What I've Learned, by Tony Blair

Luego de dejar su puesto como Primer Ministro de Gran Bretaña, Tony Blair hace un recuento de las cosas que ha aprendido durante su diez años de mandato y entrega su visión acerca de la flexibilidad laboral, el nuevo rol del estado, y el cambio de los partidos políticos, entre otros temas. Luego de leer este ensayo, queda claro que Blair, líder del partido Laborista quien ha sido catalogado como uno de los políticos más talentosos del siglo, es un progresista que decidió derribar gran parte de la ideología dura de izquierda con respecto al Estado y a la integración económica mundial, para así inyectarle nuevas energías al motor de crecimiento británico.
Aquí les copio un extracto del ensayo publicado en The Economist.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9257593
Tony Blair
What I've learned
May 31st 2007
From The Economist print edition

"This article is for a global audience, and has
focused mainly on international policy. But there
are some interesting lessons from domestic policy also.

1. “Open v closed” is as important today in
politics as “left v right”. Nations do best when
they are prepared to be open to the world. This
means open in their economies, eschewing
protectionism, welcoming foreign investment,
running flexible labour markets. It means also
open to the benefit of controlled immigration.
For all nations this is a hugely contentious area
of policy. But I have no doubt London is stronger
and more successful through the encouragement of targeted migration.

Isolationism and protectionism now cut across
left and right boundaries. They are easy tunes to
play but pointless in anything other than the very short-term.

2. The role of the state is changing. The state
today needs to be enabling and based on a
partnership with the citizen, one of mutual
rights and responsibilities. The implications are
profound. Public services need to go through the
same revolution—professionally, culturally and in
organisation—that the private sector has been through.

The old monolithic provision has to be broken
down. The user has to be given real power and
preference. The system needs proper incentives
and rewards. The purpose should be so that public
services can adapt and adjust
naturally—self-generating reform—rather than
being continually prodded and pushed from the
centre. Public-sector unions can't be allowed to
determine the shape of public services.

In Britain we have put huge investment into our
public services. But we are also opening the
health service to private and voluntary-sector
partnerships, introducing a payment-by-results
system, creating competition and allowing
hospitals to become self-governing trusts. The
new academies and trust schools will have the
freedom to develop as independent but
non-fee-paying schools, with outside partners
like businesses, universities and charities able to sponsor and run them.

3. Welfare systems work only if there is shared
responsibility—the state to provide help, the
citizens to use that help to help themselves. The
pensions reforms Britain is now putting through
will, over the decades, give us a system that is
affordable and fair between the generations, by
ensuring that, though each citizen is guaranteed
a basic pension, they will be expected to top that up with their own finances.

4. Law and order matters in a way that is more
profound than most commentary suggests. It used
to be that progressives were people who wanted an
end to prejudice and discrimination and took the
view that, in crime, social causes were
paramount. Conservatives thought crime was a
matter of individual responsibility and that
campaigns against discrimination were so much political correctness.

Today the public distinguishes clearly between
personal lifestyle issues, where they are
liberal, and crime, where they are definitely
not. It is what I call the pro-gay-rights,
tough-on-crime position. It confounds traditional left/right views.

5. Social exclusion needs special focus. From
1979 to 1997 the incomes of the richest 20% in
Britain grew faster (2.5%) than the incomes of
the poorest 20% (0.8%). That has been reversed.
Since 1997 the incomes of the poorest have risen
faster (2.2%) than the richest (2%). However,
this masks a tail of under-achievers, the
socially excluded. The rising tide does not lift
their ships. This issue of social exclusion is
common throughout Western nations.

6. Finally, political parties will have to change
radically their modus operandi. Contrary to
mythology, political parties aren't dying; public
interest in politics is as intense as it ever
was. As the recent turn-out in the French
election shows: give people a real contest and they will come out and vote.

But politics is subject to the same forces of
change as everything else. It is less tribal;
people will be interested in issues, not
necessarily ideologies; political organisation if
it is rigid is off-putting; and there are myriad
new ways of communicating information. Above all,
political parties need to go out and seek public
participation, not wait for the public to be
permitted the privilege of becoming part of the sect.

So, membership should be looser, policymaking
broader and more representative, the internet and
interactive communication the norm. Open it all up."