The Staggers

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Labour is positioning itself as the truly patriotic party

Ed Balls's invocation of 1945 and the slogan "rebuilding Britain" exemplify Labour's new patriotism.

By George Eaton Published 01 October 2012 14:46

Labour leader Ed Miliband with Ed Balls. Photograph: Getty Images.

Ed Miliband applauds shadow chancellor Ed Balls after he delivered his speech to the Labour conference in Manchester. Photograph: Getty Images.

In my recent profile of the Australian political philosopher Tim Soutphommasane, who has done much to shape the Labour leadership's thinking on patriotism (he is a particularly important influence on Jon Cruddas, who is leading Labour's policy review) I wrote of how the party could draw inspiration from the 1945 election. In that year, it was Clement Attlee's promise of a "new Jerusalem" that propelled him to power over the war lion Winston Churchill. Nearly 70 years later, "a patriotic vow to 'rebuild Britain'" could do the same for Ed Miliband, I argued. As Soutphommasane told me: "The task of rebuilding and reshaping the British economy after the financial crisis and after austerity is something that could be a patriotic project".

The opening days of the Labour conference have seen the party explicitly embrace this theme. First we had the conference slogan "rebuilding Britain", then we had Ed Balls's speech, in which the shadow chancellor spoke of the need for Labour to "recapture the spirit and values and national purpose" of 1945.

Balls is right to argue that a patriotic appeal to "rebuild Britain" after austerity could resonate with voters in 2015. Under the rubric of "national reconstruction", Labour could champion policies such as a National Investment Bank, a major house building programme, and a "solidarity tax" on the wealthy. Balls spoke of how this could be the generation that "safeguarded the NHS, and started the rebuilding of our national infrastructure ... that tackled our debts by growing and reforming our economy - and making sure the banking crisis that caused those debts could never happen again ... that broke from the cycle of political short-termism and started to rebuild Britain anew in the long term national interest."

Labour's best hope of winning the next election lies in offering an optimistic vision of a society of shared obligation and reward, something Bill Clinton did so effectively in his speech to the Democratic National Convention when he contrasted a "we're-all-in-this-together" society with a "winner-take-all society".

The irony is that "we're all in this together", with its appeal to voters' instinctive patriotism, would have been a good slogan for the Tories if only they'd lived up to it. But their reckless reform of the NHS ("the closest thing the English people have to a religion", in the words of Nigel Lawson) and their decision to abolish the 50p tax rate, an important symbol of solidarity in hard times, means that they have lost any claim to be a patriotic one-nation party. The road is clear for Miliband to establish Labour as the truly patriotic party.

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Tags: Labour Ed Balls Ed Miliband Tim Soutphommasane

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5 comments

Wed, 2012-10-03 09:13 — Indu Pendent

George
Someone else who liked borrowing, spending to win votes and power and swaggering in a Nazi uniform was keynesian fundamentalist Hilter. Who said whatever was needed to manipulate people and people believed it.

The Germans borrowed so much that had they not gone to war their economy would have collapsed. Just like Greece and Spain.

Labour borrowed and spent £600Bn and left behind the worst structural deficit in the western world. Was it done in the national or the party's interest?

Do you know what cuts Labour would make if it got into power? Has is been agreed with the public sector unions yet?

Mon, 2012-10-01 23:48 — Michael Dixon (not verified)

This particular article is desperate stuff. 1945 and Atlee. Really!!!

Half the population think Labour created the mess in the first place.

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Mon, 2012-10-01 19:14 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

Labour is reverting to its historical norm as the voice and vehicle of a many-rooted social democratic patriotism in all directions, inclusive of social and cultural conservatives as well as social and cultural liberals, inclusive of rural as well as urban and suburban voices, inclusive of provincial as well as metropolitan contributions, and inclusive of religious as well as secular insights. The 2010 intake is very largely “classic Labour”, the boys in their dads’ suits having decided to sit out the hard work of Opposition. As a result, Labour has long enjoyed a commanding lead both in the opinion polls and at the actual polls.

We need a robust, but not jingoistic, patriotism in the face of all challenges, whether from the European Union or from the United States, whether from Israel or from the Gulf monarchs, whether from China or from the Russian oligarchs, whether from money markets or from media moguls, whether from separatists or from communalists, whether from anything or anyone at all.

That patriotism absolutely excludes any new Cold War against Russia, China, Iran, or anywhere else. Equally, it precludes any idea of the American Republic’s coercively imposing utopianism, since it rejects that idea’s rewritten Marxism in which the bourgeoisie is the victorious class, because it rejects all class-based politics in favour of “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon”.

Drawing on the valiant history of opposition to all of Stalinism, Maoism, the Trotskyist distinction without a difference, Nazism, Fascism, and the Far Right regimes in Southern Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, today excludes all of Islamists, neoconservatives, those who have imported the communalism of the Indian Subcontinent or elsewhere, those who support or indulge the advocates of the denaturalisation of the Arab and the “ultra-Orthodox” citizens of Israel, and those who have never recanted their former Stalinism, Maoism or Trotskyism, or their former support for those Far Right regimes, admitting that that stance had been wrong at the time.

Ed Miliband, over to you.

Mon, 2012-10-01 17:53 — Hu Ru (not verified)

Take it from me.......order up 100k houses and the best part of the labour force will be imported by the big contractors to do it cheaper, and with even less rights.
Lots will stay and that drop in a buck wouldn't amount to a crock.
'Extra help' for first time buyers is a joke........a bad joke about keeping the balloon inflated. Bubbles pop - you cant stick them back together.
As clueless as the Libservatives - Lord give us Strength.