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Ex-Blairite Peter Hain says his new book sets out a radical new agenda for Labour. But it does nothing of the sort, says ANDREW MURRAY

Back to the Future of Socialism

by Peter Hain

(Policy Press, 15.99)

FORMER Labour Cabinet member Peter Hain has written a book arguing that the assumptions on which leading Gaitskellite right-winger Anthony Crosland based his famous Future of Socialism, written in the 1950s, have collapsed.

That is not this book, however. It is The Democratic Alternative, which Hain wrote in 1983 and I reviewed for the Morning Star at the time. So we have been here before.

Peter Hain cant be faulted for persistence. His latest book, like the previous, attempts to set out a radical agenda for Labour. That is what Hain does when in opposition.

And when in government? Another story.

The 1983 Hain argued for strict controls on capital movements and exchange and for managed trade. He proposed a public ownership stake in each of the 25 key sectors of the economy.

Hain 83 said that a socialist British government would have to break the rules of the EEC, as it then was, and face expulsion or withdrawal. He even asserted that Western countries and multinationals are the main causes of the Third Worlds problems. The net result is in essence what socialists call imperialism.

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Back to the Future of Socialism