Naively, perhaps, we used to think that not only was a law a law, but a ministerial commitment was a commitment. Not any more. Now we know that, under Blair, it was not only set-piece speeches that bore a doubtful relation to reality - remember "mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility
that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our
children to war" (Tony Blair, 1997) - but also that statutes and undertakings were to be propounded, expatiated upon, referred to and generally admired, but not necessarily to be implemented. Often they amounted to little more than mood statements, all-important at the time but, goodness, how tedious when the moment had passed.
Take child poverty. Back in March this year Save the Children and Barnardos warned that the government's key social justice target - to halve child poverty by 2010 - was in "serious jeopardy". The number of children living in relative poverty had risen 100,000 in 2006, when 2.8 million children were living below the relative poverty line (the figure is 3.8 million when housing costs are factored in). Now according to the Independent (3rd December) the House of Commons Treasury select committee publicly doubts whether the commitment will be met because the government has failed to explain "what it is doing to meet the target".
Or take corruption. The 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act occupied the moral high ground by criminalising corrupt acts by British nationals carried out abroad. We then lectured the world on the importance of honest governance - until it didn't suit us. Last December (see this blog, 18th December 2006), on the explicitly inadmissible grounds of national security, Blair instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop proceedings against BAE over astronomical corrupt payments it had made to promote a Saudi arms deal.
Of course the government couldn't make light of its pledges on climate change, could it? Well, according to Professor Dieter Helm and his group at Oxford University (Guardian, 10th December), it could, and has. By excluding consumption from aviation, shipping, tourism and overseas trade we have given the impression that we are world leaders in reducing our carbon footprint. The facts are rather different, and contrary to our claim to have overfulfilled our Kyoto target and reduced output on 1990 levels by 15%, the reality is that output has risen by 19%.
Or finally take race relations. What more talismanic New Labour legislation could there be than the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, with its definitive response to the lessons of the Stephen Lawrence affair? Institutional racism was to be abolished throughout the public sector by means of systematic monitoring and published policy impact assessments. And yet in its dying days (before being absorbed into the new Equalities and Human Rights Commission) the Commission for Racial Equality reported widespread failure across Whitehall to comply with duties under the Act. The commission has had to initiate enforcement action against seven different Whitehall departments and agencies in respect of non-compliance with employment monitoring duties and, in the case of the Department of Health, the failure to carry out race equality impact assessments of new and proposed policies.
So to fantasy football management we have now to add fantasy government. But while no one practising the first would trumpet the achievements of their team in public, the practitioners of the second do nothing else. Isn't it a little bizarre?
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