Yet for all the furore around Blair’s potential impact on a leadership race in the Labour Party, as Tim Shipman, chief political commentator of The Times, has noted, these are all views privately shared by the entire British political class.
The truth is, no-one likely to take the reins of power in Britain believes defence spending should be reined back. None of the Labour leadership contenders thinks the welfare budget should be protected. Very few in Parliament would even challenge Blair’s notion that private enterprise should be allowed greater sway in the public sector.
In fact, Britain, like Europe, is already well on its way to enacting Blair’s dystopian prognosis. The twin demands of extraordinary defence targets imposed by the White House and long-term economic stagnation have led European leaders to conclude two things: militarisation is the order of the day, and it is the working class who will need to pay.
The British military budget has now increased by billions in the last year alone. And across EU member states, a massive rearmament drive has seen core defence spending more than double since 2021.
At the same time, a devastating attack on working-class living standards is well under way. The German government, now the highest military spender in Europe, has announced €19.3 billion worth of cuts to healthcare, with pension cuts widely expected soon.
Belgium has seen Europe’s steepest increase in its military budget, with the country’s prime minister now openly speaking about the end of the welfare state and a new economic model organised around wealth creation from technology and the military.
And while public pressure over the Winter Fuel Allowance and the two-child benefit cap has so far forced the British government to roll back on some of its harshest welfare cuts, tens of thousands of public-sector jobs are due to be cut, including those recently announced by the Scottish Government.
Another sign of the times is the rise of American AI and military software like Palantir’s, which is not only behind the technology used for precision targeting in Gaza but has also been awarded extensive contracts in the English NHS, the German police force and Greek and Dutch coronavirus tracking systems. In Britain, the process is particularly advanced and is the driving force behind deeply unpopular initiatives like digital ID.
Most disturbing is the return of conscription and military drafts to European countries. In Germany, the most recent conscription proposals aim to dramatically expand the size of the armed forces, while young men are increasingly being told they may not be able to leave the country without permission from the military authorities.
In Denmark, women have been added to the draft. And in France, another country where national service – for now voluntary – has returned after years of absence, the same military equipment and tactics are now being used by the domestic police force to confront signs of social unrest.
It is in this authoritarian register that we should read Blair’s intervention. He is not attempting to change elite hearts and minds, but calling on the British government, like its European counterparts, to push harder and move faster.
For this reason, we need our own clarion call. On June 20, many thousands of trade unionists and anti-war activists from across Europe will be heading to London to take part in an international conference against war. “The wolf is at the door”, opens the conference call. “We say lower your guns and raise our wages, welfare not warfare, jobs not conscription.”
The sources of dissent are already emerging. Palestine, in particular, has become a banner for resistance to Europe’s military turn. In Italy, dockworkers who refused to load arms shipments bound for Gaza helped lead a general strike which brought large parts of the country to a standstill.
Millions of people across Britain have now marched against the genocide and the UK Government’s rotten foreign policy, coming face to face with the full force of the state in the process.
An organised fight against conscription, too, is emerging in places like Germany, where school students have been walking out of class en masse to protest new draft laws.
All of these people, and more, will be represented at the conference in London this June.
As European governments attempt to discipline their populations into accepting a sweeping social and economic restructuring, it will fall to those who will bear the cost of this transformation to mount what must be an extraordinary struggle for our future. And this is a fight that can no longer be waged within the confines of any one nation alone.
The time has come to advance a wholly different logic: not one organised around state interests or corporate priorities, but around the common class interests of the majority of Europeans instead.
Source: The National