You can't break promises you never made

New Labour was specific about economic strategy. It accepted the status quo created during the Thatcher years. This included the deregulation of markets. Monetarism. Gross reductions in taxation for the seriously rich, now the lowest in Western Europe. This process represented a transference of money from the poor to the very rich, on a scale not seen in the United Kingdom for a century or more. The maligned fat cats were an inevitable product of the times. This was paid for by the sale of public utilities, funds from North Sea oil, attacks on the public sector, public expenditure, social services, health services, pensions, etc.

It was claimed there would be a trickle-down effect that would help the poor. It didn't materialise. But look at the inhumanity of the language. Trickle-down is another way of saying the poor must depend on crumbs from the rich man's table. That's a Victorian concept. No wonder there's an increasing dependency on charity fund-raising for elementary services for the needy and the sick, even for medical research. In other words the status quo New Labour accepted is economically regressive and therefore politically reactionary.

What history will find hard to understand is how the Labour Party was conned into accepting a status quo that represented everything it was founded to oppose. We know from Curfew Jack Straw, the hammer o' the weans, that he approached Tony Blair in 1992 and suggested they launch a campaign against Clause 4. Blair urged him to start the ball rolling but to do so discreetly because if John Smith, then the party leader, heard of it, he would come down like a ton of bricks on those involved.

In the initial stages the campaign was organised behind the back of the party leader. John Smith died. Tony Blair became party leader. His election campaign for the leadership was funded by men who had become millionaires as a consequence of Thatcher's deregulation of commercial television. One of them has recently been appointed chairman of a Government quango. Can a knighthood or a peerage be far behind? The campaign against Clause 4 was now being led from the leader's office.

I was never infatuated with the language of Clause 4. It was arcane. Furthermore, since my early teens I've been actively involved in politics and the Labour movement. That means more than 40 years. Not once on the doorstep or on the factory floor did anyone ever raise Clause 4 with me. It was never an issue when it came to people voting for or against Labour. It did have a significance for members of the Labour Party. Socialism might not be on the political agenda but the clause represented a moral and philosophical aspiration, that some time people would tire of the rat race and choose to live a more

co-operative way of life.

The socialist ethic did influence economic and social policies within the framework of the market economy. The National Health Service was fuelled by socialist principles as was the wider welfare state. These things, in the aftermath of world war, made Western Europe a much more civilised place to live in. This is what was being dismantled during the past 18 years.

Clause 4 was turned into a tissue of meaningless words. More importantly it signalled that New Labour was no longer a socialist party in any sense of the word. That was not the end of it. It then became clear that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were going further. New Labour was also abandoning social democracy. Under the banner of modernity they were going back to pre-Keynesian economics, where unrestricted market forces would prevail. In any objective political context a party that embraces such an economic strategy is in fact a right-wing party.

New Labour in Government has handed over the determination of interest rates to the Bank of England which will exercise this responsibility on a strictly monetarist basis. This is monetarism beyond Thatcherism. It reduced corporation tax and is about to do so again. The Chancellor boasts that Britain will then have the lowest corporation tax in Europe. In contrast, the review of social security benefits will result in reduced benefits for the disabled and other disadvantaged groups. This is taking place when the Government is boasting within the European Union that the British economy is doing very well. If it can't help the poor when the economy is doing well what the hell is going to happen to the poor when the economy has its inevitable downturn?

For an innate feature of the market economy is the cycle of relative boom and recession. The Asian Tiger economies that were in boom last year are now in deep recession. The Japanese economy, seemingly so impregnable, is in trouble. The British economy is likely to be in recession within the next two years. The effects of recession can be ameliorated by Government intervention. This New Labour has pledged itself not to do.

Blair and Brown talk in glowing terms of Britain's flexible labour market. What does it really mean? Speak to the workers and they'll tell you. It means a small permanent labour force, and the rest on short-term contracts. When the short-term contract is due to expire the worker is sacked and re-employed on another temporary contract. This can go on for years. The employer has no responsibility in terms of pension and employment rights for these workers. It's paradise for the boss and a misery of insecurity for the workers and their families. Some of our continental partners won't have this. They say it's too cruel. It is, and was created by Thatcher.

At some stage we had to hear that hoary old chestnut, wage inflation. We got it from Gordon Brown. It's funny how we never hear of salary inflation. Was the massive salary increase that MPs gave themselves inflationary? Why then is a 2.5% increase for the low-paid in the public sector deemed inflationary? No wonder the rich are queuing up to give money to New Labour. It is Thatcherism without the stigma, as yet.