Labour fallacy
I was more incensed in 2002 that Bush imposed tariffs on steel imports than that he refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty, and I am now far more likely to tear up my Labour Party membership card over Blair's pressure on the Serious Fraud Office to stop the investigation into the BAE Al Yamamah defence contract than I am over the invasion of Iraq. I am well aware this is not a stance shared by most on the left,* which is why I don't spend six hours a month at Labour Party meetings the way I used to in the 1990s.
It's conventional to say terrorism emanating from and unrest in the Middle East cannot be dealt with unless the Palestinian issue is resolved, but I believe the Saudi regime to be just as much of a canker or even cancer - a view which Samuel Brittan seems to share (from the Financial Times yesterday):
"A precedent has been created for giving in to blackmail. British foreign policy has been revealed once more as based on supporting a Middle Eastern dynasty notorious for its disregard of human rights and support for the Wahabi form of Muslim fundamentalism."
Brittan goes on to make a further point, which is also the other reason I am so strongly opposed to what has happened:
"Mr Blair does not realise that support for competitive market capitalism is not the same as the pro-business agenda with which he feels most at home...The heart of the matter is the belief among the business and political establishments that exports are worthwhile for their own sake, irrespective of how much they have to be subsidised – or in this case how many principles of law and good government have to be cast aside...The basic mistake is known as the “lump of labour fallacy”. It is implicitly assumed that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in each industry and that workers displaced by technological progress or shift in demand are doomed to the unemployment scrap heap. It is not asked whether there can be other purchases at home or abroad to make up the difference...It is clear that arms exports now make a very limited contribution to the British economy. So one is not requesting a great exercise of moral heroism in asking a government to stand up to the blackmail of a dynastic state with an execrable human rights record."
The contradiction between the mercantilist, narrow definition of national interest that Bush and Blair have demonstrated and their (Ibelieve) sincerely held internationalist views when it comes to promotion of democratic values worries me. If we want to promote the latter, we have to demonstrate that we apply such values to our own policies.
(*A condemnation from Oliver Kamm, along similar lines, a week before Samuel Brittan...)
