Is a metaphor still a metaphor when it takes physical form?

A shiny new edifice built with controversial financing turns out to lack the basic structure needed to hold it together over time. Profit-driven contractors brought in to deliver something huge, but within a decade, it's already crumbling. Is there any better physical representation of the failure of Blairism than Edinburgh's crumbling schools?

When Labour came to power in 1997, they inherited crumbling infrastructure, suffering from years of Tory under-investment. My own primary school, at the foot of the Angus Glens, was a case in point. For my first three years there, from 1990 to 1993, we were taught in a Portakabin which had been 'temporary' for generations of children.

Faced with a need to invest, Labour had two choices. They could either make an ideological case for raising taxes, particularly on wealthier people, for shutting down Britain's network of overseas territory tax havens, and for borrowing to invest in national infrastructure, or they could attempt a political shortcut.

Much of Blair and Brown's time at the helm of the party was defined by their tendency to make the latter choice. Levering in private sector capital through PFI/PPP schemes meant paying higher interest than the more traditional method of issuing bonds, but it was debt which could be kept off the books. And so it was easier to pretend it didn't exist.

Raising taxes on the wealthy went directly against their strategy of triangulating as far away as possible from Labour's former socialist reputation, and instead they decided that winning meant courting the rich and powerful; being 'intensely relaxed about the filthy rich'. Closing tax havens would have meant an all-out confrontation with the City, whom they had spent years courting with their 'prawn cocktail offensive', and upon whom they were relying for their (ultimately doomed) economic magic tricks.

Fortunately for Labour, Major's government had just stumbled upon another option. First used to raise the capital to build the Skye Bridge, the Private Finance Initiative had been developed as a way to get the money in for infrastructure projects. Rather than relying on raising taxes for the long-courted wealthy, or on politically controversial on-the-books borrowing, it brought in private capital.

If something seems too good to be true, it usually is. The first catch, as the people of Skye were to discover, is that you end up paying through the nose in the long term. The second catch is that what you're paying for isn't always that good.

These private companies haven't invested out of the kindness of their heart. They've done it because they expect to turn a tidy profit. And while Blairites argued that the efficiency of the private sector more than compensated for that cut of public money, they misunderstood the very concept of efficiency: 'efficient at doing what?' is always the question. Because the most efficient way to make profit is to cut corners. But the most efficient way for a community to build a school is to invest in something that will last centuries. They are directly contradictory.

Civilisations need schools and hospitals and bridges and social care and universities and libraries and a whole range of other public services. And these need to be properly financed, and, yes, that sometimes means paying for shiny new buildings. And to raise the money for these, you need political parties who are willing and able to make a clear political argument to increase taxes for those who can afford to pay them, or to borrow openly and honestly through the traditional and transparent mechanisms.

The Private Finance Initiative was a political shortcut, encouraging our leaders to believe they could win votes by building services without risking losing them by raising taxes. The failure to build a firm political base for public investment has seen the edifice of a once booming Blairism collapse into dust.

The ultimate lessons of this whole affair are simple: you can't invest in the public services a civilisation needs without raising taxes. You can't, ultimately, be a successful left-wing party by dodging arguments and pandering to elites. Success doesn't come from cutting corners. It shouldn't take the mess of Edinburgh's schools to teach us any of those things.

Comment by Adam Ramsay, a writer and thinker based in Edinburgh. He is co-editor of openDemocracyUK.