The grainy black and white photograph on the front page of the New York Times showed firemen silhouetted against a burning building, flames rising high into the night sky. I had seen similar pictures many times before – of London during the Blitz. But this photograph was taken not in 1940, but earlier this week, as gangs of thugs looted and set ablaze buildings throughout the capital.
The flames had barely died down before politicians and commentators weighed in with their analysis. Most cited poverty as a leading cause. Some portrayed it as a racial conflict. Others cited the austerity measures introduced by David Cameron’s coalition government. All of this is superficial and unhelpful.
Britain has a structure of social welfare benefits that are generous by most standards; the youths who looted stores in London this week used expensive cell phones to communicate their plans to one another. They targeted not the necessities of life but the luxuries – jewelry, plasma TVs, $200 trainers. The mob included men and women from all ethnic groups and, it appears, some from well-to-do neighborhoods, with decent jobs. Poverty and race are not the issues here. Nor is the government’s austerity program.
It’s all too easy to blame Cameron. His government failed to respond quickly and forcefully to the first wave of rioting. Both Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg were overseas on vacation when the problems began. So too was Teresa May, the Home Secretary, as was Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. Apparently a holiday in the UK isn’t good enough for the likes of them, and it took Cameron and Johnson three days to decide to take a plane home – that’s at least two days too many. The government’s initial response to the crisis betrayed a startling complacency and ineptitude. And it can’t have helped that the Metropolitan Police Force currently lacks a Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, both having recently resigned in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal.
But while the government’s immediate reaction, or lack thereof, clearly contributed to the sense of impunity with which the thugs went about their business, the cause of this lawlessness can’t simply be laid at Cameron’s door. I believe the rioting was merely a symptom of a condition that has been growing in Britain for years. And if you want a particular politician to hold accountable, look no further than Tony Blair.
Blair is a lot like Barack Obama. A lot of lofty talk but little evidence of real conviction. He had some top-notch speechwriters, and did a good job delivering their work product. They gave him some good one-liners. For example, who can forget “Tough on Crime - Tough on the Causes of Crime”? Well Blair apparently did. If he actually did think about the causes of crime during his ten years in office, he did little to address them. In fact, he made matters worse. On a superficial level, for example, his response to the growing problem of anti-social behavior related to binge drinking was to eliminate licensing laws, enabling the louts who commit the offenses to drink all day long. Doubtless it pleased the powerful brewing industry, but it was a foolish move. Blair naively claimed it would promote a "cafe culture" in Britain, but it merely exacerbated the problems of booze-related crime. But there are other, more profound, factors at work here.
One of Britain’s perennial problems has been its lack of social mobility and the sense of alienation it creates among those toward the foot of the pecking order. This became more pronounced under Blair. Not only did Britain continue to languish at the bottom of the list among developed countries in terms of social mobility, but during his period in office the gap between rich and poor (which had actually declined slightly under the Conservative government of John Major) grew again. Under Blair, earnings of the top 20% rose at twice the rate, in percentage terms, of the bottom 20%, continuing a trend that began in earnest under Margaret Thatcher. Over the last 20 years, the ratio of earnings of the top 20% to the bottom 20% has grown from 15:1 to 75:1. How did Blair feel about that? In an illuminating interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, Blair was asked a simple question – whether it is acceptable for the gap between rich and poor to widen. This should be an easy question for any Prime Minister, especially one who purports to be a member of the Labour Party; but not for Blair. Despite Paxman’s persistence (and Jeremy is nothing if not persistent - he asked Blair the question no less than 12 times), Blair simply couldn’t bring himself to say “no”. And after leaving office, in a 2010 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Blair expressly rejected the concept of progressive taxation and redistribution in favor of stimulating the economy by lowering tax rates on the wealthy.
Blair did indeed slash taxes on capital gains and corporate income, and tax collections as a percentage of GDP fell to their lowest level in living memory during his period in office. Stripped to its core, Blair’s philosophy, like that of his mentor George W. Bush, is simply that a rising tide lifts all the boats. It’s not only discredited as an economic theory, but it’s one that one implicitly values personal rights over civic responsibilities and elevates greed from a deadly sin to an essential driver of economic growth.
Under Blair, this strategy lead (or at least significantly contributed) to the development of a society driven by materialism and short-term self-interest, a society in which it became acceptable, for example, for bankers to pocket obscene bonuses while driving their companies to the brink of extinction. No one personifies this new paradigm of greed and self-interest better than Blair himself. He has parlayed his so-called “public service” into a substantial business empire built on lucrative speaking engagements. A 2010 report in Britain’s Daily Mail disclosed that Blair, since leaving office, had channeled “tens of millions of pounds” through various tax-haven companies he controls, while taking advantage of loopholes in UK corporate law to avoid disclosure.
Another element of Blair’s legacy was the introduction of university tuition fees, a de facto regressive tax that Blair’s Tory predecessor, John Major, had summarily rejected. True, the rates have increased substantially under Cameron, but it is always easier for a government to raise the rate of an existing tax than to introduce a new one. At the end of the day it was Blair who opened the door to a structure of tuition fees that will increasingly put quality higher education beyond the financial reach of the less-affluent members of society and thereby ensure Britain remains mired at the bottom of the social mobility table.
The Britain than David Cameron inherited from New Labour is one in which there is an ever-decreasing correlation between work and reward, between morality and success. People read about MPs fiddling their expenses and party leaders dispensing honours in exchange for campaign contributions; they read about reckless bankers pocketing huge bonuses. They see a drunken Duchess of York caught on hidden camera attempting to peddle influence for cold cash. They read about the millions in public funds frittered on royal weddings, the purposeless taxpayer-funded junkets of the Duke of York and the tax handouts dispensed to wealthy individuals and corporations, while ordinary people are told to make do with less. They learn how leaders of both major parties cozied up to a crooked news organization in an attempt to gain its coveted endorsement. The hear about police officers taking bungs from seedy journalists in return for inside information. In short, they see greed and impunity at work in all quarters. And in what is becoming a “take what you can get” society, the rioters decided to take what they could get.
David Cameron was right to stress the need for parents to instill in their children the meaning of right and wrong, and respect for law and order. But the government needs to lead by example. The thugs who rioted in London and other cities need to be dealt with harshly. But so too do those of greater rank or wealth who break the law or breach the public trust. And Cameron should take last week's riots as a salutary reminder of the greater problems that lie ahead if government attempts to balance the budget on the backs of those who already have least, while those with the most get a free ride.
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