The Truth That Sticks: New Labour’s Breach of Trust

// March 5th, 2009 // Book Reviews

Martin Bell OBE is perhaps still best known in this country as the “man in the white suit” who ousted the Conservative MP, Neil Hamilton, from the Tatton constituency in the 1997 general election. Hamilton was, at the time, memorably embroiled in sleaze allegations during the cash-for-questions affair. Prior to his time as an independent MP, Bell had been a war correspondent for the BBC for more than 30 years, making his name with reports from conflicts in Vietnam, Angola, Northern Ireland and Bosnia among others. He now acts as a UNICEF ambassador.

Having a good amount of respect for Martin Bell and what he has achieved over the years, and also having myself been one of the million-plus souls who marched against Tony Blair’s war in Iraq, this book almost leapt off the library shelf and into my hand of its own accord. I suspect that if you were also marching on that weekend in 2003 then this book will only further confirm your views when it comes to New Labour and, specifically, Tony Blair. However, it is to the apologists for New Labour, or to those for whom realpolitik informs the limits of their ambitions for what stands for democracy in the UK in 2009, that this book is directed.

It is a tough and straight-talking analysis of a decade of New Labour government from 1997 to 2007. Coming from a man known for his honesty and with the inside knowledge of a former MP the result is a damning critique, not only of the government’s failure to live up to the New Labour manifesto of 1997 but also of the deeply flawed system that currently masquerades as democracy in this country.

Scandals from the Bernie Ecclestone affair through Cash for Honours and “dodgy dossiers” are discussed at length. Bell also dissects the politicisation of the Foreign Office and the manipulative dishonesty used by Downing Street to justify the unjustifiable. Revelations such as these may not come as a surprise to anyone who regularly reads a serious newspaper or can see past the celebrity gossip and necro news which makes up a growing proportion of TV news schedules. But seen in context with the shocking treatment of former British servicemen and women, the continued chaos in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the steady decline in standards in both public and private life in the UK, the result is startling.

Critics of Bell call him naive and hopelessly idealistic, and I recall those same terms being flung in my direction by friends and aquaintances during the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but it is because of the words and deeds of men like Martin Bell that things begin to change for the better. At the same time it is because of the apathy and the acceptance of poor standards by the cynical “realists” that things tend to stagnate and to steadily fall into decrepitude. Martin Bell may well be a dreamer ….. but he’s not the only one.