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  1. Politics
26 November 2010

Shock! Horror! Labour leader says he is a “socialist”!

Quote of the day.

By Mehdi Hasan

Yes, I am a socialist.

That was the Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, speaking on Radio 5 Live this morning. And I see that the Tories, in the form of the teenage children who seem to be in charge of the party’s Twitter feed, have used the quotation to push their ridiculous “Red Ed” line again. Fraser Nelson has got rather excited as well and his colleagues at the Spectator Coffee House blog even took time out to transcribe much of the Labour leader’s interview with Nicky Campbell.

Miliband may indeed be keen to “move on” from New Labour – and right to do so – but to pretend his “I am a socialist” remark is proof of such an approach or, on the other hand, a gaffe, is just silly and ignorant. Don’t they know that Tony Blair, the architect of New Labour and rewriter of Clause Four, also described himself as a “socialist”? Not just in 1983 but in 1994, too.

From Sunder Katwala’s Next Left blog:

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So here is Tony Blair the socialist, as he prepared to rewrite Clause Four of the Labour Party in 1994:

“The socialism of Marx, of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy; it failed to recognise that state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital; and it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today.

“By contrast, socialism as defined by certain key values and beliefs is not merely alive, it has a historic opportunity now to give leadership. The basis of such socialism lies in its view that individuals are socially interdependent human beings – that individuals cannot be divorced from the society to which they belong. It is, if you will, social-ism.”

Only two years ago, Cherie Blair saw fit to describe herself as a socialist in a Guardian interview. And during summer’s Labour leadership campaign, all five candidates – including a seemingly reluctant David Miliband – affirmed their socialist credentials.

From the Next Left blog in June:

Emma Burnell asked the candidates for the Labour Party leadership, “Are you a socialist – and what does the word mean to you?” at the hustings event co-hosted by the Fabian Society, Compass, LabourList, Left Foot Forward, Progress and the Young Fabians at the Institute of Education in London. Gaby Hinsliff challenged the candidates to give a “one-line” ideology for this final question of the hustings event.

Each of the candidates [was] happy to use the phrase, though David Miliband was perhaps the most indirect in his answer: “It says on the Labour Party card that we are a democratic socialist party, and I am happy to subscribe to that.”

So why the hoo-ha over Ed M’s remark on 5 Live this morning? As the Labour leader said during his conference speech in Manchester:

Come off it. Let’s start to have a grown-up debate in this country about who we are and where we want to go and what kind of country we want to leave for our kids.

On a side note, you can see me discussing what socialism means in 2012, with Tony Benn on Newsnight, here.

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