I believe Labour is moving sharply to the right, and very quickly.
There's talk of sticking to Tory spending limits despite the disaster that delivered in 1997.
Deficit control is apparently vital, just when the economics of public debt and growth have been destroyed.
Child poverty can no longer be tackled in the way it was, and with it the aspiration of redistribution fades away.
And Blue labour is openly on the agenda, with which many have an issue.
And all this is because, apparently, the electorate won't buy any other ideas and if they did there'd be an economic disaster as a result of trying anything else.
If true at least some in Labour have conceded the economic argument to Osborne, the austerians, Hayek and the Institute for Economic Affairs.
To only slightly misquote Krugman, the confidence fairy is in town and has cast her wicked spell all over some in Labour.
UKIP could be one reason. This is likely the cause: Peter Kellner's suggestion that Labour is a long way from winning the next election.
The result is a giant tack towards not just the middle ground, but the right. And when the economics of the right have so spectacularly failed this is deeply worrying.
If this is the direction of Labour's travel (and of course, there is time for it to change and I may be wrong) then no wonder people are jaundiced with mainstream politics. This looks like a shift without conviction towards a policy without substance in pursuit of a goal not worth achieving. If it comes to pass do not be surprised if we end up with weak, ineffectual and failing government.
And that's when the far right move in.
Which is why the left need to be robust now.
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Really I think Labour’s move to the right is a movement by true believers. It is the only explanation as to why they do this.
As unpleasant as the 1997 commitment to Tory spending limits (which Kenneth Clarke has said were only ever meant to be baselines to be exceed if necessary) were, at least they happened in a relatively benign economic climate. Pursuing Tory spending policies in the current climate will be a disaster and will guarantee Labour will lose again in 2020.
The right wing nature of part of the Labour party is particularly evident in Scotland where the party has basically devolved into “oppose the SNP regardless of the issue” meaning that whenever the SNP tend towards Social Democracy, Labour tacks to the right. It is tragic because there are many good people in Scottish Labour (and plenty of neoliberals in the SNP for that matter) but their party is ignoring them. Why Labour does the same in England where there is no centre-left Government to oppose is more complicated and can only be because the leadership genuinely wants to pursue neoliberal policies.
I thought about voting Labour at the next election, but I don’t see how I can now. Not that it matters, I live in an ultra safe Labour seat where the Tories will probably lose their deposit and finish behind several minor parties, but still a lot of the left thinking of going back to Labour, will not now.
As controversial as it may sound, perhaps Ed Milliband should have a look at what his father wrote about the political process.
Why can’t we just forget about Labour? They’re finished. Cruddas seems to be another Champagne socialist) http://atosvictimsgroup.co.uk/2013/04/07/john-cruddas-another-champagne-socialist/) and they are clearly the bespoke suited apparatchiks of vested interests. Why don’t we forget ’em already?
I have voted in every election for 50 years, even when there was no conceivable chance of my preferred candidate being elected. However, I will find it hard to find a reason to vote in the next election. A choice between faster economic suicide, slower economic suicide, or we don’t have a clue. I despair.
Absolutely. I will not vote for the least worst option this time or “tactically”. I’ll be looking at the economic programmes of the parties – including minority parties – and if I think they are on the right course I will vote. Otherwise I will abstain.
We even have the Greens in Brighton threatening ordinary working people with the sack and cutting wages.
I agree Simon, it’s another strand of careerist politicians feathering their own nests under a slightly different (but inreasingly hard to differentiate) veil.
The major problem I forsee is that of time; is there time before 2015 to set up a new left thinking political party that people will buy into? Is the Left Unity project the potential answer?
Or is it better to try to do our damndest to move labour back to the left where it belongs? As the coalitions cuts bite ever deeper and more people get sucked closer poverty will there be a further shift to more “collectivist” thinking, where the needs of the many outweigh the vested interests of the few? The fact that Labour seems to heading in the opposite direction fills me with dread.
What chance of moving Labour left?
Greens anyone?
I wish it was they who were getting the boost, not UKIP
Andy
I agree. The time has come to stop trying to influence the existing mainstream parties and to forge a new thing.
Is there time. I believe there is. This is where the power of the internet and social media comes in.
What would it look like. Well I believe the time has come for labels of Left, Right, Centre-Left etc to be ditched. A new narrative is needed that by-passes the media, the political classes and traditions and speeks directly to the people. They’re who need to be convinced.
In short it is time to mess with a few heads.
Richard
I’d love to think you’re right and in my own mind I agree with you. However, talking to the few politically thinking friends I have (so many are disinterested, disillusioned or simply “I’m alright Jackists”, as I call them) for each one that believes in a new start there’s at least a couple of others who want to influence the status quo, ie move Labour back to the Left).
Trouble is, when you look at the make up of the existing party and those who exert the most influence, you just cannot see it happening. They are all “Tory-lite” or “Tories in waiting”.
I’ll be at Left Unity’s national assembly on June 22nd and I sincerely hope some firm direction can come out of this to lead some sort of co-ordinated response, otherwise the prospect of the next 10-15 years looks like a revolving door of the same tried (and failed) neoliberal policies, just fronted by different shades of blue.
It’s going to take a massive leap of faith for a lot of people to change things, I just hope there are some big hearts out there who are prepared to look beyond their own four walls.
Call me a dreamer, but I still hope 🙂
Please dream
“A shift without conviction towards a policy without substance in pursuit of a goal not worth achieving”.
Brilliant phrase. Perhaps it should be the title of a category for your posts. Goodness knows, Labour are giving us plenty to enter in such a category.
Well I just used it as a tweet as you said that
Are you blogging again?
If so send me links when you do by mail please
I think there’s a danger that Labour will move right – however I don’t think this is a new threat; it’s been in the offing since Ed won the leadership election in 2010. It seems to me that Ed’s natural instincts are to the left but he has inherited the old Gordon Brown Treasury team cautiousness, and he is a triangulator. So he is pitching his tent somewhere between the soft left Compass camp and the centre-right Progress camp. A triangulator’s assessment of the advance of UKIP on the hard right is that they tilt the political balance further to the
right and so Ed is triangulating right to compensate.
Needless to say, this triangulation is a huge mistake.
UKIP is a hard-right populist party, a weird mix of libertarian, authoritarian and anti-politics elements. It can’t be appeased, bargained with or reasoned with. All 3 parties are losing some support to it but fortunately for Labour the drain on the Tory vote is far bigger than the drain on the Labour vote.
The centre-right Progress grouping is a burnt-out husk of a neoliberal mutant LINO (Labour In Name Only) party. Like UKIP an utter irrelevance but for different reasons. There are some thinking folk in there but for the most part it’s made up of Blairites who threw their toys out of the pram when Ed won the leadership and have been gunning for him ever since. As with UKIP, Ed’s best move is to ignore these people. Blairite members of the Shadow Cabinet should be relieved of their posts at the next reshuffle and replaced with committed social democrats. There would be very little Progress can do about such a coup were Ed to mount it, because since Dave Miliband retired hurt they have no viable alternative leadership candidate.
The Compass grouping represents the main source of viable Labour policy thinking at this time and Ed really needs to mainstream that ASAP to win the arguments and mobilise a Labour landslide in 2015.
Howard
If you think Compass are on track, I’ll trust you
Much as I do on the LINOs
Richard
Agreed. The Compass camp need to walk over LINO, which needs to be marginalised. There is an alternative to neo-liberalism and “Progress” is anything but……
Conviction, conviction, conviction should be the mantra of the real Labour party!
http://leftunity.org/
People should consider Left Unity as an option to the L/P, its a very fast growing new political party and will robustly defend the gains of the welfare state
As an observer outside your country, it is a frightening thing indeed if the UKIP is the future for Britain; but given what’s happened in Hungary not an impossible thing. Are we looking at the 1930s re-visited? If that’s so, what follows could be worse – World war. And given what’s happening vis-a-vis China and Russia and the U.S. attempts to hem those powers in, this too is not impossible.
My suggestion, hedge your bets. By all means try and push Labour back to the left, but also support Left Unity. At the very best, you end up with two left parties that can form a coalition; at worst you will have the possibility of a new Left-wing movement.