Blair’s speech echoed Hayek’s warnings that managerialism bypasses the checks and balances designed to prevent the erosion of liberty and miscarriages of justice. Like any good communitarian, the Prime Minister defined liberty as the balance between freedom and security, a political equation that is often on the lips of our tyrannous leaders. The fragile institutions of criminal justice and the common law were dismissed with disdain:
The theory is basically treating Britain as if it were in the 19th or early 20th centuries. The practice however takes place in a post-war, modern, culturally and socially diverse, globalised society and economy at the beginning of the 21st century. The old civic and family bonds have been loosened. The scale, organisation, nature of modern crime makes the traditional processes simply too cumbersome, too remote from reality to be effective…
Yes, in theory, that is what is supposed to happen through the traditional court processes. In practice it doesn’t. We are fighting 21st crime with 19th century methods.
Blair criticises the traditional court system for protecting the accused and takes great pride in “reversing the burden of proof”. To deal with the communally defined ‘anti-social behaviour’, the tool of social engineering is summary justice with a right of appeal, presumably to the same inefficient, cumbersome courts that, according to our Prime Minister, do not work in the first place.
Blair and New Labour take pride in smashing the checks and balances which protect civil liberties in this country. If you have misunderstood the man and still believe that he is located in the liberal tradition as some of the comrades do, think again. His first instinct is order, social and authoritarian, covenanted by the community and upheld through the state, in a mantra of rights and responsibilities, derived from Hobbes and cemented by Blair’s favourite socialist, R H Tawney.
Respect is a way of describing the very possibility of life in a community. It is about the consideration that others are due. It is about the duty I have to respect the rights that you hold dear. And vice-versa. It is about our reciprocal belonging to a society, the covenant that we have with one another.
More grandly, it is the answer to the most fundamental question of all in politics which is: how do we live together? From the theorists of the Roman state to its fullest expression in Hobbes’s Leviathan, the central question of political theory was just this: how do we ensure order? And what are the respective roles of individuals, communities and the state?
Legal stricture will never be enough. Respect cannot, in the end, be conjured through legislation. Government can provide resources and powers. It can do its best to ensure that wrong-doing is detected, that its powers against offenders are suitable, that its systems are expeditious and its enforcement strong. And the British system, like others, in the modern world, has not been good enough against these standards.
Despite the loathsome outcome of this campaign and the manifold injustices that will result, one can pity Blair as an agent who follows the path laid out before him. The transition from a high-trust society to a low-trust society is a consequence of the welfare state and the expansion of moral dependency on the part of many individuals. The state lacks the tools to remedy and offset the pernicious consequences of its systems. It returns to the mindset that has served it so well: controls, shortcuts and arbitrary regulations designed to solve the defined problems. If existing systems like the courts are outside the executive control, they are bypassed for more malleable solutions.
Blair treads the path that has been written for him.
Philip Chastion quotes Bliar thus:
“We are fighting 21st crime with 19th century methods.”
Once again revealing nothing so much as Tony Bliar’s almost complete lack of historical perspective or knowledge. At times one wonders if he was parachuted straight into Britain as an adult and has never so much as watched the History Channel, let alone read a book.
In some ways we have more crime today, in others we have rather less. In some ways the crimes are worse, in others, they are not. We are bound neither for utopia nor dystopia.
There is nothing so unique about 21st century crime that it justifies the greatest removal of liberty in hundreds of years..
Bliar’s twitterings are the product of a poor, ill-educated mind. St John’s has a lot to answer for.
‘New Labour take pride in smashing the checks and balances which protect civil liberties’ This may well be true. However, many of these checks and balances are handled by publicly funded agents of the Crown (i.e. lawyers dependant on legal aid or state funded social workers). My experience of criminal lawyers is that they are for the status quo of enabling chronic repeat offenders to get off the hook and terrorise others. Also, the more individualistic society becomes (which is to be welcomed), does lower trust become inevitable consequence? These are tricky issues. I think rather than this blog attributing so much power to TB (curiously some in the Newsnight audience tonight believed the resolution of their problems were entirely down to him personally) it would be useful for it to articulate more clearly an alternative libertarian morality. When the Daily Mail (as it did yesterday) holds the Education minister personally accountable for appointing a sex offender in a school, is it any surprise ministers act in an authoritarian power crazed way?
Mike writes:
“However, many of these checks and balances are handled by publicly funded agents of the Crown (i.e. lawyers dependant on legal aid or state funded social workers).”
You mean like Cherie Booth?
My God! Did Blair really cite “the Roman state its fullest expression in Hobbes’s Leviathan” as the bounds of his philosophy? Or was that quote from this R H Tawney (of whom I confess my complete ignorance).
Philip, please clarify.
On the former view, I’m about to demote Blair from idiotic to satanic. Tell me you were extrapolating, please.
It was as quoted
Mary Contrary – you see a glimmer of the light. Tony Blair is not a complete idiot, although he is stupid enough to be influenced by stronger people around him. I’ve always felt that the people around him utilised him, with his full accord, for evil. But enough of this gloominess: read this account of the early Tone trying to be a rock star and a rock promoter and draw your own conclusions: (Link)
I have always said, at the risk of sounding like someone flying out of the bat cave, that he has been a willing conduit for evil.
Verity,
I’m pretty sure Blair does what he does because he believes it is good. I don’t mean in the “doing the right thing” misguided liberal way – I mean in the egotistical “I am the people, the people are me” sort of way. He thinks he has the power to impose a perfect order on society and doesn’t see the need for checks or balances.
You’re right about him not being an idiot. Hard to find the right words but he is simultaneously clever yet incapable of seeing reason when his beliefs are challenged.
In case you’d forgotten, I’d like to leave you with that image of Blair, naked but for his jackboots. Sweet dreams.
You will not be forgiven, Mark. Not forgiven.
There is something very contradictory about being a socialist ex public school boy, the empahasis becomes even stronger when the socialist is clearly unable to give up loving money. He dressed and paraded his children for the press in brand teeshirts, (surely a put down for the less well off?) and haggled with Chinese tailors for £10 discounts for suits that only cost £120 anyway.
His wife does charity events where she gets to keep a bigger slice of the takings than the good cause.
These are not the traits of a nice person/family who want to be good. They are traits of a family that are out for themselves and like to be the centre of attention.
Cherie Blair, for a barrister, has a terribly forgetful habit of, when returning to Britain, walking through the Green Channel by mistake.
Thousands of pounds worth of free gifts from Donna Karen NY, thousands of pounds worth of gifts from an Aussie department store (they meant it to be one gift, but you know how Cherie is) and she walks through the Green Channel. For a “barrister”, she is certainly a forgetful kind of fat woman.
A superb post, Guy. The final paragraph nicely sums up the problem. Blair is by no means the main architect of all this as he does, indeed, take advantage of trends which have been around for a while.
Mike agrees that it “may well be true” that the present government wants to end checks and balances of the Common Law. It is not a matter for doubt. This government – as demonstrated by Blair’s speech – is explicitly committed to crushing such constraints on state power. Wake up and smell the coffee.
“Many of these checks and balances are handled by publicly funded agents of the Crown”. Indeed. That has been the situation for many decades, and yet the attacks on such constraints began about 20 years ago (under Maggie T, let’s not forget). There is no logical reason why such checks and balances should be under threat unless there is pressure to end them from opinion. What we have had is a collapse of respect for such constraints in the last 20 years..
“These are not the traits of a nice person/family who want to be good.”
Julian, I said he believes himself to be good, not that the belief can be rationally justified. He almost certainly does not think of himself as a socialist, even though his solutions are command based. He thinks he has embraced capitalism (without conceptually grasping it) and found a “third way” (which rather resembles national socialism). You are right that his actions are self-contradictory but he possesses the perfect balance of ego and self-delusion to act as he does and still believe he is serving the greater good.
Very nicely put Mr Chaston but there’s one small point I beg to differ on,
I would feel about as much sympathy or pity for Tony Blair as I might for stepping on bacteria. This man trades upon gimmickry and artificial fears created within the Sahara of his own imagination. His concept of ‘respect’ is based, as expressed in today’s Telegraph leader, not upon the true values of actual respectability, but upon the metro sub-culture so prevalent in our modern society, where “e didna show me no respect yer honner” is a defence for a yoof gunning someone down for no reason.
I’ve enjoyed reading Guy and Johnathan’s posts. ‘Blair treads the path that has been written for him’ I think the likes of Clinton, Blair and (maybe) Cameron are effective marketeers of public opinion. They see what the polls suggest they should do and they go for it to remain popular and win elections. This makes perfect sense and they will believe they are serving the people. with the best of intentions Culturally, with an addiction to the NHS, to comprehensive education, to ‘ancient’ legal precedents (again usually defended by lawyers paid from the public purse, and do not doubt it sometimes based on obscure rulings designed for a medieval society) there is a deep rooted conservatism in this country about the role of the state. The media (especially the BBC) underpin this, and when the Daily Mail (from the right) rages over legislation for everything from dangerous dogs to classroom assistants, we end up with the politics we deserve. No wonder the politicians behave the way they do and we’re in the state we’re in.
My apologies to you Philip. It was your post I enjoyed reading. I mistakenly attributed it to Guy (who is also well worth reading).
curiously some in the Newsnight audience tonight believed the resolution of their problems were entirely down to him personally
Of course they did, he’s the Little Father. Why should people who have been infantilised by 60 years of welfarism not expect the Dear Leader to sort out their problems? If they tried to sort out yobs themselves the police would nick them before you could say “vigilante”.
When the Daily Mail (as it did yesterday) holds the Education minister personally accountable for appointing a sex offender in a school, is it any surprise ministers act in an authoritarian power crazed way?
Well she was personally responsible, she decided not to put this man on List 99, but as is inevitable with a NuLab weathervane, now the press have kicked up a stink she is “reconsidering” her decision.
The centrally managed quasi-fascism that is the NuLabor project depends on intrusive levels of regulation in all levels of national life. That’s what they wanted, they started out authoritarian and power crazed, and constructed the project in their own image.
Blair is an authoritarian idiot. Doesn’t he understand that this is not some new 21st century crime, what is called anti-social behaviour covers much of what the original 19th century police where created to deal with. How about a 19th century solution for a 19th century problem. Visible policing, punishments that mean something, and the Rule of Law. Perhaps he didn’t notice but it is the precious socialist Welfare State that is burning away the old civic and family bonds? Get rid of it! let society reemerge and with it the civic bonds between individuals.
chris
You are under the impression that Blair wants to do what he thinks is best for his nation. No. To understand you first of all need to realise that bringing down Great Britain is the point of the plan. That Blair has made a song and dance of the ‘respect agenda’ bullshit merely demonstrates that he’s feeling the heat and needs to shore up his position by being seen to do something. He is an enemy of the British people. Consigning all that is good, right and proper about our country to the dustbin of history is what motivates people like him. Unless you understand that you will never understand him.
‘To understand you first of all need to realise that bringing down Great Britain is the point of the plan.’ Where is this plan? Can I see it?
‘He is an enemy of the British people. Consigning all that is good, right and proper about our country to the dustbin of history is what motivates people like him.’ Well, we’ve won the Olympics on his watch (quite a marketing effort for GB and quite a coup in world terms)and stood by the USA in intervening to bring down fascist dictators.
I know its anathema to point out things like this on this blog but…
Blair seems ambivalent about his Britishness. He almost always escapes from this country for his holidays and embraces the EU concept that Europe is a single entity.
I have always felt he would have preferred to have been a Continental.
Much of this theory that he thinks is good looks to me like classic denial symptoms. When a person is in denial they hold contradictory concepts of themselves.
Mishima descibed it well in his story of the mouse who thought he was a cat. When he met a real cat he told the cat “you can not eat me, I am a cat”. The cat said “no you are a mouse, I am about to eat you” The Mouse replied “it is impossible for you to eat me”
At this point the mouse jumped into a vat of water and drowned, the cat not wanting to get wet walked off without eating the mouse.
The point of this story is the mouse acted rationally to maintain the fiction that he was a cat, and prooved to himself he was a cat. Deep downhe also knew he was a mouse.
Blair maintains a fiction in his head that he is telling the truth and a good man, he will spin all sorts of lies to maintainthis fiction to himself and the outside world.
We all do it to some extent, but Blair is a master at living in denial about who he is and his motives to behaving in the way he behaves.
I think he is quite a nasty piece of work.
This discussion of Blair’s mind is making me queasy.
I agree with Pete_London. Blair’s project is the destruction of Britain.
I know its anathema to point out things like this on this blog but…, writes Mike, praising Blair’s securing of the Olympic Games. Yep, you’re right there, old boy.
I guess I could be being hopelessly naive. And we still have 5 years of these fascists before there is a chance of getting rid of them! If I had the money I would emigrate, but with New Labour taxing till the pips squeak looks like I will never have the money to get out.
Verity writes:
” Blair’s project is the destruction of Britain.”
It always fills me with a sense of dreadful irony when a Guardianista starts banging on about how ‘Thatcher destroyed society’. No one, perhaps since Cromwell, has done so much to force changes on the British constitution and society than has Bliar.
It is the stated intent of his party (or, at least, his fragment of it) to so change society that no government after his will be able to put it back together again the way it was.
One by one the fundamental constitutional checks and balances, the freedoms and concepts that have evolved over centuries have been smashed.
And yet the mendacious Left castigates Margaret Thatcher for selling council houses, privatising a few industries that had only been nationalised three decades before, and trying to establish the (very sound) principle that those who consume local services should actually pay for them.
It’s pretty clear to me who the real wrecker is – the man who thinks ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has no place in the 21st century!
Chris, you touch on something I have thought in relation to this issue:-
Why do we need new laws to bring back order we had in the past?
We do not require new laws, but a dismantling of some recent laws that have hamstrung normal operation of the societal organism.
Blair/NeuArbeit is acting like an alas, rather typical mediocre computer programmer – adding more and more functions and code instead of fixing what is wrong. The professional approach when failure occurs is to first examine recent changes, which are usually the cause when a long-running system suddenly begins to misbehave and not be afraid to reverse them out and reconsider/review the model and algorithms used.
Philip, I did enjoy reading your comments on Blair’s authoritarianism but fall short of agreeing with your statement that “the transition from a high-trust society to a low-trust society is a consequence of the welfare state and the expansion of moral dependency on the part of many individuals.”
I would offer instead that the blame be placed squarely on the shoulders of neoliberalism and the subsequent inequality between the super-rich and low pay workers, which has grown sharply over the past 25 years due to cuts in health, welfare and education, carried out under both the Tories and NuLabour; while expenditures move overseas to low wage economies in cheaper climes.
The social pact between capitalism and the welfare state died under Mrs Thatcher. Blair’s Third Way ideology is an attempt to mask the connection of NuLabour to that regime.
Lastly, Blair’s latest verbals highlight how NuLabour turns public debate away from the real problems facing the UK to content-free “civic morality.” NuLabour are so out of touch with the voters and with the social polarity which has increased under Blair’s rule which threatens to overwhelm him.
carol writes:
“… which has grown sharply over the past 25 years due to cuts in health, welfare and education…”
What cuts in health, welfare and education? Public expenditure is higher than ever and widely agreed to be out of control. And yet social disintegration continues to worsen as it has for decades, regardless of the current status of the welfare state.
I’m afraid this tattered socialist analysis simply falls to pieces the moment it is exposed to the facts.
carol writes: I would offer instead that the blame be placed squarely on the shoulders of neoliberalism and the subsequent inequality between the super-rich and low pay workers, which has grown sharply over the past 25 years due to cuts in health, welfare and education, carried out under both the Tories and NuLabour; while expenditures move overseas to low wage economies in cheaper climes.
Well, undoubtedly there are some superrich in Britain, many of them Indian billionaires who made their fortunes through an entrepreneurial spirit and hard work in our country, which is rather nice.
The super rich, carol, who are very, very, very few and far between, create wealth. They create the enterprises which employ workers at rates commensurate with their skills. They pay taxes that give the public sector a free ride. So does big business.
“Cuts in health, welfare and education”? Are you mad?
It seems quite obvious that Mr. Blair is a very nasty piece of work, lying, duplicity, hypocrisy, arrogance, authoritarianism, war-mongering, .. the list of his faults is endless
He came to power by hi-jacking an existing political party, and hence the historical votes of old-labour supporters, who thought they were voting for one thing and got something else
It is also obvious that much of the dysfunctional mess that our country has become is due to the mass of new illiberal, controlling legislation of recent years, and the vandalistic destruction of the checks and controls that used to limit the power of the Government and the Prime Minister
The big question is “Can Britain be Repaired?” Will a future government repeal the bulk of New Labour’s legislation, restore the position of Lord Chancellor and the valuable powers of the House of Lords, give us back our ancient and hard-won freedoms, stop being the USA’s apologist and attack dog, stop toadying to Big Business, get rid of all those CCTV’s that make the place feel like a prison (the rest of the world gets by without them – are we such a savage and criminal lot that we have to be watched all the time?), restore some real power to local government (so that it in turn can restore some Civic Pride to our towns) and generally get the State out of our faces and back to doing its few essential tasks properly?
I don’t think it is possible, and much as I would like to, I don’t think there is anything I can do to help save all the good things that Blair now and Thatcher before him have destroyed. So as soon as my commitments here are ended (2 to 3 years) I am off, somewhere, I don’t yet know where, taking my expensively acquired useful skills, 30-odd years of work experience, and public-spiritedness with me. The powers that be obviously no longer have a place for “respectable” midddle aged Englishman in their Dystopian vision for Britain.