Safety First: Mike Phipps, Labour Left Briefing

Monday, 1 December 1997

Mike Phipps, Labour Left Briefing

Safety First: The Making of New Labour by Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann (Granta, £9.99)

Ten full weeks before the May 1997 general election, Tony Blair's aides told the media that the new Prime Minister would enter No.10 shortly after 1pm on 2 May to facilitate live reports for lunchtime news bulletins. Such details are typical of this highly informative book by two journalists from a New Statesman/Tribune background. It also encapsulates the authors' dilemma, torn as they are between undisguised admiration and profound cynicism about New Labour.

The book is firstly a history of how Labour's policies have evolved. Especially good is the clear account of economic policy from Keynesianism to monetarist betrayal, through the Alternative Economic Strategy and the long march back to monetarism under Gordon Brown. This is also a book about the personalities who make up New Labour and their own evolution – or U-turns. One example is the young Frank Field who once complained, "The poor get poorer under Labour." Field of course is now Minister for Welfare Reform, preparing proposals that might truly fulfil this prophecy.

The authors are withering about Labour's unswerving bipartisan approach to foreign affairs. Former Shadow Foreign Secretary Jack Cunningham is singled out for his "dilatory work-rate" and "indolence, ignorance and slavish adherence to the British Government line on Bosnia."

But it's the right-wing defence team of George Robertson, John Reid, John (now Lord) Gilbert – "the most consistently unpleasant back-bench propagandist for NATO and nuclear arms" – and John Spellar, "chief fixer" for the right-wing electricians' union, who come in for the most scathing criticism. "If they weren't all bought up by the bloody CIA, they might as well have been," one Cabinet member is reported as saying. Defence is emblematic of the timidity behind the rhetoric of this government: the policy's a mess, cobbled together primarily to reassure Labour's opponents and the arms industry that things will go on much as before, despite the end of the Cold War and the changing relationship with the US. The Eurofighter, for example, ten years behind schedule and originally targeted at a country which no longer exists (the USSR), will still be built with at least £14 billion of British taxpayers' money.

There are insights into Blair's personal style too. Perhaps the most telling is his attitude to Labour's MEPs, now topical again following the recent suspension of four of them for speaking out against the leadership's underhand attempt to remove its opponents by changing the method for selecting candidates. The origin of this scheme lies partly in the modernisers' resentment over a 1995 Guardian advert by 32 MEPs against the ditching of Clause IV. But his frosty relationship with the entire Euro-Labour Group, even those who slavishly support him, indicates Blair's distrust for any public activity in the Party beyond his patronage and control.

Overall, the book's analysis – that New Labour will abandon any principle in the interests of electoral popularity – is rather superficial. The problem is far deeper: the current leadership is ideologically committed to an economic and political project that will inevitably bring it into conflict with the interest of the workers' movement. Still, at 456 pages, this is the most detailed and accessible guide to New Labour yet.

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WHAT THEY SAID

‘Safety First does the government the courtesy of examining its origins and ideas seriously. That inevitably involves criticism. But grown-ups’ respect for Blair and Blairism is much more likely to be encouraged by real analysis than by facile praise. Safety First is not the last word on New Labour, but it is the best so far.’
Roy Hattersley, Guardian

‘Paul Anderson is a former editor of Tribune and a former deputy editor of the New Statesman. Nyta Mann is a former NS assistant editor. The tone and the standpoint is Tribune at its best: rude, factual, lively and down-to-earth English, always provocative, always selective, but crammed full of useful information . . . They remind the triumphalists that the Conservatives killed themselves. Labour could almost certainly have won on bolder policies.’
Bernard Crick, New Statesman

‘The best of the many books now out on Labour. The authors have the ideal background to explain the Labour government, its personalities and policies to the reader . . . Safety First is clearly written and cleverly constructed.’
Nick Cohen, Observer

‘Anybody looking for a primer on Blairism would do well to start here . . . The fact that the authors are on the left, but are sceptical of the Blairite project, gives them distinct advantages in comparing old Labour with the new sort. It means that, although they understand what Mr Blair is about, they are immune from the tendency to gush in awe.’
Economist

‘A well-written and incisive portrait of the key players in the Labour Party and British government . . . a worthwhile, witty and engrossing book.’
Fabian Review

‘Anderson and Mann know a formidable amount about the development of Labour’s policies . . . Safety First is very useful as a reference book . . . a good corrective to the notion that Labour began to modernise when Blair became leader.’
John Lloyd, Times Literary Supplement

‘Written from a critical libertarian left perspective, Safety First will not, I suspect, get Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann invited to many Downing Street cocktail parties. Theirs is a voice from outside the conventional Labour spectrum, and in this stimulating and informative account they treat the official version of the party’s recent history with healthy scepticism . . . They show that serious heterodox thinking — the legacy of independently minded radicals such as George Orwell and Raymond Williams — has survived the left's disintegration.’
Tom Phillips, Contemporary Review

‘A rather intelligent tome . . . In its narrative breadth, it is a useful guide to the politics and personalities of the British government.’
Sion Simon, Spectator

'Safety First is a must.’
Mark Seddon, Tribune

‘Anderson and Mann are well-qualified to analyse the politics of the contemporary Labour Party . . . a highly informative guide book.’
Gillian Peele, Times Educational Supplement

‘A valuable study of the making of the Labour government.’
New Times

‘An intelligent guide to the development of key Labour policies and the intellectual trends that back or oppose them.’
Fortnight

‘Highly informative . . . the most detailed and accessible guide to New Labour yet.’
Labour Left Briefing

‘Safety First does not share Socialist Worker’s political analysis, but the authors have done a great job. It is stunningly up to date. Everyone will benefit from reading it.’
Socialist Worker