Gordon's global gurus

GORDON BROWN, the trade union leaders' 'radical' alternative to Blair, has announced that a new panel will advise the Treasury on globalisation. Advice on how to avoid the more rapacious consequences of globalisation, workers might think.

Tony Mulhearn

Readers of the socialist, though, won't be surprised that the panel will consist of the planet's richest man Bill Gates, GlaxoSmithKlein's Jean-Pierre Garnier and, wait for it, Lee Scott of WalMart. Yes, the same Lee Scott whose treatment of its workers and its union-busting actions are an international scandal.

Scott paid himself £10 million in 2004 and paid his workers the lowest retail wages in the US while increasing their Medicare contributions. WalMart are celebrated for being prepared to close one of their superstores rather than recognise a union. These people give exploitation a bad name.

One face of Gordon Brown claims to be Old Labour at party conference. That's for the consumption of the deluded who still believe it's possible to reclaim Labour for the working class. The other face asks the capitalists why should they take a chance with Cameron while they can rely on an old PFI-loving, nationalisation-hating, privatising stalwart like himself?

The striking feature about Brown and Blair, whose policy differences are a fiction cultivated by the media and some union leaders, is that, unlike past Labour leaders who paid lip service to socialism, they don't try to hide their slavish commitment to neo-liberalism. With the checks and balances of the Labour Party now dismantled, they march to the drum of the haves and have mores.

Blair wears his sobriquet Ramsey McBlair like a badge of honour. Brown unconditionally supports McBlair's every utterance. All genuine socialists stand aghast at the charade being played out daily by the doctors of spin. The magnificent conference on 19 March that launched the campaign for a new party of the working class has not come a moment too soon. Events show the urgent need for such a campaign.

Campaign for a New Workers' Party

IF YOU'RE disgusted with the sleaze-ridden, pro-rich New Labour and want to show your support for a new party that fights for working-class people, sign the declaration of the Campaign for a New Workers' Party.

Go to: www.cnwp.org.uk or email: info@cnwp.org.uk