actually make sanctions more effective, and prolong indefinitely Iraq’s subjection to a form of international trusteeship.
One reason why the allies, as the Blair and Bush governments like to call themselves, are so keen to act is that the existing sanctions are, mercifully, eroding fast. Smuggling, cash surcharges on contracts, unsanctioned preferential oil supplies to Iraq’s neighbours and flights in and out of Baghdad have all helped to ease conditions for ordinary Iraqis. Anglo-American smart sanctions would put a stop to most of that by forcing neighbouring states to police the unlicensed trade across Iraq’s borders. In return for this tightening of the vice, the British are proposing to restrict controls to military and ‘dual use’ goods – those with civilian and military applications.
But the obstruction of dual-use products is at the heart of the problem with the current sanctions. The secretive New York-based sanctions committee already rubber-stamps Iraqi imports of flour and rice. But it has blocked or vetoed more than $12 billion-worth of alleged dual-use contracts. Everything from chlorine and ambulances, vaccines and electrical goods to hoses, morphine and anaesthetics have been stopped, in every case by the British or US representative, on the grounds that they might have military uses.
The same will apply under smart sanctions, as will the arrangement by which Iraq’s oil income is controlled from outside, with a third of it used to pay reparations to cash-rich Kuwait and the cost of administering sanctions.
The pretext for maintaining and tightening the embargo is supposedly to prevent Iraq from developing new weapons of mass destruction and to force it to readmit the arms inspectors withdrawn two years ago. One of those inspectors, Scott Ritter, insists Iraq has long since been disarmed and no longer has the means to develop significant chemical and biological, let alone nuclear, weapons.
No other state in the region – notably nuclear-armed Israel, which daily violates a string of UN resolutions in its illegally occupied territories – is subjected to such punishment. The obvious way out of this inhuman and failed policy would be negotiation for the simultaneous lifting of sanctions and return of UN inspectors. That is unlikely to happen. Iraq has been singled out, not because of the brutality of its dictator, but because it cannot be trusted to toe the Western line in a strategically critical part of the world.5
(30/5/01)
Blair, Berlusconi and the heirs of Mussolini
The choice is not between New Labour and some imaginary, more radical Labour government, Tony Blair never tires of chiding critics from the heartlands, but between his administration and William Hague’s barking, slavering Tories. When it comes to this election, his point is unanswerable. Even in Scotland and Wales, where there are electorally credible challenges from Labour’s left – or in England, where the Liberal Democrats have adopted more progressive positions on some issues – only two parties have the remotest chance of forming a government next month.
The alternatives on offer are a party which, for all its policy outrages and grovelling to the rich and powerful, has brought in the country’s first national minimum wage, a legal right to union representation and the biggest-ever increase in child benefit – or a party which promises to slash spending on public services, ban public-sector strikes and lock up all asylum seekers in internment camps.
That, however, is only the beginning of the story. Any illusion that the government might be gradually turning itself into a more recognisably Labour administration has been firmly dispelled by the prime minister and Gordon Brown in the past few days. Both have been busy explaining why those earning over £100,000 cannot afford to pay a few thousand pounds a year more in tax for fear of undermining their incentive to work, and the chancellor has declared he wants to see every teacher in the land winning over children’s hearts and minds for the spirit of private enterprise.
Meanwhile, Blair says he wants to intensify the modernisation (for which read privatisation) of health and education, as well as the reform of welfare (for which read cuts). Unconcerned about the growing anti-corporate mood, New Labour has shown it is determined to position itself as Britain’s foremost party of big business. And there have been renewed mutterings at Millbank about breaking the party’s links with the trade unions if there is any more nonsense about transport workers going on strike. The Blairite project, it seems, is up and running again.
This week’s Italian elections – won by a billionaire media monopolist running in harness with a regionalist xenophobe and the political heirs of Benito Mussolini – offer a timely warning about where this kind of marginalisation of core supporters can end up. To be fair to the Blairophile centre-left coalition that has ruled Italy for the past five years, it never stretched quite as far to the right as its British counterpart. But, like New Labour, it offered itself as the best bet for international business – which repaid the compliment by campaigning hard against a Berlusconi victory – and pushed through a programme of welfare cuts, privatisation, labour flexibility and budget austerity to squeeze Italy into the eurozone.
Faced with a left-leaning government which failed to deliver to its heartlands and a demagogic opposition which played mercilessly on the racism and social tensions around illegal migrants, voters haemorrhaged to the right, producing Sunday’s gruesome result. Factor out the specifics of Italian political culture and it is not so hard to imagine a British version of this debacle a few years down the line.
Politicians are articulators of power and social interests and they respond to pressure. At the moment, New Labour feels far more heat from its powerful business and media friends – as well as allies and international institutions abroad – than it does from its own core supporters, such at the trade unions, which have sold their loyalty cheaply over the past four years.
Tony Blair’s government has, arguably despite itself, shifted the terms of political trade, for example, around the issue of public spending. But the prime minister has also helped create a crisis of political representation by effectively closing down internal Labour democracy, while weighting the balance of political influence inside his big tent heavily towards middle-class and employer interests. Under the current electoral system, both main parties have to be led as genuine coalitions or they undermine confidence in politics itself.
Supporters may acknowledge a Labour government as preferable to a Tory one, but if the gap is seen as too narrow, some will inevitably peel off and the coalition will erode. Without a second-term shift to a politically broader administration, challenges from the left are bound to grow and where they are credible – as in London last year – are likely to be effective. The risk must also be, though, of a parallel drift into voter apathy and an eventual collapse, Berlusconi-style, of part of Labour’s electorate into Tory populism.6
(16/5/01)
Globalisation and a war on asylum
The mood music has become steadily harsher as the extent of the far right’s advance on the European mainland has been rammed home. First David Blunkett described asylum seekers as ‘swamping’ schools and medical services. Then Peter Hain singled out Britain’s Muslims for their supposed ‘separatism’, while denouncing southern Europe for being a ‘soft touch’ for asylum seekers. But now, as the tabloid campaign against refugees reaches a new frenzy, Whitehall officials say it is Tony Blair – far more even than his would-be hardman Blunkett – who is driving the government towards an aggressive new line on asylum and immigration.
Earlier this week, Blair celebrated his success in convincing José María Aznar, the Spanish prime minister, to back a British plan to withdraw EU aid from poor countries which fail to join the crackdown on migrants. The message could not be clearer. Just as Australia’s conservative prime minister John Howard swept away an electoral challenge from the populist right by stealing its clothes on immigration, Blair is now determined to buy off any potential domestic
