Mary Ann Sieghart in the Independent argues 'Labour's wrong if it thinks it's time for a shift to the left', and yet she concludes:
Labour has to give voters reasons to vote for it, not just reasons to vote against the Coalition. They don't have to be wildly left-wing and populist. But if all the party has to offer, in the words of another Labour MP, is "wonky bureaucratic answers to problems, vacuous phrases and no coherent story", then it mustn't be surprised if voters are lured instead by the empty promises of a left-wing, populist candidate.Labour has to start telling its own story, fast.
So what else are they to say then Mary? That they'll outdo the Tories from the right - as Labour in Black is doing? That's just absurd. As the Guardian notes today, echoing sentiment I expressed here on Friday:
[Cameron made a]promise of rebalancing the busted British economy, away from London and south-east and finance, and towards other regions and other sectors of the economy. It was a promise also made by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable. And it is a promise that the coalition is failing to deliver on. That much is clear from the numbers, which show that in both jobs and housing markets London and the south-east are bouncing back from the City's crash, even while the rest of the country founders. But it is clear too from last month's budget, in which the confusion of this government's policy on industrial and regional development is laid bare. The cost of this confusion is not just a matter for Whitehall. More importantly, there is a vast human toll, in chronic unemployment. And there's a political price, as George Galloway's success demonstrates. Sure, wars and poor campaigning played their part — but the fact that only four out of 10 voters in deindustrialised Bradford West plumped for a mainstream party should also tell Westminster what happens when all three parties pay a region's economic development only lip service.
The real problem is that Britain is the most centralised country in the western world. London is the nation's economic, political and cultural centre of gravity. This concentration of power has become more and more pronounced. Break that stranglehold and there is a chance that real local democracy could deliver innovative solutions: regional currencies, green new deals, the use of pension funds to build houses, for example. There is, though, precious little sign of that happening. As a result, the poverty will get deeper and the howls of protest ever louder.
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One really has to wonder what universe these commentators inhabit? “Don’t trust Galloway’s leftist, and simplistic ideas, but give credit only to his effective organisation and concentration on local issues” says Mary Ann Sieghart.
I have to say, I think she’s WAY off beam.
First, the issue of the appeal of genuinely Social Democrat/Left politics. The British electorate – or at least a good chunk of it – has been waiting at least since 1997 — probably before – for someone to stand on the steps of No. 10, before entering to start governing, and boldly announce “Right – from this moment on Thatcherism’s dead and buried! Fresh start, based on proven values!”, meaning a proper return to the successful values of the post-War years, even if different means and instruments need to be devised to achieve it.
That’s certainly what I expected “Tory” Blair to do in 1997, and no doubt what many of the 4 million voters who had ceased to vote Labour by the 2005 General Election, which is why I resigned from the Labour Party in 2001, in disgust and despair at its falsification of Harold Wilson’s observation that “The Labour Party is either a moral crusade, or it’s nothing!”
We know which route Tory Tony chose = the nothingness of a hollowed-out sham – a party of straw men, fronting a back-room handover to City card-sharps in red braces, expert at nothing except parting decent folk from their hard earned cash, and from the assets of solidarity and the organisations and systems of mutual care and concern (Trade Unions and utilities first, the start on stripping down basic civic and cultural and societal goods such as health and education, which is being completed now) built up over the previous 100 to 150 years.
So Mary Ann Sieghart’s statement that “What Bradford West and the recent elections in Scotland showed is that the unpopularity of the Tories and Lib Dems doesn’t automatically translate into popularity for Labour.”, with its warning that Labour should not tack to the Left is, I believe, contradicted by the fact of the leaching away of the New Labour vote, as voters on the Left came to recognise the monster they had engendered by supporting Blair’s “New Labour”, as also by the fact that the haemorrhage of New Labour’s support was stemmed somewhat by the take-over of Labour by Gordon Brown, who was seen as more authentically a “moral crusade” politician than Blair. That’s certainly why I came back, in early 2009.
In contrast to Ms Sieghart, I believe there’s a real thirst, and a real market, for just such a return to those “moral crusade” values, and I think that is demonstrated by Galloway’s campaign literature. Take a look at this: http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/03/bradford-west-tory-vote-collapse/
Far from being simplistic, leftist ranting, Galloway’s literature lays claim to being “real” Labour, espousing the sort of Labour values that gave us things such as the NHS, real Legal Aid, the Open University, properly funded and democratically accountable effective education, and real international aid, support and solidarity with the Third World. Far from being anti-Labour, or non-Labour, Galloway was able to allow disillusioned Labour voters to feel they WERE voting Labour when they voted for him. They are part of the 5 million lost Labour voters, who are NOT going to come back to a pale TINA clone!
Finally, there’s the scorn she pours on Galloway’s “Stop this cuts madness!”, which she damns as being “more immediately appealing” than what she implicitly sees as the more realistic Tory “There is No Alternative” line, or Labour’s implicitly more responsible “we can only fiddle about at the edges to help you.” line. She even calls in support the old chestnut : “For even if a left-wing, populist message gets you into government, you then have the problem of governing on a manifesto that wouldn’t last a week in the bond markets.”
This Blog has more than amply demonstrated, as has the unfolding of events in the global economy since the Con-Dems took over, that this is nothing like as real a threat as the Con-Dem Government have tried to argue, and that, to the contrary, only bold action to reverse the cuts and to stimulate demand through real investment will see us begin to emerge from the hole into which the Coalition have dug themselves, and us.
Timidly digging more slowly, using a smaller spade is NOT going to get Labour elected — only a real plan for jobs and investment, and re-instating most of the cuts (on the basis of proven effectiveness), will do that. And, of course, tackling the tack gap, and the culture of tax evasion must be part of that plan.
Galloway is personally unattractive – in my opinion
But there is no doubt he is articulating real concerns that resonate many
Richard