madness

i confess i am a fan of tony blair. he successfully built on the work of neil kinnock and john smith and turned labour from being a perennial also ran into new labour and a powerhouse election winning party.

it all went wrong when blair gave unconditional support to george w. bush’s war on terror. this seemingly unquestioning following was done at the cost of many lives, cost of blair’s reputation and for little recognisable gain.

then blair dropped the bombshell: he wasn’t going to contest a fourth term. at that moment he became a lame duck prime minister.
from that announcement on it seems that it has all gone sour for new labour.
cash for peerages, ruth kelly and david blunkett (walking disaster zones), the continued death toll in iraq, id cards, continued questions on what is britishness (and sad to say it looks like david cameron has it pegged – but we will have to see if he is the same in power as he is opposition), the internal strife between the blair and brown camps, the prisons debate and much more.

the latest “idea” to come from the “think tanks” of new labour is x-ray machines in lampposts in order to track potential weapons carrying terrorists.
leaving aside the question of whether or not such street x-rays are possible, there are a large amount of questions of the ethics of such surveillance.
the uk is the most watched country in the world; some of us can be filmed upwards of 300 times a day. the majority of the cctv cameras we are caught on are property of private companies and not controlled by the state.
the current trial of the july tube bombers show that in the main such cctv is reactive, it can help piece together what has happened it is not necessarily good at highlighting the immediate risks.
(oddly this is also one of the major arguments against the introduction of the id card – if all the card is going to do is tell you who it was after the event it is hardly the biggest deterrent in the world.)
we also know that at some point that such instruments will be offered out to private companies to build, run and maintain. all in the name in “balancing the books”, though what this really means is that the state underwrites a private company, guaranteeing their profits and protecting them from any loss – it is the third way of capitalism.

anyway it isn’t that i object to. it is the fact that the idea has even been suggested. it is one of those so blue sky out of the box thinking things that someone should have said lets not even bother to make a not of this one.
in a sense this is an example of how much new labour is floundering. it has painted itself into a corner over law and order and the issue of terrorism. rather than approach the subject in a calm and sensible fashion it dreams up headline grabbing initiatives that might sound good around the table but in the cold light of day are obviously the thing of desperation.

part of the trouble comes from the fact that new labour is approaching 10 years in power, with blair as the uncontested leader for all that time.
i don’t advocate the american situation where the president can only serve two terms, as that means there is a big chance that the president will be treading water, as they become a lame duck.
what strikes me as being a sensible option would be that the leader of the party has to face regular elections within the party. this means that they have to pay attention to the members of the party, they know that they will be accountable for their actions or lack of actions and more importantly it means that they do not become complacent and start behaving as is they are untouchable.

blair needs to go soon. gordon brown needs to be his own man.
more and more i think cameron has a good shot at becoming prime minister, and to be honest that scares me.