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Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 13:27:38 -0800
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From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: The Third Way: Old style Thatcherism with a new fig leaf
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The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald October 12, 1998
Old style Thatcherism with a new fig leaf
Christopher Henning
The air was appropriately thick with smog on Tuesday in Beijing, where the
British Prime Minister gave his latest exposition of the Third Way.
"The battle between extreme forms of socialism, extreme forms of
capitalism that marked the 20th century =96 I think that is over. I think
that fundamentalist ideology has gone," Tony Blair said.
"Instead what all countries are trying to do is to find a way of combining
a dynamic market economy with a strong sense of social provision and
national unity and purpose," Blair told an interviewer from Chinese
television. The watching millions no doubt listened with their customary
politeness, but what they made of it is anybody's guess.
It is clear what the Third Way isn't. It isn't extreme. It is in the
centre ground of the conventional political spectrum stretching from Right
to Left. Blair has called it the "radical centre" in the past, but it's
clear he doesn't think that radical means extreme.
But if it is in the centre =96 radical or not =96 of the conventional
political spectrum, how can it be a third way?
Blair is very keen on the Third Way (always capitalised, like Holy Ghost).
His staff tend to view their boss's enthusiasm ever so slightly askance.
Requests to explain the Third Way are met with a roll of the eyes and a
deep intake of breath before the explanation is delivered in measured and
professionally neutral tones.
But the leader of New Labour believes in it deeply, and one can see why.
Blair needs the Third Way. It is a fig leaf to cover the awkward nakedness
of his policy stance. It is a smart looking package in which to wrap up
something he believes =96 quite justifiably =96 his supporters won't like. I=
t
is the sugar coating for a bitter pill indeed: Thatcherism.
Put simply, the Third Way is left wing governments introducing right wing
policies. Blair can't say openly to hiss supporters "Margaret Thatcher was
right and we were wrong." Such a statement would undermine the reason for
his party's very existence. He has to pretend the opposite.
He cannot say when he hands over control of interest rates to an
independent central bank, when he devises ways to cut back on welfare, when
he places a clamp on public spending, when he makes senior businessmen
members of his Cabinet, when he studies the feasibility of selling off the
Post Office, that he is just continuing the good work that the Tories
started. He must make it all look new and different or he will have a
revolt on his hands. Hence the Third Way.
Australians know all about the Third Way. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating,
though they didn't think up the term, were practicing it from the early=
'80s.
The floating of the dollar, the opening of the market to foreign banks and
the progressive deregulation of the economy were all Third Way policies. So
was the reorganisation of welfare to encourage people off the dole and back
to work, and the attempts to eliminate poverty traps.
Even Gough Whitlam, with his rejection of leftist prescriptions on some
issues and his conciliation of the middle class in the late '60s and '70s,
had more than a whiff of the Third Way about him.
But Whitlam, Hawke and Keating were prophets, not the Messiah. They
thought up a lot of the contents, but they didn't think up the packaging.
For that they had to wait for someone younger and greater than themselves.
That was Blair's and Clinton's contribution: the serious attempt to
convince voters that this was something new.
As for the Third Way heralding the end of ideology =96 well, hardly. There
are few ideologies more rigid in their orthodoxy than free market
economics, which is the foundation of the Third Way.
What the Third Way does acknowledge is that ideology is not enough. There
is scope in politics for pragmatism and compromise to smooth the rough
edges of free market capitalism, to ease the passage of this Thatcherite
medicine down the throats of suspicious lefties.
And in Britain, where the ancient trenches of ideological warfare are dug
deep into the social and political landscape, acceptance of compromise is
something new.
=09
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
