PRIME Minister Blair, speaking to one of his major supporters, Murdoch’s Sun newspaper yesterday, spelt out that he was not going into early retirement and that he wanted to see his election manifesto put into action before he stood down as Prime Minister.
‘I’m going to see the whole programme through’ he told the Sun.
He added that he was ‘absolutely happy’ that Chancellor Gordon Brown would be his successor.
Just before Christmas, Blair told a meeting of Labour MPs just what this full programme was. He said that he was ‘battling on all fronts’ to bring about education, welfare and pensions reforms, adding: ‘Of course it’s going to be tough.’
Yes, it is going to be tough, and it will take a full parliamentary term, if not more.
Yet Blair has come back from his winter holidays in Egypt displaying confidence that he will be able to see this programme through.
He pointedly did not pledge that the Labour Party would see this programme through – he reduced the matter to himself as an individual.
The reason for this, of course, is that while he has been on his hols, the new leader of the Tory Party has made it crystal clear that on health, education and welfare he is a Blairite, and that the Tory Party will see to it that Blair’s programme is carried through the House of Commons.
At the same time, we have seen the Tory press and media mount a campaign to politically destroy the leader of the Lib Dems, Kennedy, on the farcical grounds that he drinks whisky, so that the Lib Dem dregs can be taken under the Cameron umbrella to strengthen the Tories. Do not fear, however, a new era of prohibition has not arrived. All the House of Commons cut-price liquor bars where alcohol floods down the throats of MPs of all parties are not going to be closed down by some Tory Taleban.
A Labour government can only push anti-working class legislation through the House of Commons to rip the Welfare State apart with the support of the Tories and the Lib Dems.
In the course of such a campaign, the government will have to lash out at the trade unions especially on the issues of pensions, education and welfare and benefit cuts. This will further deepen the parliamentary split.
That such a course of action will break the Labour Party apart and see the trade unions being forced to break with Blair is obvious. It will also see the Blairites forming a common front with the Tories to carry through their legislation and wage war on the working class, spurred on by the deepening capitalist crisis.
In that case, Blair will leave Brown behind to keep control of the remnants of the Labour Party, following in the path of Ramsay MacDonald.
The question is, what must the trade unions do about this developing situation to safeguard the jobs, wages, basic rights and pensions of their seven million members?
The answer is that they must respond to Blair’s declaration that he will complete the job of smashing the Welfare State in his third term.
He must be told to resign now, and to join the Tories if he wishes.
If he will not resign and insists on carrying out his programme to smash the Welfare State by making common cause with the Tories against the working class, the trades unions must call a general strike to bring down the Blair government to go forward to a workers’ government that will carry out socialist policies.
This is what has to be done.
This is the only way to keep the Tories out.
