I'm aware I'm a day late on this one, but so what? The issue is important and won't go away.
The Guardian reported yesterday that:
Ed Miliband will lose the next election if Labour falls into a trap set by theConservatives and allows itself to be defined solely as the defender of public spending, one of the party's leading frontbench intellectuals has warned.
Gregg McClymont, the shadow pensions minister who is a former Oxford history don, writes in a new pamphlet that Labour will avoid the Tory trap only if it resists the temptation to appeal to its core supporters in the public services.
I confess I'd never heard of Gregg McClymont, and it's not a name to forget. And I have to say I doubt his intellect.
Of course Labour can forget its core vote and concentrate solely on playing Westminster neoliberal games for the benefit of the home counties elite as the Policy Network are suggesting. And it will lose Scotland for good if it does. And with the SNP so dominant north of the border that will mean the end of the Union - and with it any prospect of Labour victory ever again.
If that's what Mandelson and his friends want, so be it. But let's be unambiguous about the fact that they're demanding the end of the United Kingdom and the end of the Labour Party as an effective political force. That, of course, may be their agenda. But if it is at least they should either admit it or they should start applying their intellects. Because right now they're not doing at least one of those things, and maybe both.
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Exactly my first thoughts on reading the report.
Then (as a Scot who sometimes thinks maybe Scottish independence is the only realistic hope of social democracy taking hold in the polity we currently know as the UK) I thought:
OK, dammit, bring it on – maybe a Scottish-induced demise of Labour-in-Parliament, along with the certainty of the L-Ds going the same way, is the also a step along the way to social democratic renewal in a constitutionally restructured Britain. Anybody see a faster prospect?
If I was Scottish I may well think that….
Perhaps I’m being selfish
No need for them to demand the end of Labour as a political force, offering as it does as policy only watered down (small c) conservatism it’s that way now.
A new statistical analysis of YouGov polling by Think Left’s Garry K indicates that LP support increased markedly when Ed Miliband rejected New Labour’s subservience to the Murdock press.
‘Ed’s greatest moment shows that when he read the public mood better than David Cameron over phone hacking, the public responded well. Ed can lead and win an argument.’
http://think-left.org/2011/12/29/the-polls-2011-a-cusum-perspective/
Prior to the May 2010 GE, Tribune reported that Mandelson et al were hopeful of creating a new ‘centre’ Labour/LD party comprising Blairites and Orange Book LDs, thus completely marginalising the broad left from the mainstream. There was also evidence of the Brown campaign being undermined. I fear that their agenda is indeed:
‘If that’s what Mandelson and his friends want, so be it. But let’s be unambiguous about the fact that they’re demanding the end of the United Kingdom and the end of the Labour Party as an effective political force.’
So do I
Syszygy, I think you’ve highlighted a key fact – that, handled correctly with vigour and attack, a real democratic (hopefully Socialist) stretch of clear water is there for the taking between the woeful Con-Dem Coalition, and the equally woeful defenders of the New Labour project/scam, who seem to have morphed from “Thatcher-lite” clones to genuine Thatcherite TINA-supporters – Mandy, and Milburn and Lord Hutton and even Frank Field – keen to lock in the failed, punitive and divisive, neo-liberal solutions that have got us in this mess.
Labour potentially lost the 2015 Election as early as July 2010, by spending a ludicrous 4+ months electing a Leader, when we can elect a Government in 4 to 6 weeks, so leaving the whole of July, August & September for the Tories to fix the image of “this debt-ridden mess and crisis that Labour left for us” in the minds of the electorate.
A Leader on July 1st – almost any Leader – could have spent those 3 months assiduously countering the nonsense of the Con-Dem position, pointing out how bad things would have been if the Labour government had followed Tory advice, and hadn’t stepped in to save the banking system, to whose incompetent greed almost ALL the debt was attributable – and going on to point out how the Con-Dems were actually bringing about exactly what Labour avoided in 2008, so that the “facts on the ground” (which they can now brush aside by referring back to the “Labour mess”) would have been powerfully persuasive.
All in all, this advice from Greg Whatisname? should be binned immediately, and Ed M should go on the attack to establish just how well Labour performed on the economy and the handling of the 2008 crisis. That’s what needs to be done; if he fails to make that point, Ed M could be the Archangel Gabriel himself, and he still won’t win.
Labour lost in 2010, not for Tony Blair’s risible argument that Gordon Brown had shifted away from New Labour, which was already a poisoned brand – Labour lost more votes on an average annual basis between 1997 and 2005 than they did between 2005 and 2010 – but because they failed to identify the real villains of the crisis (the casino-bankers), and really make them pay = FULL nationalisation of RBS, plus NO bonuses until they paid back the rescue package WITH INTEREST to the taxpayer.
If Gordon had done that, he’d still be in No.10, and Ed needs to pursue the fairness, justice, equal shares/equal sacrifices line as part of a genuinely ethical politics that seeks to defend the weak against the powerful – something he seems actually to be saying in his New Year message (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16356763 – flagged up by JohnM in another post on this site). Ed should certainly pay no attention to these New Labour cheer-leaders: once the horse is dead, no amount of flogging will bring it back to life!
Gregg McClymont, Labour’s famously unknown shadow pensions minister, nowhere to be seen or heard during the many months of pensions negotiations.
Odd that
Wonder why
Couple of million people on strike
Not a peep
Come on now Richard, we cant have Labour shadow ministers supporting uppity striking trade unioniststs, can we?
To be fair, the pensions minister (and shadow) predominantly cover the DWP bit of pensions. The big public sector schemes like the LGPS fall under remit of relevant DCLG etc minister.
Also, he’s a fairly recent appointment, taking over from Rachel Reeves.
Point taken
And I note his rebuttal of the Guardian report too
However that report does seem to very accurately reflect the Policy Network position – which I readily admit seems nearly as far removed from what I would hope for Labour as the Tories are
I think left right labels are false, both parties compete to see who can work for the banking/opium/warmongering elites.
Exactly. There are no political parties now, just a political class only interested in self-advancement. The electorate thus has no effective representation in government. How did the slaves solve this problem of lack of representation in Spartacus Blood and Sand? What was that phrase they grew so fond of towards the end of the show? Wait, it’s coming to me… oh yes; ‘KILL THEM ALL!’
I’m not kidding here, this is where we’re headed. The end of access to free legal representation means many here will be on the same level as the Roman slaves were, with no rights at all. Look how great that turned out for the Romans in the end. Perhaps someone should be telling that idiot Cameron to remember the sayng ‘history repeats itself’.
off topic, HMRC chief counsel doing some nice tap dancing in front of some mp’s
Link?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017ckcf/Select_Committees_HM_Revenue_and_Customs_Committee/
Recorded coverage of the Public Accounts Committee’s session on Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Standard Report with Antony Inglese, General Council and solicitor.
Given the grotesque incompetence of the Westminster machine, it is little surprise that so many want to detach themselves from it. But the Scots should not imagine that this means “independence”. For this you need your own currency, key decision control in your own government and preferably a measure of self sufficiency for basic needs. Scotland may have energy supplies, but that alone is not enough, especially if they are dependent on a few gobal major firms and global financial interests to sustain this. They have a long coastline to think about as the Russians recently have reminded them. What was weird was that the Scots may be seeking Chinese money to build the HST2 extension to Scotland. Would that be to allow their elite to get to Heathrow and the West End of London a little faster?
Ed : This comment deleted as potentially libellous
I never under stood Labour’s historical predilection for encouraging separatist sects inside the UK. It began with Irish nationalism, presumably to spite the Tories. Latterly it has encompassed Scottish nationalism.
Labour thought it could shore its position in Scotland by delivering self-government while neutering the SNP by gerrymandering the Scottish parliamentary electoral system. Labour was thinking this at the same time Brown was saying that he had ended “boom and bust”.
I have no doubt that Scotland will leave the UK and that Labour will be nationally disenfranchised as a result. Cameron and Salmond will see to it, and who could blame them.
The Queen will be upset, but almost everyone else will just shrug.
I think the two Labour supporting history Oxford professors have some valid points; Labour can not alone be seen as the “tax and spend” & “public sector” party as the Tory press will portay and marginalise them very easily as they did to Labour in the 1980s.
Voters want to see a party that is pro-private sector too and create a government that will push “productive investment” – in other words its a question of expanding the cake not just re-portioning the pieces of the case . Yes there are a lot of uncomfortable squeezed middle voters out there who will decide the 2015 result.. Our economy is at stake this time and the balmy, golden days of Tony Blair are long gone. With intelligence Ed can do it but it needs careful planning and contributions from a broad church.
But you have to remember that the only way to stimulate the private sector right now is forth government to spend
Nothing else will work and honesty about that is essential
Sounds like Downsian views. Position yourself as close to the centre of a normal distribution as possible and hope everyone on your side votes for you as the least worst option. Obviously with numerous downfalls even under normal circumstances, such as disenchanting the electorate with the “choice” on display, and reducing turn out among your core supporters.
It’s astonishing given that the tories failed to get a majority in the last election that there’s so little confidence in establishing a distinct vision / identity. It’s far worse to position yourself too close to the government– if it succeeds you are hardly showered in glory, if it fails you fail with it. Either way noone pays much attention to you. Doubly so with the internal opposition of the coalition.
I hope Labour finds itself able to convey confidence in its economic beliefs and policy, and to bolder– and clearer– in its message and narrative.
Agreed, entirely
There is an interesting article in Labour uncut which suggests that Alex Salmond is in a sort of agreement with the coalition in England and is supported by the Murdoch press in Scotland (always suspicious). It may have some truth, as the Tories are a lost cause in Scotland, and so the support for the SNP in Scotland may control Labour at Westminster, indirectly.
http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/04/14/alex-salmonds-cosy-relationship-with-rupert-murdoch-and-the-tories/
I think there is a fair suspicion that the SNP, once always seen as
Left is not so clearly so now
I, for example, have real problems with its fax policy
The Labour Uncut piece is not particularly convincing or evidenced. Murdoch and his prints are a-political “whatever sells papers” populists who go with the flow. Politicians have to live with that and manage as best they can. What do want or expect the SNP to do about the Sun in Scotland? Wave garlic at it?
The SNP management of its relationship with the Westminster coaltion is more interesting. Sandra C seems to be saying the Tories may be motivated to get in bed with the SNP, and I follow that, but it doesn’t put Salmon in bed with them. Again, there’s not much substance in the Labour Uncut piece on that idea. Salmon has such a difficult game to play, he’s always going to look dodgy, and easy to charge with dodginess. Just like Ken Livingstone.
The much more important point (see my first post above) remains – that the SNP (a social democratic party in a social democratically-inclined culture currently inclined to call a plague on both London houses) may consequentially unlock the English stalemate and weaken or dissolve the English political tribal structure that is responsible for our woes. The SNP won’t and can’t control, dictate or lead the English consequences of whatever they do, what happens in England thereafter, so that’s not a problem for the English. And its hard to see how the SNP could ever do an L-D type betrayal, even if it had leaders who wanted to. That’s something else that was/is only possible in the UK rotten borough.
(Just to declare myself in case anybody is guessing what axe I might be grinding, I’m Scots grown, lived and worked in England for 50 years, no SNP connection, an L-D of the S-D tendency until last year, now just desperate for my country and my children.)
I know that last sentiment!
I’ve just read the McClymont/Jackson Policy Network report and to be fair to them, I think it’s been reported very misleadingly in the Guardian (as happens so often nowadays, sadly!)
While it is true that the report does say that Labour can’t win the next election solely by relying on support from public sector workers (and I’d agree with that, given that only a minority of people work in the public sector, and even less after the ConDem cuts) the main focus of the report’s conclusions is that Labour needs to deliver a positive message about economic renewal and growth to win in 2015 – with well-worked out positives which present a clear alternative to the ConDems (e.g. more activist industrial policy). I think this is right – the ConDem appeal to voters is based on negativity and fear and Labour has won most convincingly in the past with a positive message of economic renewal (1945, 1966, 1997).
It seems to me, given the thrust of the report, that McClymont and Jackson would be highly sympathetic to many of the policy ideas for economic renewal presented in The Courageous State and also Compass’s Plan B, for example. So for me, the report isn’t that bad – certainly a lot better than the last Policy Network publication, In the Black Labour, which basically said Labour should abandon the economic argument to the Tory Party. However, it’s not a perfect report by any means. The main weaknesses in the McClymont/Jackson report, as far as I can see, are:
1) there is no way, realistically, to deliver social democratic outcomes without spending more than the Tories (or the ConDems, if they choose some kind of electoral pact) are going to want to do in 2015-20. Thus there isn’t much alternative to Labour being defined as a party that wants to “tax and spend”, at least to a higher degree than the Tories. But given the immense macro and microeconomic damage being caused to the UK by the cuts, I don’t see this as a problem in itself. Rather, as Richard says, “the only way to stimulate the private sector right now is for govt to spend”. That needs to be the key message on the economy – along with explanation of what the money will be spent on and how it will benefit ordinary people.
2) There is no mention of the environment in the report at all and I think this is a very serious omission. “Growth” will only be possible insofar as it respects environmental constraints and in particular, limits to natural resources and limits to carbon emissions. Without that, our economic model is entirely sunk.
Just my €0.02 on this anyhow!
Actually on rereading again, there is a bit of reference to environmental issues in the report – e.g. Green Investment Bank. But there needs to be a lot more…
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