Blair's Babylon (Cruel Britannia - Nick Cohen)

Member Name: amygdala

Product:	Cruel Britannia - Nick Cohen
Date:	07/10/00 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Informative, impassioned, but...

Disadvantages: ...depressing.

An interesting fact about the Conservative Conference for the year 2000 that has just finished as I write this: it had fewer corporate sponsors than the Labour Conference the week before. Anyone who is surprised by that should go on a daily diet of articles from this book, because it describes many more of the ways in which Tony Blair has brought Thatcherism back to life. New Labour is really Nouve Labour: as desperate for money and its trappings as it is for power.

Though the two go hand in hand, of course, and when politicians are offered a choice between power without principles and principles without power, what sensible one chooses other than power without principles? In power you can do some good, after all; out of it, you can't. Or so many members of the incoming Labour government must have argued to themselves, and there were commitments, clearly laid out in the manifesto, to such things as a robust law guaranteeing freedom of information.

Three years on we’re still waiting for it. In the meantime we’ve seen the self-proclaimed Christian socialists of New Labour preside over an ever-more frenzied worship of Mammon and an ever more slavish copying of America. Though again, the two go hand in hand:

“He [Chris Whittle, head of an American company called Edison] offered American schools (shamefully underfunded, as in Britain) what appeared to be a fabulous deal. They would each get free use, though not ownership, of a satellite receiver, two videos and as many televisions as they wanted. All he asked in return was a guarantee that bulletins from his Channel One station were shown. Every day a 10-minute ‘news’ broadcast would be beamed in with two minutes of commercials for Pepsi, Reebok, gangsta rap, the US military, burgers, Twix, M&Ms and - perhaps wisely after all that junk food - Clearasil. As long as the school signed a contract that stipulated that 90 per cent of children watched his package for
an hour a week, Whittle allowed teachers to use his equipment for any other purpose. He was pushing at an open door. Heads were willing to sell their grannies to save money. By 1993 he had a market of eight million children and 40 per cent of US teenagers. Advertisers were so keen on compulsory commercials that they paid $200,000 (£125,000) for a 30-second slot.” ("UK PLC", pp. 184-5)

That was corporate lunacy *à la Americaine*, in broad, self-confident strokes on a giant canvas; we Brits still prefer more delicate brushwork, achieving surreal whimsy rather than brash zaniness:

“The next wheeze was to arrange a £500,000 deal with makers of Ribena and McVitie's. The companies would supply free drinks and biscuits at the 2.4 million annual [blood] donor sessions; in return, they would get home addresses of blood donors and send them junk mail. A sponsored NHS, brought to you by Jaffa Cakes, created such mockery that the deal was dropped. Last summer the [National Blood A]uthority tried to save £700,000 by buying blood bags from an Australian company, Tuta. Some of the bags had faulty seals and it cost £3 million to replace them. The families of several patients claimed that blood from the bags had poisoned their relatives.” ("The Blood Business", pg. 173)

And note that the British scheme didn't work: you can still go and give blood without fear of junk-mail from Ribena or McVitie’s. Or you could when this book was published, at least. Laugh if you like - I certainly did when I read those two passages - but there's a lot in this book that isn't funny and will only get worse, whoever wins the next election. The only positive thing I know about Tony Blair is that he doesn't take his holidays in America, but then I suppose he's doing his best to turn the UK into America anyway. One of the most important changes has already been made: you can now have whatever government you lik
e, so long as it's in bed with big business.

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