Our community reporter Spring Heeled Jack has written a series of short articles which we will share over the next few weeks.
Here is the latest installment of Hard Times.
Labour in crisis-the Blair project begins to unravel
The third way was no longer focused on public and private sector companies competing for contracts.
Blair’s new system relied on private finance levered in to fund major capital projects such as new schools, hospitals and prisons, which would take much longer to bring to fruition by public finance alone.
However, the disadvantage with the third way was that private companies would own the buildings, car parks and the land with daily users remaining as tenants.
The public would never own anything after paying the funds back several times to these private enterprises, who would make capital from the situation.
This matter caused a great deal of upset with many members in the Labour Party who opposed the new system.
Another issue was New Labour, its questionable business links with people such as Bernie Ecclestone who allegedly gave the party over £1 million in return for special favours from Tony Blair.
Similarly, the multi national corporate Mittal group were then New Labour supporters and funders.
Consequently, media interviews with experienced journalists such as John Humphreys were going to investigate and expose the entire matters about party funding.
Tony Blair was put under the microscope about funding and business links and pursued by a pack of media journalists looking for a specific angle to show that New Labour then wasn’t whiter than white.
Formerly, the Labour party relied on funding from working people, trade union members, who paid the political levy to fund Labour, but this had changed with the New Labour party being totally made over in every aspect of its operations.
Traditional Labour party members including working class people were dismayed at what was then seen as ‘Johnny come lately’ newcomers taking over the party management in every possible way.
Moreover, the Labour party was inaugurated to progress the daily living and working conditions for working class people, but this had significantly changed under New Labour.
Tony Blair then had other significant domestic problems due to an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease, which affected countless farms throughout the UK and caused financial mayhem for farmers and everyone involved in the agriculture industry.
The pre-arranged agreement between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was also largely seen at that time as a sham by political and media commentators.
Brown became Chancellor of the Exchequer and was eventually scheduled to replace Blair as Prime Minister.
However, Blair fought and won three General Elections, which left Brown thereafter wondering whether he would ever get the top job of Prime Minister.
This led to increasing tensions between Blair and Brown where the two former colleagues and friends hardly spoke to each other.
Relations remained frosty, where Brown controlled the purse strings as Chancellor and Blair concentrated on foreign policy.
All of this behaviour was apparent to political and media reporters who were very surprised and shocked at the poor relations between two senior politicians responsible for running the country.
Article submitted by Spring Heeled Jack.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not the Digital Sentinel.
