The emerging anti-Blair consensus?
The Sunday Telegraph, in a review of "England in particular", by Sue Clifford and Angela King, argues:The book comes at the right time to join the critique of the Blair years that is emerging from Left and Right. His England carries the sheen of commercial success, but it is insufficiently local, insufficiently green, insufficiently happy; its only goal is retail expenditure; it is a restless, over-stressed place, mired in bureaucracy and an off-the-peg internationalism - a sort of giant, droning airport in which everyone, whether talking on mobile phones or plugged into broadband, is perpetually aspiring to be somewhere else
I'm not sure to what degree I agree with this. The idea that there is nothing more to life than retail expenditure was hardly unknown in the Major and Thatcher years, to put it mildly. Indeed the whole paragaph reminds one of that viewpoint common to right-wing think tanks, and indeed the Conservative Party until 2003, that Britain could and only should be like a version of America that existed only in their heads.
Yet if David Cameron's conversion of the party is to be believed, then maybe the Thatcherites have lost control of the party, to its apparent electoral benefit. And it is true, surely, that there has become a certain over focus among parts of the left - the Blairite left really - on Britain's relative economic success*, as measured by the simple averaging per inhabitant of GDP, and less on the quality of life for its inhabitants.
I wouldn't overestimate this 'emerging critique': if Cameron wins the next election most of the party's votes will be people hoping foremost that he will cut the rate of income tax. But it might be enough to shift the balance.
*Reaching its limit perhaps in the Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society view that Britain is unquestionably the world's second strongest power.
posted by Matthew @ 5/31/2006 08:06:00 PM
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