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Incompetence And Ideology
Good to see Simon Heffer giving both barrels to the myth that New Labour is incompetent. It isn't incompetent, he argues: It is malignant.
Of course, EURSOC was first to air the idea that Labour's supposed lack of ideology was a diversion, and that the ten years under Blair saw the most intense period of ideological legislation in recent history. Heffer expands on this theme, laying into the soft excuse that government is merely incompetent:
"When we say, as we should often feel the temptation to do, that the Labour administration that has governed us for the past 11 years is incompetent, we should be aware also that we are saying the following: that, but for its administrative and technical failings, it would have done well.
"I do not believe this to be true. Despite the sheen of reason that Gordon Brown and, before him, Tony Blair and their chums have sought to put on all they do, this Government has had dark motives from the start."
Heffer continues,
"It has followed policies deliberately that have enabled it to pursue its own political agenda - and this has always been a deeply politically motivated government in the way that Lady Thatcher's was, and that John Major's wasn't - and irrespective of some of the dire consequences that might flow from those policies.
"The element of deliberation and deliberateness in what Labour has done makes an accusation of incompetence, or carelessness, seem wide of the mark. Things were meant to be this way.
"Labour has pursued policies, be they social or economic, for ideological reasons: and when they fail, as so many have, it has not been because of slipshod administration. It is because that was how things were always going to work out."
Heffer nails immigration as one aspect of Labour's scheme. Why were millions of workers needed to fill vacancies when millions of Brits waste away on benefits or extended sick leave? "It was because of a doctrinally driven determination by the new Government in 1997 to destroy our national identity and to advance multiculturalism."
He applies his "doctrine of non-incompetence" to other areas: Brown's creation of a "client state" of Labour voters tied to public services, whether as employees or beneficiaries of welfare: "stunning in its calculation", Heffer calls it.
Education? "A Marxist-driven philosophy of anti-elitism forced down standards: but if the level of attainment required to pass a public examination is forced down too, then, voilà! we all look much cleverer than we used to be."
Crime? "Mr Brown also had a policy of making fathers redundant in families, by downgrading the state's respect for marriage, and providing a career structure for single mothers that included state-provided childcare.
"Coupled with the Blairite policy of turning the police into a weapon of social engineering from one of crime fighting, he has presented us with today's under-achieving, feral youth, with its knives and guns, going around killing each other and making our cities seem like the dirtier suburbs of Los Angeles."
Check it out, but please read our Post-mortem of the Blair years too: A reading of the decade which was radical less than a year ago, but which has found itself in the mainstream press.
