one of his top domestic priorities). I'm going to leave the examples there, but someone with more energy could keep them coming all day.
The long and short of it is that there is absolutely no doubt that part of the reason the Tories have been able to get away with so much shite over the last 10 years is because much of the rhetoric underlying it was accepted, used and normalised by New Labour in government and subsequently became the centre-ground of British politics. And again, this isn't something they did prior to 1997 to triangulate so they could achieve some 'greater good'. It's something they chose to do in power, when they had unassailable majorities, which failed to actually win them votes and which the centrists in the party continue to do to this day.
Sounds crazy but absolutely true.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/mar/28/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation
From the article, it seems that the DNA thing and the child screening thing are seperate policies. Don't get me wrong, both of those things in isolation are the stuff of dystopian fiction fascist governments and way to the right of the anything the Tories have ever done or suggested (to my knowledge), but they fall slightly short of the 'its in the DNA' eugenics thing you're suggesting:
He wanted all suspects (so, people who have not been convicted of a crime) to have their DNA added to a database. He also wanted to screen every child (EVERY. CHILD.) to see if they risked becoming criminals. He didn't want to check children's DNA for evidence of criminality.
edit: maybe their slogan could have been New Labour: Technically not eugenics
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Well if you look at that article without any wider context about the Blair era it might seem that way, sure. But he relentlessly targeted the young, working class, immigrants & minorities for years - thus they are the ones more likely to be 'suspects' in the first place.
Also I may be misremembering, but I believe he wanted to screen more people's DNA because initial samples couldn't come to a concise conclusion (duh) and thus he wanted to expand it out to a wider pool to compare & contrast against.
I mean, no matter what way you slice it - it's insanity.
Entirely agree, just trying to parse out exactly what the article was saying the policy was. As I said, even by the most generous reading it's insane, fascistic stuff. The sort of stuff New Labour's defenders skip over and pretend was inconsequential.
I'll admit I was properly glued to this idea of Blair being this great & balanced leader, and maybe he was the right leader for that time - plus I was like 10, so clearly I knew nothing - but there's an argument to be made that some of the most polarising issues on topics like Brexit, Immigration, Benefits, NHS budgeting, Police powers (particularly stop & search) and criminal sentencing have a direct link to his Government.
Looking back on some of the policies they implemented and even some of the ones they wanted to implement - and the way they spoke about immigrants & gypsies? It's hard to tell the difference between him and the Tories.
isn't the exactly what villain said?
also it's funny, i've been looking terrified at the new eugenics stuff that's been coming from the charles murray-style social scientists and biologists (mostly linked to IQ), but i never knew about this one. a lot of the eugenics people are from britain (guardian had done a story on them). also, it's extremely difficult to find a handful of big-effect genes for traits like this now (with massive improvements in genome sequencing compared to even 10 years ago), i wonder what the data was like 1997-2010 when they proposed this frankly nazi-style policy.
good luck trying to predict from those effect sizes!
Love it, get that yellow cafe waitress in the slammer.
No because, from the article at least, it's not referring to screening their DNA, it's referring to looking at factors like their marks in school, whether they skip school and using that to predict whether they'll be criminals. Still very Orwellian, but stops short of trying to identify 'criminal DNA' in kids.
They got an idea that early intervention was the silver bullet to stopping criminality. Could you spot dysfunctional families and problem kids early and through targeted resources prevent criminal behavior which would save later trauma to victims and save money in the long term. It turned out to be unworkable.
People do underestimate the impact they had in the first 18 months. Certainly can't remember a government that hit the ground running as well.
Lot of credit should go to Brown and Mowlam.
Re Byrne's note, it was crass but it was a nod to the tradition of outgoing ministers.
The idolisation of Blair is what does New Labour a disservice in many ways because the lessons to be learned from New Labour are swept under the carpet in defence.
Once they got power they really failed to move the country towards Labour values and in trying to balance policy with public rhetoric they created an image of mistrust. They never won the argument for immigration or public spending they just took the flak on those issues and when your opponent can beat you on those you're done.
It's important that Labour look to how they can become the dominant political party rather than just get into power for a term or two every now and again. Not saying i have the answer to that but I've yet to really see centrists make that distinction or provide an answer.
I also think people take a very narrow view of the 97 election as so many aspects fell in Labours favour that building a strategy on it isn't wise.
Once they got power they really failed to move the country towards Labour values and in trying to balance policy with public rhetoric they created an image of mistrust. They never won the argument for immigration or public spending they just took the flak on those issues and when your opponent can beat you on those you're done.
It's important that Labour look to how they can become the dominant political party rather than just get into power for a term or two every now and again. Not saying i have the answer to that but I've yet to really see centrists make that distinction or provide an answer.
I also think people take a very narrow view of the 97 election as so many aspects fell in Labours favour that building a strategy on it isn't wise.
Rwanda-style asylum plan was ‘nuclear option’ for Blair in 2003, records reveal
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