Having just published about conviction politics (in a piece actually written on Friday) I then discovered Ropy Hattersley has been doing the same thing in the Guardian this morning.
I strongly recommend his article, and like his conclusion, which is:
It is convictions that make politics worthwhile — an exciting and interesting as well as an honourable profession.
Unreconstructed Blairites will claim that I am doing no more than asking Labour to choose between power and purity. Quite the opposite is true. There has never been a time when social democracy was more relevant to the nation's needs or when its unflinching advocacy was more likely to command support. The danger for Labour is that we will once again be seen as a party without a clear purpose. Margaret Thatcher proved that the people admire and support politicians with strong convictions — even when they do not share them. Labour needs to listen — but to its own conscience and judgment, not "the people" as heard through the Ukip megaphone.
I agree.
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Ropey, shurely…
Roy Hattersley has always been a perceptive observer – as much a loss as the Deputy PM who never was as Dennis Healey the PM who never was, both to the loss of the body politic and the UK as a whole. It was his article entitled “Why I no longer believe in Labour” in the Observer soon after the 1997 Blair landslide that confirmed my wife’s suspicions that with TB nothing was going to change; in fact, as we have seen, quite the opposite.
I have two comments on these two posts on conviction politics:
1) Why on EARTH isn’t the Labour Party fanfaring the substantive policy proposals to which it is already committed, using, I would suggest, ALL the billboard spaces used by Cameron’s appalling lies in the 2010 General Election.
If you think Labour has no such policies, then please look at this: http://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/whoever-said-labour-has-no-policies-prepare-to-be-embarrassed/
These are policies that DO derive from Social Democratic convictions, and yet how many of the electorate know about them?
2) One of your correspondents on this blog – Caroline Wilcox, I think – said Ed Milliband should take his cue more from Atlee than Blair (too bloody right, in my view!!) Well, it seems to me the Blairites have realized that shouting from the side of the pitch at the players on the field hasn’t worked, so now they’re trying to nobble the referee. How else are we to interpret a double-page spread – yes, two full pages – on the ineffable Lord Adonis, singing the praises of the two Ed’s, and assuring his readers that Ed Milliband is solidly in the Blair tradition!!!
Having failed to deflect Ed, they’re now trying to co-opt him. Never has the need for REAL conviction politics been greater = clear vision + clear narrative + trust based on integrity. It was Roy Hattersley who observed of the SNP triumph a couple of years ago, that it was because the SNP said what it believed, and believed what it said, and acted accordingly (something I’m sure your correspondent Fiona would endorse) that it had won so handsomely.
So, the Atlee style and substance is need, especially now UKIP may make common cause with Tory Euro-sceptics, and dump Cameron ahead of 2015 (indeed, by 2014) and use our corrupt FPTP electoral system to capture the castle on 30% of the vote, by offering xenophobia and withdrawal from the EU to those fooled into thinking the thieves are outside, in Europe, instead of inside in the banking and casino finance sectors. If we come out of the EU the thieves will REALLY have a free hand in the short time before they decamp with their ill-gotten loot, and we’ll wake up to find ourselves a Third World society ruled by Fascists.
Andrew, you are absolutely right about the UK’s path towards Fascism. However, I would disagree in that I believe we are almost there. When Farage and his cronies can make such appalling comments about migrants(for example they have unpleasant diseases) and the disabled, and these comments are not challenged by the leader of the left Ed Miliband whose own father was a Jewish migrant then such ideas are allowed to take hold and people are able to continiue to disaparage various groups in society. The Tory onslaught on the ‘skiving’ disabled has set the scene for what is to come. I think of my father, who as a young man spent four and a half years away from home in the second world war to fight fascism and his Trades Council branch which supported a Spanish family whose trade unionist father had been imprisoned by Franco, and I wonder what he would think of the current situation.
Regarding the UK’s impending third world status , Going South by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson highlights the many third world features already displayed by the UK. If some people really believe that Farage will provide a solution to their threatened status they must be very gullible. He has some extremely wealthy backers and frankly his purpose must be to attract some working class votes so that the elites can continue their neoliberal massacre of the British economy. I have no doubt that at the General Election and following no decisive vote then Cameron will be ditched and Farage will be embraced by the Tories in order to form a government.
This will go nowhere till the Neoliberals and anti-Neoliberals in both main parties realise they have to leave and co-opt to form their own, brand new, political parties. Until then all we’re presented with is party leaders trying to pretend they’re two people at once. It’s ridiculous.
I don’t believe Labour has the conviction to rock the financial system. In the book ‘Where Does Money come From’, the authors make a clear case to show that the Banking system controls the Bank of England (though we are given the impression that the BoE ‘controls’ credit). If labour cannot commit to cleaning out this Augean stable then it is doing next to nothing. It will have to arise from a grass roots movement which means things will have to get worse (already a fifth of families can barely afford their shopping bill) which could mean a continued lurch to the right as people look for simplistic answers.
Andrew,
Spot on.
Publicly the Labour party seems more worried about being to far from the Tories policy wise rather than not far enough. Rather than explain alternatives the Labour party seem to prefer either silence or very similar policies. They seem fearful of the media and have obvious difficulties finding a platform for their views. One massive problem is that whoever you vote for ‘the markets’ ends up in charge. And this opposition are terrified of ‘the markets’. The other problem has been the incredible pro cuts stance of the main media outlets including the BBC. During the first period of the new government Peston and Robinson regularly trotted out editorial pieces about domestic and state debt largely blaming overspending and ignoring the responsibility of the financial sector. I find it astonishing that even now the government can blame the cuts on Labour’s overspending with barely a word of protest. Someone in the Labour party once said to me, in response to mu criticism of their timidity, that they do respond and make noise but no one wants to print or broadcast it.
Labour needs to be far more courageous, During a time when the US is moving close to fuel independence we have moved further away. We’re in a position were the privately owned power providers make fantastic profits but refuse to undertake necessary investments in infrastructure demanding instead that the taxpayer steps in. We need to get as close as we can to nationalising power. No profits without responsibility. The same goes for the rail network. I have no problem with massive taxpayer funded rail projects, but I do when simultaneously injections of cash are going straight out the back door in the form of dividends.
I think I may have had too much coffee.
While we’re discussing the nationalisation of the utilities, let’s not overlook that misunderstood but universally used utility, money. It’s vital, far too important to have its supply left in private hands.
Forgot to say – the Adonis article was in Saturday’s Times
Came across this comment to the above mentioned article -about right in my view:
Labour policies are decided by focus groups and policy wonks in marginal seats.
Indeed. Who else could have decided that it was a good idea for the Labour Party to introduce a sham assessment, banned in the USA after a class action lawsuit, that finds even the terminally ill ‘fit for work’?
How else could a party that came into being to look after the interests of the working man have championed the introduction of Workfare?
Winston Churchill:
“It is a national evil that any class of Her Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions… where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad and the bad by the worst; the worker, whose whole livelihood depends upon the industry, is undersold by the worker who only takes up the trade as a second string… where these conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration.”
Apparently the Labour Party is now more right wing than Churchill. Apparently it thinks the tax[ayer should pay for free workers to be sent to the likes of Asda and Poundland. Apparently Miliband thinks the way to beat an unpopular Tory Party that couldn’t win outright is by making the Labour Party more like them.
This is the degeneracy at the heart of British Politics. We now have politicians of all stripes who believe in nothing but their next turn at the trough. Thatcher won because she did believe in something, and although I didn’t agree with her, I respected her for that. It is difficult to find anyone in Parliament today worthy of respect; they are all much of a muchness – a professional class of politician devoid of substance and seemingly all from the same mould, basically interchangeable as far as party and policy are concerned.
To put it crudely, the whole lot of them stink, and if they want a reason as to why UKIP are doing so well, they need only to look at themselves.
its a fascinating time for British politics thats for sure. Whilst I disagree with the majority of what UKIP stand for they are resonating with the electorate. Its an interesting question as to whether the 3 main political parties stick to their core values (even if sometimes its hard to tell what they are) at the risk of losing votes or whether they should be shifting their position – immigration is an obvious area to raise this question in.
its a very uncomfortable time to be a leader of the main political parties. The tories and the lib dems are getting hammered by discontent over the economy (amongst other things), but labour need to be careful that they dont go so far left as to be viewed the same way in which they were during the Thatcher years (ie almost unelectable). UKIP is a worrying trend.
I don’t think Labour need to go ‘to the left’ in same way they did in the past because the issues are not exactly the same. They need to point out to the British public that their country is the most unequal in Europe and has gradually got that way since 1979 (http://www.neweconomics.org/issues/entry/inequality) and that reform of the Banking system is overdue without which democracy and social justice is impossible. They should also positively defend the Keynseian dictum that ‘Government spending creates income.’ £1.2 trillion was the cost of the bail out of Banks -they should be able to get this across but they haven’t the passion or the guts.
We’re unequal in more ways than that. Friends of mine, young newlyweds, decided to set up in France. On his modest salary they don’t simply have a house with a garden, they have a house with land, a fair bit of it. France famously did away with its aristocracy, as did other European countries, centuries ago. Land’s a lot cheaper there as a consequence. We still have ours, they’re in large part descendants of William the Conquerer’s heathenly mob and they still own huge parts of the country, leaving us to cram on top of each other into the remainder. That’s a state of affairs which should be being addressed (and don’t get me started on banking) yet what crucial issue lately exercises the nation’s media? Taking away bus passes from pensioners. This is a nation of tiny minds and our oppressors take full advantage of that fact.
This is a nation of tiny minds and our oppressors take full advantage of that fact.
Agreed. The 1872 land ownership census is still pretty much valid today!
The Returns of the Owners of Land, commissioned by the House of Lords to prove that they did not own most of the land – and hastily buried when it showed that they did. See Who Owns Britain, Kevin Cahill.