Call me a cynic, but the BBC seems to have transitioned magnificently from its role as a covet apologist for the Blair regime to a smooth public relations operation for the emerging Brown leadership. Such a transition requires no change in logo, editorial control or political outlook. Indeed, as the electorate has grown tired of Blair’s persistent hectoring and lecturing on subjects about which he is so obvioulsy ill-informed, Gordon Brown will give the New Labour project a whole new lease of life. Some English voters may not like his Scottishness, but that’s quite irrelevant as his chancellorship has overseen a continuation of the steady flow of high-paid jobs away from Scotland and Northern England to the South East of England with the near total demise of the country’s manufacturing sector and the flight of call centre jobs abroad.
One wonders just how Gordon Brown retained his credentials as a prudent defender of the interests of ordinary working people tied to his Scottish roots in the Lang Toun of Kirkcaldy, an area with considerable social deprivation and paradoxically the UK’s highest Ritalin prescription rate (and probably lowest consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables). For his political choices over the last decade as Chancellor of Exchequer have been neither prudent nor in the interests of the traditional working classes Mr Brown claims to represent.
In the UK the best test of your overall class allegiance is not your annual income, your parents’ income or even your academic background, but your favourite newspaper, whether print or online. Whether we like or not, there is a class of UK residents who instinctively buy one of the redtop tabloids, the Sun, Star, Mirror and in Scotland the Daily Record (aka the Daily Retard). As more school leavers go to university, you’ll even see the shelves of student shops stacked with copies of these Celebrity Gossip comics. Without the blessing of a hanful of media magnates and their appointed editors-in-chief Thatcher would never have won such a resounding victory in 1979, 83 and 87, Kinnock might have won in 1992, but Tony Blair would never have swept to power in 1997 or retained sufficient public confidence despite his repeated warmongering, corruption and toadying to the whims of big business. The usual suspects in Scotland, the Daily Retard and the Scottish Sun, both of which have helped fuel anti-English sentiment in the past, tried their best to avert an SNP victory at the Polls. When New Labour’s line manager in Holyrood, Jack McConnell, belittles the SNP’s electoral gains, he does so in the full knowledge that without the gutter press the fate of the New Labour Mafia north of the border would be a whole lot worse. In short New Labour’s tabloid propagandists appeal to the same tribal gut instincts that lead some to support Rangers or Celtic come what may.
Brown’s left wing credentials are largely a figment of the media’s and New Labour’s spin machine’s imagination. This is the same man who has consistently backed every single decision Tony Blair has taken on behalf of his corporate handlers. He had absolutely no qualms about hosting dinners in honour of Alan Greenberg, a person more responsible than almost anyone else for the imposition of neoliberal policies on the Third World leading to the decimation of public services and the selling off of local industries to predatory multinationals, a processs popularised as privatisation or inward investment. The only conceivable concession to those who fear a slide towards British involvement in a future US invasion of Iran seems to be his rhetorical support for a increased role of Parliament in decisions over war and peace. But let us not forget that a majority of New Labour MPs voted to support British participation in the invasion of Iraq, so why shouldn’t the same bunch of lemmings fall for humanitarian propaganda that the likes of the Guardian and BBC have already begun to peddle to justify more military intervention in resource-rich regions?
Gordon Brown may give the New Labour project a temporary facelift, but don’t be fooled. His prudence is as big a façade as his predecessor’s integrity.