Here are two threads on the BBC’s Have Your Say. Firstly on Gordon Brown’s 1st year record, and secondly on the Civitas report on over-zealous child protection laws, which lead to situations like this.
There is a connection between the two because Gordon Brown is almost the personification of why (New) Labour has failed yet again, and the child protection laws are a good example of this failure. It starts off in good intentions, the government trying to rectify certain social situations; in this case, trying to make sure that children do not become victims of abuse, which we – as parents – of course naturally fear.
However, the left’s solution to problems is always a top-down bureaucratic approach, where the government intervenes whenever it detects any kind of problem. Back in the 1970s we saw the – to say the least – difficulties which this approach caused in the economic sphere. It took a long time for the
Labour did learn, however, a few lessons from this debacle and its long period out of power due to its complete lack of economic credibility. ‘New’ Labour’s claimed adoption of non-leftwing economic policies was probably one of the reasons why they got back into power. Even though, once in power, they reverted to many of their old bad economic-centralisation habits when Gordon fell out with Prudence.
Left-wing, socialism, liberal* (call it what you will), of course grew out of the post WWII situation to become the current conventional wisdom and dominant ideology in government, the universities, the law industry, education, the health and social services and elsewhere, remaining relatively untouched even by Thatcherism. It has grown, mostly – but not exclusively – in power and influence through the public sector, and it is voters from here, not the traditional working class, which now provide the Labour party with most of its support. It is a place, a constituency, where Brown feels at home.
Gordon Brown, though, has been the main instigator of Labour’s social policy which is still based around this idea that the government knows best and should – must – intervene to make sure that society always moves in the right direction, towards what they conceive of as ‘social justice’. This fits in with what we know of Brown’s almost pathological need to micro-manage everything, which is why it is possible to see Brown as the personification of Labour’s inherent bureaucratic hyper-managerialism, which verges on – and sometimes teeters over into - the dictatorial.
Because what Labour claims to stand for – social justice, fairness, equality are all fairly un-contentiously ‘good things’, people are often lulled into giving them from either wholehearted support right through to the benefit of the doubt. At least, people feel, their hearts are in the wrong place, especially compared to the ‘nasty’ Tory party, which are still seen as the party of the privileged, the toffs and the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade of swivel-eyed loons. But, such promises cannot be fulfilled by Labour without this recourse to heavy-handed, draconian legislation that is – at best – ineffective, counter-productive, intrusive and resulting in many unforeseen consequences. This authoritarianism is not an accident, unfortunate by-product or a matter of temporary expediency that will wither away once socialist utopia is reached, if anything it can only get more authoritarian, more intrusive, more dictatorial as the number of unforeseen consequences, cock-ups and all the other failings such schemes are heir to come about.
That too is why Brown now seems to be ineffectively flailing about as the whole edifice he - mainly – created starts to now tumble down about his ears. He is the horror-film cliché mad scientist who is destroyed in his own laboratory by the very monster he created.
*although, not liberal at all in the original sense of liberal, which is – coincidentally - about where I would place myself - more or less - on the political spectrum.
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