PRIME minister Blair is frequently accused of replacing the established form of bourgeois rule in Britain, through an elected parliament, a government and a cabinet of ministers, with a US-style presidency, where he is the president, the cabinet is his administration, and he is the commander in chief.
In fact, David Blunkett’s book ‘The Blunkett Tapes: My Life in the Bearpit’ reveals that Blair did not even act as if he was an all powerful president and commander in chief.
Blunkett says that Blair acted as if he was part of a joint cabinet led by Bush, with a responsibility to be loyal to the US commander in chief, no matter what, and by definition disloyal to the interests of the British people. He acted as if he was the governor of the 51st state of the union and not the leader of an independent state.
Blair was, after September 11, 2001, and his early agreement with Bush that there had to be war with Iraq, a willing agent of a foreign power.
Blunkett writes: ‘You influence someone not by abusing them, but by persuading them.
‘I do not think that in politics there is a betrayal in privately telling the US the truth, and being as supportive as it is possible to be, given the difficulties that causes you politically at home.’
For Blair it was the US right or wrong, and to hell with the British government, parliament and people.
Blunkett makes the point that Blair and his advisers were aware that the US was courting disaster in Iraq.
He reveals that Blair urged Cheney and Rumsfeld not to destroy the entire Iraqi method of administration by dismantling ‘the whole of the security, policing, administrative and local government system…’
Cheney and Rumsfeld took not the slightest notice of Blair and proceeded to create the basis for a massive looting of the country and then the historic Iraqi insurgency.
As far as Blunkett is concerned: ‘The issue was “What the hell do you do about it?” All we could do as a nation of 60 million off the coast of mainland Europe was to seek to influence the most powerful nation in the world.
‘We did seek to influence them, but we were not in charge, so you cannot say that if only the government recognised what needed to be done, it would all have been different. The government did recognise the problem.’
In fact, the problem was that Blair, as the leader of a much-weakened British imperialism, saw that being in a ‘joint administration’ with Bush, and playing an extremely minor role was the best that British capitalism could manage.
He chose to go along with a disastrous policy and rejected the millions of working class and middle class people who were marching in Britain demanding that there be no war, and then that the war be stopped.
In fact, the value of the British support to Bush was not the size and capacity of the British armed forces, which the US could easily have done without and saw as a minor contribution to the war.
Britain’s major contribution to the war was that it gave the US an important ally, otherwise it would have been totally on its own.
Blair preserved this support through thick and thin and is now pursuing the same policy in Afghanistan.
However, there is not the slightest reason for thinking that any other bourgeois government of Britain would have acted in any different way from that of the Blair government.
The problem is not the qualities of the different leaders. The problem is that British imperialism is now so weakened that it cannot stand any longer on its own two feet.
It has long decided that its future is to attach itself to the US, do its dirty work, and try to get some of the rewards of a scavenger.
The only way that Britain will restore its independence from US imperialism is through a socialist revolution that overthrows the ruling class, smashes its state apparatus, expropriates its property and carries out socialist policies at home and abroad.
