One Nation Labour and its challenges
There is a tension between Miliband's centrist language and his left-wing policies.
By Tim Wigmore Published 03 October 2012 10:43
Initial reactions to Ed Miliband’s Labour conference speech have been overwhelmingly positive, with even Tories praising the delivery, if not the content. And it really was an excellent conference speech – by far Miliband's best, potently argued without over-doing the wonkish language.
It was a speech that signalled the birth of "One Nation Labour"– a potentially election-winning concept. While Miliband didn’t deliver any new policy announcements, the theme of unity is well-judged for the current climate. It also fits neatly with Labour attacks on Conservatives as elitist and out-of-touch, and criticisms of David Cameron for failing to govern in the inclusive manner he promised. So far, so promising.
But the life of "One Nation Labour" will not be without its challenges. Here are a few that it will have to successfully overcome if it is to secure the party a majority in 2015.
1. ‘New Labour in disguise’
The most obvious Tory attack line will be to remind voters of New Labour and argue that "One Nation Labour" merely amounts to the same ideas in a new disguise.
Miliband has said before that "the era of New Labour has passed". But a new catchphrase for the party, appealing as it may be, will meet with cynicism from the millions of voters for whom "New Labour" merely equates to dashed dreams.
2. Who does One Nation Labour speak for?
One of the curious aspects of Miliband’s speech was that, while it was delivered in decidedly centrist terms, its concrete policy content did not reflect that. To put it another way, this speech would have been viewed as a lurch to the left had it lacked the "One Nation" theme. The stern words about immigration were pure Blue Labour. And on education and health, Miliband’s trenchant criticisms of the current government’s policies were, by extension, rejections of New Labour’s reforms too. With this Parliament not quite yet into its second half, there is ample time for him to deal with these issues. But the crux of his problem is that as the election nears, the double act of pleasing the left with policy announcements, while speaking in rhetoric aimed at winning over swing voters will no longer be viable.
3. Committing too soon?
Although Miliband has been shy of making concrete policy commitments, he risks future policy being hemmed in by his criticisms of the current government.
Take the 50% tax rate and the NHS. While his opposition to the government’s policies in these areas has broad appeal, it would be easy to believe that Labour have made concrete promises to restore the 50% tax in 2015 and repealing the NHS bill – neither of which are true. In the case of the NHS bill, this may simply not be viable by 2015; indeed, repealing the bill on account of its expensive and top-heavy nature would require more expensive and top-heavy policies.
4. That crowded centre ground
Taking the speech on its ‘One Nation’ theme, this was a plea for the centre ground. But, even if it was successful in helping to establish Cameron’s Conservative Party as not being of that centre, Labour face other challenges for it.
Nick Clegg’s former director of strategy Richard Reeves recently argued that “the left-wing votes 'borrowed' from Labour in 2010 will not be available in 2015" and, accordingly, that the Lib Dems should focus on making themselves the party of the "radical centre". The trouble for Miliband is that such a political space seems little different from his own "One Nation" theme. And predictions of Lib Dem wipeout have become less fashionable, recognising both the party’s long history of defying grim circumstances and, more importantly, the immense personal popularity of many of its 57 MPs. It will be very difficult for Miliband to make inroads into the 57 – as he must – without offending some of his own core support.
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5 comments
The glorified gossip columnists of "political journalism", with their total lack of interest in policy or philosophy, have no idea what to make of One Nation Labour, and have been demonstrating all over the place that they are historically illiterate by droning on that Miliband's invocation of Disraeli is somehow "cross-dressing".
Next to none comes from One Nation backgrounds in the middle and working classes, and they will certainly have learned nothing about it from any academic course of Politics. At best, any mention of it there would be termed "revisionist" rather than simply factual, and the only key to understanding the Labour Movement.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party's own paid staff is made up very heavily indeed of people who have come across One Nation Labour, at least since coming into that employ even if never before then, and who define their entire mission in life as being the suppression of that tradition.
Using the standard definition of "right-wing" in terms of Gladstonian global utopianism both capitalist economically and, in that cause, interventionist militarily, these people's hero, David Miliband, would have been by far the most right-wing Leader of any major party since well before the War, or at least arguably since well before the twentieth century.
Whereas Ed Miliband promises in his Leader's Speech to repeal the corrupt and corrupting NHS Bill, his brother wrote that Bill word-for-word when he was running Tony Blair's Policy Unit, as he did almost the entire Coalition programme, itself an imposition of the utterly Gladstonian contents of The Orange Book under the name "The Coalition Agreement", for which no more than a quarter of delegates had ever been persuaded to vote at any Liberal Democrat Conference. Such in the nature to which this country was subjected in May 2010.
But that coup had been planned in detail a decade or more earlier by Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell (said to be looking for a seat), the five figures who would have been in Cabinet instead of the Lib Dems if Cameron had won an overall majority (Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers, Peter Mandelson, James Purnell and Andrew Adonis), and the Leader of the "Opposition" who would have been attending the Cameron Cabinet if everything had gone according to plan, David Miliband.
But they were frustrated by Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. Otherwise, the whole privatisation and cuts programme, with its attendant wars abroad and assaults on civil liberties at home, would have happened, as only too much of it did, 10 years ago and more. It would all have been very firmly entrenched indeed by now.
Yet it is to that, and to its principal architect and apologist, that the Labour Party's paid staff very often continue to feel their fealty. The London Regional Office campaigned openly for Boris Johnson, and therefore, not that it has to, has still yet to notify Dan Hodges of his ipso facto expulsion for having done the same thing.
Are matters different up here? Perhaps. But I should take an awful lot of convincing. And I am not the only one. I only have to think of the party staffer best known to me in these parts. He has probably not read Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory, written by someone with who was in the year below him at school and who was instrumental in first co-opting him onto a Parish Council. He would certainly never admit to having done so, still less to agreeing with any of it.
Yet, in his heart of hearts, he probably would agree with about as much of it as that with which he would disagree. But he has spent 15 years defining himself against every word lately collected therein. A party in which the tendency recently organised as Blue Labour rules in benign coalition with what used to be called the Soft Left would probably suit the real views of man halfway between the two.
But he has invested too much in an allegiance to everything to which they are both opposed, to everything that defines itself against them both. And, as the world turns, precisely that is why he will never now be an MP, but, being the same age as I am, can probably look forward to another 35 years of putting the kettle on. He is not the only one. There is also, if perhaps to a lesser extent, the central Labour Party staffer whom I know best. Among many others, no doubt.
Your One Nation editorial in the magazine this week might have had some credibility, we're it not for the absurd right wing ravings this week of Mrs Lamont, a sort of poor man's Angela Merkel supposedly leading the Labour Party in Scotland
Does "One Nation Labour" include
- borrowing to make people feel better and win votes and power like Hitler did rather than using the money srategically
- popularist lowering VAT to stimulate cheap imports and destroy UK jobs
- burdening UK businesses to undermine their competitiveness and restarting Gordons fatwa against SMEs
- training people for 20th century jobs that dont exist any longer
- raising peoples expectations unrealistically and adding the national unhappiness
- substantially higher taxes for people earning £40k -£7ok (the band most people aspire to and have a chance of reaching)
- higher raxes for the lowest paid especially for employers contributions making people too expensive to employ
- easier educational qualifications and aggressive Labour style leveling down of education
- more freedom and influence for the public sector unions
- growing the state when most people want it to be smaller and more efficient
- talking about the 50% tax rate then not implementing it
- champaigne and canopes lifestyle for the political elite whilst they do lots of important meetings with media types and City bankers (whilst doing a Hattie (out of both sides) and criticising them)
- promoting a corrupt establishment e.g MPs expenses, police bribery, phone hacking, libor fixing all done under Labour
Really? A comparison to Hitler? That's mature/clever/intelligent. I'm invoking Godwin's law of Nazi analogies - you lost the argument before you even started it.
Really? A comparison to Hitler? That's mature/clever/intelligent. I'm invoking Godwin's law of Nazi analogies - you lost the argument before you even started it.