[A-List] UK ideological state apparatus: Polly Toynbee

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Every week the Financial Times publishes a column written by US
conservative Amity Shlaes. Every week I choke and splutter with
incredulity at the mindless crap she commits to paper and gets paid vast
sums for. A similar experience occurs when I turn to the writings of
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, one of New Labour's chief fan-sheets.
Maybe you too will experience the same sense of wonder...


This great government

Now is the time to celebrate New Labour's success - before war and
recession come along to spoil it all

Polly Toynbee
Friday October 4, 2002
The Guardian

The compassionate Conservatives gathering in Bournemouth observed the
Labour conference with abject despair. How do they match that? Unless
they match Labour spending they are dead. Lofty promises of reform smell
of a cover-up for cuts unless combined with a "no spending cuts" pledge.
"Spend better" might work as a slogan but "spend less" just reminds
voters of the Tory legacy of 18 years of public squalor. While they
dither over whether tax cuts might still seduce, how little they
understand of the seismic nature of Labour's success: in five years this
has become a social democratic country. (Does Labour itself comprehend
this?)

For this is it. After five years in power, this is the best government
Britain has ever had. By far. In 1945 might compete for competence and
social progress, but it failed to pull the voters along in its wake. So
set aside the ifs and buts for this one day at the end of their
conference for a brief moratorium on complaint. Set aside their
derelictions and disappointments, draw breath and take stock of what
Labour has done well. The other 364 days of the year will suffice for
those things left undone and those things done downright wrong.

What jolted me into this frame of mind was not the tub-thumping of
Gordon Brown, not Tony Blair's "Be Bold" burnished rhetoric. It was
certainly not Clinton's sexy showmanship - this old political crooner,
all mouth and no trousers, who left behind no progressive monuments.
Instead, the reminder of the best of Labour came in Estelle Morris's
deft and powerful speech, stripped of airiness and windy abstraction,
calmly seasoned with a deep understanding that earned her a heartfelt
standing ovation from a party these days full of decent people much like
her.

That's it. That is what is best about Labour, when at its best. There is
an array of ministers, senior and junior, thoroughly competent, by now
pretty experienced and good at governing. (Not all, but most.) One after
another, Blunkett, Hewitt, Milburn, Cook, they looked formidable, they
know whereof they speak, grounded in the real world that eluded even the
better Tory ministers who had never worked in and rarely used the public
services they ran.

How do we know Labour is doing well? Target-weary the country may be,
but Labour's Gradgrind approach to facts is unique, monitoring and
chasing anything that fails. Never before was there such determination
to find what works and make it happen. Benchmarks are set, notches
marked. This sometimes distorting mania for measurement may need
relaxing, but it is a tool for perpetual public self-assessment. The
trouble is that no sooner does a success look inevitable than it is
discounted. Blair will slash street crime in a few months? Incredulity
gave way to indifference once it was clear he would indeed do it.

Five years is not long. (Especially considering the first two wasted
famine years.) Tanked up with high-octane cash for four more years, the
foot is now hard down on the accelerator. So let's take stock, drink in
the glass half-full and leave off bemoaning the half-empty part for now.
Where to begin? With the lowest inflation and interest rates in 30
years, the only still buoyant economy in Europe, Brown's sine qua non.
Warning: many figures now follow, but don't let the eyes glaze over -
these are the statistics of social justice.

· The New Deal came first, an urgent priority in 1997 when 351,000
young people were long-term unemployed. Now there are only 5,000.
Looking back at Thatcher's lost generations of dustbinned
school-leavers, this seemed beyond all possibility: now full employment
is imminent. No pensioner is left on less than £100 a week. Income
support for children is up 80%. Abolishing child poverty - that
staggering promise often treated as if it were banal - will hit its
quarter mark a year early, and looks set to reach the halfway point by
2010. (The rest is silence, for now.) Working families earning under
£13,000 now get £2,400 extra. Child benefit has risen fast; new
child tax credits add far more.

· Health - that grumbling black hole of swirling expectation - with
60% more spent on it will probably over-shoot the EU spending average in
2007. Reading about failures, who would know that waiting times have
plummeted? Five years ago 70,000 people were waiting more than 26 weeks
for an operation - now there are just 1,200. Ninety five per cent of
people with suspected cancer are seen by a consultant within two weeks:
800 more cancer consultants make the difference. New progress-chasers
check quality and spread the NHS treatments that work, with 40,000 more
nurses and 10,000 more doctors. It will soon be noticed.

· Schools are the best success so far. Five years ago, half the
children leaving primary school couldn't read well, doomed to fail. Now
three quarters pass the 11-year-old reading tests. Shocking that a
quarter still fail, but remarkable progress in so short a time. Every
pupil gets £670 extra spent on them, with 20,400 extra teachers: 6%
more spent per year. Exam results keep rising, Sure Start's help for
infants at risk of failure will feed through to school results. What
stirred the Blackpool audience in Estelle Morris's speech was her
hard-hitting analysis of Britain's class divide: deeper, she said, than
anywhere in the EU. Aged five, children already achieve according to
social class, and schooling then deepens instead of diminishing the
difference.

What else has Labour done? Free museums, right to roam, 48% more for
foreign aid, cannabis virtually decriminalised, near peace in Northern
Ireland, Scotland and Wales devolved. There is less chance of being a
victim of crime than any time in 20 years, with burglary down 39% and
more police than ever. Workers have new rights to trade unions, a
month's holiday, six months' paid maternity, two weeks' paternity.
Despite tough talk on illegal migration, Britain allows more legal
migrants - 175,000 work permits a year - than anywhere in the EU.

Is all this boring? Problems and failures make better copy, only partly
because the best news is bad news and journalists are cynics by calling.
Puzzling over why things fail and what might be done is more
interesting. Writing up the failures gives a sense of purpose, kicking
the government to goad it on to do more. The trouble with success is
that by definition it is old news, describing some old 1997 problem
already overcome. The New Deal for young people hardly rates a mention
these days. But failure is always right here, right now, demanding
attention. (On a grimmer note, there is a darker reason to mark this
good government moment: the fear that war and global recession could
make this the high-water mark of optimism for many a long year.)

Loud is the chorus of "Yes, but". No figures tell the whole story. For
example, 70% more for drug abuse treatment is good, but it's still 70%
of far too little. Yes but ... the fullest prisons ever, and poverty pay
for millions with no curb on wild excess at the top. But those are for
other columns, other days: normal service resumes next week.