Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

190 Twenty-First Century Populism
Labour’s constitutional reform programme lacked coherence and cogent
purpose. Blair recoiled from earlier interest in electoral reform and, after the
initial bold move in removing the right of most hereditary peers to vote in
the House of Lords, the reform of the upper house remained stillborn with
Blair appearing to favour an appointed upper house. Indeed, Blair was later
mired in controversy over the appointments of his acolytes and donors to
the Labour party as life peers.
Furthermore, New Labour’s enthusiasm for pluralism would diminish in
relation to other aspects of the reform agenda. For example, a proposed freedom
of information law was severely emasculated, while senior Labour
figures would later appear to regret the implications of the Human Rights
Act incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law −
with criticism raining down on the judiciary over its rulings in relation to
the asylum and security issues against the backdrop of the war on terror.
The party’s attitude to institutional pluralism leaves one to consider
whether this is the true face of New Labour emerging and whether the earlier
programme of constitutional reform was simply a carry-over from commitments
made by Blair’s predecessors as leader in Labour’s earlier modernization
phase. Nevertheless, a disdain for the pluralist trappings of liberal
democracy might be used to support the thesis that New Labour is indeed a
populist phenomenon. In fact, Blair and his colleagues have been accused of
authoritarian populism for law-and-order proposals which would impinge
on civil liberties and longstanding legal principles such as trial by jury
(Russell, 24 April 2006) in addition to its positions on the asylum and immigration
issue. There have also been New Labour outbursts of derision against
‘liberal’ opinion-formers who express concern about the hard line taken in
these policy areas. For example, former Home Secretary Jack Straw erupted
against ‘BMW-driving civil liberties lawyers from the suburbs’ while his successor
David Blunkett dismissed ‘bleeding heart liberals’ (Randall, 2004:
192). As Mair illustrates, some of Blair’s rhetoric also has a populist tinge. A
case in point was Blair’s speech to the 1999 Labour party conference in
which he ventured: ‘Arrayed against us: the forces of conservatism, the
cynics, the elites, the establishment ... On our side, the forces of modernity
and justice. Those who believe in Britain for all the people ...’ (cited in Mair,
2003: 92).
Nevertheless, this attempt to establish himself as an anti-Establishment
hero was ridiculed by Blair’s opponents and criticized by his party. Indeed,
there was the feeling within the party that the only ‘Establishment’ he was
really challenging was that of the Labour movement itself. A better example
of Blair’s real political approach came in California in the summer of 2006,
where he warned of the dangers of ‘protectionism, isolationism and nativism’.
In a battle between ‘open or closed’ responses to globalization, and
between ‘modern or traditional attitudes to a changing world’, Blair placed
himself on the side of the open, modern approach, and seemingly against