Term Paper on British Politics
The moral explanation for a democracy is that it lets the citizens to elect a
good government. If the citizens fail to do that, then democracy loses any
virtuous fairness. In electing Tony Blair the British electorate elected a
somewhat not so good government.
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Blair, like his Conservative predecessors, implements a shared general vision of
state and society of the liberal market-democratic nation state. The most
substantial political feature of the nation state is that secession is very
strenuous. In a domain of nation states, the creation of new states is nearly
impossible. Majorities of the people live in a political society with
established values for no specific reason other than they were born there.
Fundamental and exceptional change, yonder the national values, is by meaning
impossible. (Ideology and ethics of Tony Blair)
The character of liberal societies makes this uncertainty worse. Liberalism is
strongly against absolute societies, against ideals. In neoteric liberal
societies, market forces and the democratic political methods decide the form of
society. In case the market leads to income unevenness and the freely elected
government chooses not to apportion incomes, then for liberalism that is the end
of the affair. Before the 9/11 attacks and the Afghanistan war, the Kosovo
interference had been the most substantial event for the Blair government. The
Kosovo war was peculiar in its victory. NATO won a war against a medium-sized
industrial nation, lacking a single battle casualty. That victory brought about
no peace to Kosovo itself, and to the West. In the consequence of the attacks in
Tony Blair accompanied President George Bush in remarking that these values
themselves were under attack. In his speech to the 2001 Party Conference, Blair
steered new western interference, in Africa for instance, and promised a
long-term western occupancy in Afghanistan.
Obviously Tony Blair also saw killing for values as lawful. The concept of
killing for value is extreme by western ethics standards. But, there were many
religious wars that went against the ideal. The objective for this pensive doubt
is simple. If Tony Blair possibly lawfully kills any person in Belgrade or
Freetown, to exert his values, then why is it not lawful for them to come to
London, and kill Tony Blair for their own values? Warfare brings in holy wars.
The dread of a bloodbath, such as the wars of religion in Europe had a basic
influence on the development of liberal philosophy.
A war of democratic subjugation was all the time intrinsic in democracy. The
post-1989 enlargement of democracy brought it closer. Western leaders can be
appraise on how far they go in this current interventionism, and the current
political wave under the leadership of Blair is ahead of all others in Europe.
Blair did not have a war-making image when he was elected, but the image changes
a few years later. Blair was deliberately seeking a Churchillian image, of
persistent military action. Without fail, Blair along with Bill Clinton approved
the bombing of the official residence of President Milosevic. During that time,
German environment minister Jurgen Trittin categorically shielded an
assassination of Milosevic, as 'legitimate tyrannicide'. More possibly, Tony
Blair's willingness to kill is an inner psychological trait, which only became
public in a crisis.
In Kosovo, Blair authorized military force, equivalent to that in the Gulf War
and the Falklands War. With Britain's partaking in the Afghanistan war, he has
out-classed his Conservative forerunners. The post 1989 fallacy of a peaceful
world has wiped away. Neo-liberalism is the most specific part of Blair's
ideology and is clearly set out in policy statements, such as the 1999 Blair-Schröder
manifesto. Neo-liberalism is obsession with competition, personal achievement,
and the glorification of the entrepreneur, the belief in the power of the market
to structure society, the rejection of all alternative values. These concepts
are uniformly repeated in New Labor policy statements.
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There is a global appendage for the emanation of neo-liberal societies, a kind
of neo-liberal world order. In this New World order states compete against one
another, as if they were business firms and the citizens are equivalent to
employees, and their primary duty is to work for the export success of the
nation, and to attract inward investment. This is to some extent a return to the
economic ideas that forerun the victory of market liberalism, mercantilism.
Nonetheless, neo-liberalism has not deserted the market-liberal assumption that
a nation is essentially a market place. Neo-liberalism anticipates the citizens
to work together as a unit, against other nations in the global market, but also
to compete with each other inside the nation. This vista of the world as a
sequence of strata markets is characteristic of neo-liberalism. “Nations compete
against nations, regions compete within nations, firm competes within nations
and within regions; firms are structured as markets of competing sub-units.
Markets of markets, within markets of markets – neo-liberalism substitutes the
market, and market-oriented activity, for all other forms of social life”. (Treanor,
2002)
Blair's education policies are driven by the obsession with achievement and
excellence. The social-Darwinist influence is prevalent here. Blair government
has continually emphasized that it wants high standards in education. Blair and
his ministers mean that everyone will be evaluated by high standards for some
long-term goal of a better, stronger, Britain. Classic political liberalism, and
market liberalism, saw the state as a load, an autocrat, and an incompetent
brake on the businessperson. Neo-liberals oft vigorously seek state
intervention, to originate or exaggerate the market. This concept, that state
and society are exclusively market promoters, is an element of neo-liberalism.
The proportion of categorical elimination under the Blair government is very
great. The Blair government was elected, by 'the non-underclass'. Its policies
were made for this 'middle England' or 'middle Britain'. One inquisitive
exclusion was the September 2000 fuel crisis. The protesters were the
self-employed, small business, backed by middle England. Blair nevertheless
misidentified them with the 1970's strikers, led by left-wing radicals.
There is no disbelief that policies of several European governments measure to
the intentional conception of an underclass, in junk jobs and workfare projects.
The elementary political philosophy is the belief that equality is impossible.
Accordingly, the state must persevere part of the population in an unequal
status. Blair riffraff impartiality in another way and is in favor of a society
layered on the foundation of educational achievement. He opened the 2001
'pre-election' campaign, by promoting that a meritocratic society was the
specific goal of a second term government. Blair emphasized personal achievement
as the basis for social. For Blair, 'social justice' means equal of chance for
talent, and essentially equal access to a selective educational system.
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Blair does not seek a comprehensive society in an egalitarian way. In speaking
of the inclusive society, it is in the older sense of "the rich man in his
castle, the poor man at his gate. New Labor Party is known for its confidence on
'focus groups'. Nonetheless this is not the egalitarian approach. Not everybody
gets into a focus group, and those who don't get into New Labor’s focus groups
simply don't count and consequently broad underclass is not welcome. In turn,
the underclass has deserted political participation. Voter turnout in British
elections is falling. In the 2001 election it was the lowest since 1918. This
type of democracy makes easy the marginalization of the underclass.
In the final years of Blair's second term, the issue of national identity is
much more prominent. Despite anti-immigrant parties in Europe very seldom
collect more than 20% of the votes in elections, they have now set the pitch for
immigration policy.
Thus the Tony Blair premiership has not only confirmed previous trends towards
leader-centered parties and governments, it has provided a definitive sea change
in the progress of a genuine British presidency. The display of strategies and
techniques intended to secure and expand Blair's public outreach, jointly with
the preference attached to the Prime Minister's personal pledges and individual
vision have moved the office into new heights of independence and leverage. In
his book the “British Presidency”, Michael Foley argues that the power of Blair
is not frenzy, but rather a zenith of trends that have established powerful
leadership as a fundamental standard of political assessment and governing
competence. Thus, Blair presidency finds the emanation of the New Labor project
and its defining ideal of strong leadership within the coexisting appendage of
Margaret Thatcher's condemning politics and the dysfunctional premiership of
John Major.
Works Cited
Foley, Michael, "The British Presidency", 2000.
Hattersley, Roy, “It's no longer my party”: The Observer, 2001.
“Ideology and ethics of Tony Blair: the underlying political model”, http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/blair.html
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