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NOTHING is certain in this world except death and taxes, claimed Benjamin
Franklin. If he were alive today in Britain, the great man might add to his list
the re-election this week of Tony Blair and his New Labour. Unless a lot of
people have been fibbing to a lot of the pollsters, Labour will trounce the
rival Conservative party just as soundly as it did in 1997. Except this time
there won’t be much dancing in the streets.

In Britain as in other affluent nations, interest in party politics is
plummeting, especially among the young. Look at the voting figures for the last
US Presidential election. In Britain psephologists have long predicted a low
turnout for the election. Where has the passion gone?

The same way as the Berlin Wall is the common view. The triumph of market
capitalism, we’re told, has stripped politicians of their ideological
differences, and replaced real political debate with endless spin and haggling
over narrow spending and tax plans.

True enough. But there’s a deeper reason for the disenchantment with
elections. Suspicion is growing that national governments are no longer in the
driving seat—that most crucial decisions on trade and economic policy are
being made in the boardrooms of multinational corporations and round the table
at the World Trade Organization. If this is so, then why bother to vote?

So the new government will be under pressure to prove not only that it has
the will to stand up to powerful industries, but that in this world of
increasingly interlocked economies it retains the power to do so. It won’t be
easy.

Take Britain’s astonishingly successful pharmaceuticals industry. Drugs
companies are getting bigger and more global by the year, while their products
become dearer and often help only small groups of patients. This presents a
dilemma for a government that needs to keep down the costs of healthcare but
cannot afford to lose the jobs and tax revenues the industry generates. If the
government gets too heavy, companies can simply up sticks and go elsewhere. The
value of a pharmaceuticals company is rooted not in heavy machinery but in
easy-to-move intellectual property and bright scientific minds.

The last government tried to strike a balance. It gave the industry
unprecedented access to ministers while creating an independent body, the
National Institute for Clinical Excellence, to evaluate the cost-effectiveness
of drugs. Smart thinking, you might say. But its weakness was cruelly exposed
when NICE ruled against a new flu drug, Relenza. Its inventor, Glaxo Wellcome,
responded with veiled threats to pull out of Britain. Consequently, when NICE
overturned its own ruling it fuelled suspicions of backroom deals, even if none
was struck.

The new government will find its relationship with this and other industries
harder still to manage as multinationals attract more scrutiny from charities,
pressure groups and the media. To succeed it is going to have to get better at
balancing an ever wider range of interests.

It was blinkered attempts by ministers in the 1980s to protect one
industry—beef producers—that led directly to the BSE crisis. The
last government spent millions on an inquiry which sparked much rhetoric about
signing up to the precautionary principle, using scientific advice more
effectively, and putting consumers first. But in the first test of those
ideals—this year’s foot and mouth epidemic—ministers again bowed to
the farming lobby. Vast areas of the countryside were closed off to the
detriment of tourism, while the government ignored scientific advice to use
vaccinations to help stop the disease spreading. The lessons of BSE have still
not been learned.

The new ministers will have to do better when genetically modified food next
hits the headlines. Blair’s early enthusiasm for GM crops fuelled accusations
that his government was in the pocket of the biotechnology industry. Only after
a public outcry did he set up the farm trials that are due to end in 2002. Some
ministers will be privately hoping that the trials give some evidence that GM
crops harm wildlife or the environment. If they don’t, the government will have
no legal grounds to stop GM seeds being imported and planted commercially in
Britain.

That could be a political nightmare. It would put the government in the
ignominious position of having to let a technology take root in British soil of
which most Britons are deeply suspicious—all because of global trade rules
that seem to put the rights of big business first.

That will do nothing to alleviate voter apathy.