Tony Blair has come out swinging at Jeremy Corbyn again, insinuating that his economic policies would somehow be worse for the country than the continuation of ruinous Tory austerity dogma, wage repression, and privatisation mania!
We all know that Tony Blair is an economic right-winger who continued the Thatcherite agenda of privatisation, tax cuts for the rich, a blind eye to tax-dodging, ridiculous PFI scams, reckless financial sector deregulation, bailouts for the banks when their deregulated casino capitalist gambling went wrong.
He offset this right-wing economic malice with policies like tax credits and investment in public services, but overall even the most staunch Blairite would have to admit that he won the support of the Murdoch propaganda empire with his policy of not reversing even the most botched of Tory privatisations. Not even the railways.
In his latest article Blair has reiterated this view that he'd rather the British people suffer the consequences of even more Tory austerity dogma in post-Brexit Britain, rather than see Corbyn attempt to change direction with his policies of repatriating British infrastructure and services, rescuing the NHS and social care from Tory administered decline, establishing a National Education Service, and creating a national investment bank to drive an investment-based recovery.
Here's what he said:
"If a right-wing populist punch in the form of Brexit was followed by a left-wing populist punch in the form of unreconstructed hard-left economics, Britain would hit the canvas, flat on our back and be out for a long count"
The use of language here is telling. Instead of criticising Tory austerity, wage repression and privatisation mania as "hard-right economics" he's deriding a centre-left policy platform as "hard-left".
- Free university education (or affordable administrative fees) are commonplace in western Europe (Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, France, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Scotland and many more).
- Publicly owned rail networks are commonplace all over the world, in fact 74% of the "privatised" UK rail network is now operated by the state rail companies of other countries (Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, France). Apparently, according to Blair and his ilk, wanting the British rail network to be run by Britain for the benefit of the British, rather than by a hotch-potch of foreign governments is "hard-left" craziness.
- Publicly owned energy grids are commonplace all over the world. In fact, Tony Blair is going to describe Corbyn's policy of having a not-for-profit democratically accountable energy grid as "hard-left economics" he's also going to have to describe Texas as a "hard-left" state, because that's exactly the system the have there.
- If it's Corbyn's water company policies that Blair is ranting about, then he's going to have to explain how allowing the communist government in China to operate our water companies (as is the case now) is less hard-left than running them for the benefit of the British people.
- Publicly owned mail companies are commonplace all over Europe too. If anything is economic extremism, it's selling off the Royal Mail against the wishes of the British public.
- National investment funds are also commonplace all over the world, in fact Norway's sovereign wealth fund is the richest in the world because they used it to invest their oil wealth, rather than squandering it on tax breaks for the mega-rich and pre-election bribes like Thatcher did.
What Tony Blair is trying to do is to perpetuate the propaganda narrative that Jeremy Corbyn is some kind of extreme-left communist type, when in reality he's a centre-left social democrat.
Corbyn only looks very left-wing because Tony Blair and his Progress mob did such an efficient job of purging genuinely left-wing people from the Labour Party, and because the UK media is completely dominated by people who refuse to rock the boat by ever questioning the fundamental assumptions of orthodox neoliberalism.
The amusing thing is that Blair still hasn't realised that bitter divisive criticism from discredited figures like him, Alistair Campbell, John McTernan, and Peter Mandelson doesn't do Jeremy Corbyn any damage at all, in fact, criticism from that lot (who have refused to condemn Tory austerity dogma with anything like as much zeal) is just about the best endorsement a genuine Labour Party supporter could hear, because neoliberalism-lite is way past its sell by date.
The fact that Tony Blair keeps repeatedly aligning himself as closer to the Tories than Jeremy Corbyn and the majority of the Labour Party membership just helps to illustrate that the UK has had four decades of hard-right Thatcherite neoliberalism, and now it's well past the time for a genuine change.
I'm not going to lead you down the garden path by telling you what is motivating this kind of divisive wrecking behaviour from Tony Blair when Jeremy Corbyn is soaring so high in the polls, or why Blair keeps on indicating that he'd prefer the country to continue suffering socially and economically devastating Tory misrule, but the fact that Jeremy Corbyn defied Blair over Iraq, and has said that he would like to see Blair investigated for war crimes can't be an insignificant factor can it?
Corbyn only looks very left-wing because Tony Blair and his Progress mob did such an efficient job of purging genuinely left-wing people from the Labour Party, and because the UK media is completely dominated by people who refuse to rock the boat by ever questioning the fundamental assumptions of orthodox neoliberalism.
The amusing thing is that Blair still hasn't realised that bitter divisive criticism from discredited figures like him, Alistair Campbell, John McTernan, and Peter Mandelson doesn't do Jeremy Corbyn any damage at all, in fact, criticism from that lot (who have refused to condemn Tory austerity dogma with anything like as much zeal) is just about the best endorsement a genuine Labour Party supporter could hear, because neoliberalism-lite is way past its sell by date.
The fact that Tony Blair keeps repeatedly aligning himself as closer to the Tories than Jeremy Corbyn and the majority of the Labour Party membership just helps to illustrate that the UK has had four decades of hard-right Thatcherite neoliberalism, and now it's well past the time for a genuine change.
I'm not going to lead you down the garden path by telling you what is motivating this kind of divisive wrecking behaviour from Tony Blair when Jeremy Corbyn is soaring so high in the polls, or why Blair keeps on indicating that he'd prefer the country to continue suffering socially and economically devastating Tory misrule, but the fact that Jeremy Corbyn defied Blair over Iraq, and has said that he would like to see Blair investigated for war crimes can't be an insignificant factor can it?
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