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| Forget ideology says Blair |
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| Written by Gordon Prentice | |||
| Tuesday, 29 June 2010 12:25 | |||
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Tony Blair tells the Institute for Government that we live in a non-ideological age and that the Coalition Government could learn from the experiences of the Labour Government. See the Guardian. Hmmmm. I’ve always thought of Tony Blair as a very ideological kind of person. He tries to hide it but it is there. He talks of “change” and modernisation all the time. It is his thing. Everyone now knows that, translated, this means giving the private sector a much bigger role in the provision of public services. In Blair’s universe there are no private sector failures, only public ones. His mantra is “we do what works” but soon this morphs into doing what he thinks is the right thing to do. And that is when it all goes pear shaped. When he won the vote on top up fees – against a Labour manifesto pledged not to – he explained he had “to do what was right”. Soon, all sorts of things fell into that convenient category. His support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 because it was “the right thing to do” was the misjudgement that finally put the skids under his premiership. In George Parker’s piece in the FT we learn Blair tells Whitehall it can learn from companies that “reinvent themselves every year, almost month to month”. But learning from the private sector is being made more difficult by rules covering conflicts of interest. Blair tells us that “rules of propriety are almost becoming an obstacle.” Oh dear! Another misjudgement, I fear.  Tags:
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| Last Updated on Wednesday, 30 June 2010 07:22 |