Oliver James: Cheap Labour

Being reminded of what might have happened in the past 10 years has been miserable. In his characteristically mawkish, self-deceiving homily on Wednesday, Tony Blair exhorted us to go back to 1997, to "Think back. No really think back".

Well, Tony, in all seriousness, I can hardly think of anything that you got right. I suppose you managed not to balls up John Major's Northern Irish initiative. Some 600,000 children are not in poverty who would otherwise have been - but then that was Brown, not you. More money was spent on health and education than the Tories would have - but your real goal was privatisation, and it's not that many years from now before the new hospitals and schools become the property of the companies that built them.

Most nauseating of all was your attempt to portray us as a great nation at peace with itself. The truth is that 23 per cent of us suffered a mental illness in the past 12 months, and the same percentage again is on the verge of it. This is exactly twice the rate for mainland Europe, which is 11.5 per cent.

Apart from enabling a basic level of economic success, sufficient to pay for food, health and education, the purpose of government is to minimise the amount of mental illness by creating a benign society, like the Scandinavians have been doing for 70 years. Blatcherism has done the opposite. If you can face it, here's a glimpse of what really happened to our social psychology in the past 10 years, starting at the beginning of life.

Foetuses depend on having calm, happy mothers. There is abundant evidence that feeling stressed in the last trimester is an independent cause of hyperactivity and behaviour problems. The mother's high levels of cortisol - the fight-flight hormone - are passed through the placenta and continue to affect the child nine years later. Yet, since 1997, women have been more, not less, likely to work right up to the birth.

It just goes on from there, as if the New Labour control freaks are oblivious to the evidence of what makes for mental health. Caesareans have multiplied several-fold, even though they interfere with bonding. British babies are even less likely to be breastfed than anywhere in Europe, again reducing emotional intimacy. Then, mental illness-inducing strict routines for babies, like insistence on four-hourly feeding or imposed sleep schedules, have become widespread. Where is the government action, following the damning study of this method published last year? It shows that, compared with babies raised in infant-centred regimes (for example, demand-feeding or sharing the parental bed when distressed), at three months the routine-nurtured babies spend 50 per cent more time crying or fussing: the Discontented Little Baby.

On top of all this, the past 10 years witnessed a massive growth in children's television channels, with non-terrestrial TV penetrating more homes, left free to have their wicked way with our minds. The resultant heavy viewing is bad for your nipper's mental and physical health. (Aric Sigman's book Remotely Controlled examines this phenomenon.) There is the greater aggression but also, as a recent American Psychological Association report shows, increasingly, the content sexualises little girls, making them neurotic about looks.

Then there has been the rise of electronic games (also harmful if taken in excess) and unhealthier eating. These significantly contributed to an epidemic of childhood obesity. (See Sue Palmer's Toxic Childhood.) Small wonder that Britain was at the bottom of this year's Unicef study of child welfare in 21 developed nations. Even the Americans were doing better - just.

As a foetus, an infant or a toddler, since 1997 you were more likely to have the kind of nurture which predisposed you towards being angry, depressed and anxious. This is a dreadful preparation for an education system which, even with the best early childhood in the world, you would find considerably more stressful.

SATs pressurised you to measure your performance relative to others. Obsession with GCSE results quotas governed teachers' methods. While average class sizes came down slightly, this was almost entirely due to the introduction of relatively low-paid and unskilled teaching assistants.

You might have found yourself in a spanking new building (soon to be the property of a private company), with your exercise books and teaching aids festooned with logos of their commercial sponsors. But successive education ministers confessed that the new system's purpose was to create compliant producer-consumers, not to meet our children's need to think for themselves.

That you now learn in order to earn was made explicit by the withdrawal of university student subsistence grants and the introduction of tuition fees. As in America, a high proportion of British students found themselves doing "McJobs" in order to survive. Despite that, on average they graduated with debts of £15,000. This is hardly a good preparation for the next stage: even more massive debt, nil savings, workaholism and consumerism, all underpinned by spiralling property prices.

The cost of the average house rose from £68,000 to £205,000 during the 10 years after 1997, a far higher increase than in previous decades. Interest rates were at record lows and lenders were allowed to offer six times annual income for mortgages. Shortage of housing stock was exacerbated by the absence of restrictions on foreign ownership. As prime London locations were bought up by wealthy foreign-born residents, seeing UK plc as a tax haven, the indigenous rich were forced further and further out of the centre, pushing up prices everywhere.

At the same time, affluenza-stoked consumerism was roaring, with unsecured debt spiralling on deregulated credit cards and loans. The virus of placing too high a value on money, possessions, appearances - both social and physical - and fame was everywhere, and in all classes. Authentic psychological needs - for emotional security and intimacy, for example - were conflated with material wants. We became a nation living on the never-never, with trade deficits exceeding all recent levels.

Yet the consumer goods were a gigantic swizz. As soon as retailers had our credit card details, they no longer wanted anything to do with us. Although the advertising mood music had been very different, it was a one-night stand they were after.

For, infuriatingly, built-in obsolescence had grown. When my MP3 player broke down after two years, I did everything possible to get it repaired. After a succession of lengthy, expensive and extremely frustrating calls to "customer services representatives", I was finally convinced that it would cost more to repair than to replace. It's the same story for toasters, children's electrical toys: you name it. Largely unregulated customer support departments are just a way of getting you to hang on when ringing a costly 0845 number. There are no real repair departments any more, and it's you who has to live with the guilt of global warming as you make for the dustbin.

You were looking for a long-term relationship but these bastards loved and left, and it was the same with your employer. As a 2004 International Labour Office report showed, compared with other nations British job insecurity has become extreme with short-term contracts and fewer employment rights. Addicted to consumption, huge mortgages and unsecured loans, you had to buckle down. As the average debt-laden student emerged into this workplace trying to catch their breath after the frantic rush to get a (heavily devalued) 2:1 or a first for their increasingly vital CV, they already knew they were going to have to kick the shit out of workplace competitors to be able afford that first, poky flat.

Service industries continued to replace manufacturing even faster under Blair than they did under Major - down to 15 per cent of jobs, compared with 20 per cent in 1997. A 2006 report by the Institute for Public Policy Research revealed that, in this service-industrial world (remember the politico-babble of Living on Thin Air: The New Economy by Charles Leadbeater or The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy by Anthony Giddens?), office politics and self-presentation had replaced real measurable achievements as the key to career success. Chameleonism, Machiavellianism, hyper-competitiveness and workaholism were what was needed. The twentysomething could see this all too clearly on Big Brother or The Apprentice, as they slumped, exhausted by the longer working hours, to eat their unhealthy supper, washed down with ever greater quantities of booze (perhaps after getting home from the deregulated pub).

The political rhetoric from all the major parties was of aspiration, greater prosperity and social justice, which is just double-think for inequality. The reality was a gap between rich and poor not seen since Victorian times. In the first five years after 1997, the average chief executive's salary doubled, with the likes of Philip Green trousering a £1.2bn dividend and removing it tax-free to Monaco. In the second five years the liquid assets (cash, or property that could be quickly turned into cash) of the wealthiest increased so much that the richest 0.3 per cent now own half of them in the UK.

Children depend on parents, employees on employers, consumers on producers, and electors on politicians. In the past 10 years, all these dependant relationships have broken down in Britain. There was nothing inevitable about this: globalisation cannot be blamed because, in many European nations, the relationships have become more, rather than less, nurturing. It could have been a different story, Tony. And it still can be, Gordon and Dave: there is an alternative.

Oliver James is the author of 'Affluenza - How to be Successful and Stay Sane'

I could, y'know, do like whatever

The 'IoS' has acquired a sheet of paper from the outgoing Prime Minister's blotter outlining his future plans...

1. Buy top-floor flat in Whitehall with view of Downing Street and install hyper-broadband for special red Blairphone connected to No. 11 only, in case Gordon needs any help. Discuss with Gordon the possibility of installing a Blairsignal on top of House of Commons, in case I am VERY urgently needed and other modes of communication fail.

2. For first act as Ex-Prime Minister Ex-Portfolio (shorten to X-Man?), broker peace in the Middle East by getting everyone to sit down around a table and drink tea together, just like we did in Belfast. Because, hey, most people who have actually dealt with them agree that Hizbullah and Mossad are pretty straight kind of guys.

3. Tell Gordon... I mean, suggest to Gordon that I plan to... I mean, I would like to, continue to use Chequers for top-level briefings with major international political figures since he is too po-faced... I mean, puritanical... I mean, hard-working to deign... I mean, need to use the Prime Ministerial country residence.

4. Organise major charity concert, possibly called Ugly Rumours of Aid, at new Wembley stadium (a New Labour triumph) featuring supergroup of Sir Cliff Richard (vocals), Phil Collins (drums), Bill Wyman (bass), Bill Clinton (horn) and T Blair (guitar) to raise funds to heal the wounds of Africa. Because, y'know, what's going on over there is pretty terrible.

4. Put out feelers to Hillary Clinton (more than Bill ever did!) to find out the going rate for addressing Democratic Party Caucus and saying I knew Bush was wrong all along (similar feelers to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and, er, all the other ones).

5. Organise major balloon endurance race called Grin and Hot Air It to draw attention to problems of global warming - T Blair and Sir Richard Branson to see who can stay in the air longest while maintaining a dazzling, charming smile.

6. Launch own clothing line through TopMan - possibly called Top PM Man - including reversible red and blue tie, sweatproof blue shirt (with saucy lady cuff detail), eye-catching surf-style bathing shorts for the mature man, and the executive, stain-proof Statesman suit (nothing sticks to it!) complete with built-in, hand-of-destiny-on-my-shoulderpads.

7. Write book entitled 'Hey, Y'Know What? You Really CAN Have It All: The Third Way To a Happy Marriage', explaining that a woman can have a career and kids as long as both partners are equally high-flying and she agrees to renounce her own political ambitions.

8. Challenge John Major to a game of tennis. Win.

9. Bury weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Become weapons inspector. Find them. (NB - check with Alastair exactly which kind of WMD can reach Britain in 45 minutes.)

10. Order takeaway pizzas from five different firms to be delivered at 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am and 6.55am to Mr G Brown, 11 Downing Street, on 28 July. Just, y'know, as a joke. He needs to lighten up!

11. Google myself on 28 July. Google Gordon. Compare results.

12. Go round and see Lord Browne to find out how he's getting on.

13. Buy Linguaphone Teach-Yourself-German course so I can post messages on YouTube for Angela Merkel, just like I did for Mr Sarkozy.

14. Ring Ken Livingstone and say, "Hey, can't we draw a line in the sand now?"

15. Buy house in David Cameron's constituency and register to vote there. For fun.

16. Read Leo a story.

17. Fix that squeaky board on the landing at Connaught Square.

18. Order brochure from Saga.

19. Join local library.

20. Tidy sock drawer.

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