Politics
If Labour fails to act on its beliefs now, then when will it?
Published 08 May 2008
Brown will not win the hearts of the people until he combines his competence with a clear moral vision
It is a regrettable truth about electorates that they usually see apologies as a sign of weakness and proof positive that the penitents have done something wrong. So there has been quite enough apologising and explaining and "feeling our pain" and "listening and learning" over the past week, following the local elections. What voters want from Gordon Brown now is resolution and action.
Learning to empathise will not appease a right-wing press that scents blood; nor will it mollify opponents within the party, but rather encourage them in their talk of leadership challenges; and it won't keep the electorate onside until the next general election.
As our political editor makes clear on page 12, the party has suffered a drubbing from which it will be hard to recover. But the Prime Minister leads a party with a solid majority, which he can and should use to govern with conviction. Labour has two more years in power, during which time the best way it can signal to voters that it has been listening is to respond to their concerns. These are seldom as vocalised by the Tory press.
Two years, with a global recession, an almost certain fall in property values and imported inflationary pressures from world food and energy prices, could turn out to be a very long time indeed in politics. Brown, better equipped intellectually than almost any other prominent politician to govern during such an economically unstable time, should use these two years to entrench and Tory-proof a Labour legacy. At the end of that period, core voter fatigue could deprive Brown of a second term of office (that becomes an absolute certainty if he spends the coming months afraid to do anything). But Labour stands some chance of overcoming electoral weariness if it acts decisively on policies that reflect Labour values and that the party can defend with conviction. Of the things Labour stands for but has not yet achieved, it should ask: "If not now, when?" Too many children's lives are still, after 11 years of Labour, blighted by deprivation. For all Brown's commitment to eliminating child poverty, it is not vanquished. It could be. Voters do not vote for their own interests only. Determination to give every child a chance would be seen as bold and the right thing to do.
At the same time, Brown must deal with the 10p tax-band error once and for all by raising tax allowances. Compensation through handouts is not good enough. No Budget should disadvantage the lower-paid. Why continue to give grounds for rebellion? Labour should instead make the case for the rich paying their share.
Brown must also abandon his plan to extend detention without charge for terror suspects to 42 days. There would be no surer way to provoke a back-bench revolt.
The Work and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, writing on page 10, makes a strong case for Labour pressing forward with such a socially progressive agenda. The Tories have failed to defeat Labour from the right, he argues, which is why they try to steal the centre ground and mimic Labour pledges on social justice. They have been forced into this mouthing of progressive rhetoric by a shift in the centre of political gravity. Labour can take the credit for that but it has to continue to be innovative on such issues.
The same can be said for constitutional reform, once central to Labour's self-image. Does Labour still want to be the party to take Britain into a more egalitarian future? If so, it has to proceed with reform of the Lords and devising a fairer voting system. That would test David Cameron's progressive credentials.
And why would a Labour government want its legacy to include ripping up a social service of vital importance to the poor and elderly, as closing post offices around the country will do? As John Pilger argues on page 24, the savings are tiny, the damage done to communities immense.
Brown the technocrat will ensure Britain survives the coming economic turbulence. But he will not win the hearts of the people unless he combines his competence with a moral vision. "The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing," Harold Wilson once said. Brown has to feel that. Electoral success might just follow.
Burma's isolation is no solution
Days after the New Statesman reported on the plight of ethnic-minority rebels fighting a desperate war of resistance on Burma's eastern border, a fresh catastrophe was visited on that benighted country. Estimates for the ultimate death toll from Cyclone Nargis, which crashed in from the Bay of Bengal on 2 May, are continually being revised upwards. One commentator has suggested as many as 250,000 could die as a result of drowning, homelessness and disease.
The situation is so serious that the military junta has said it will welcome foreign aid (which it refused after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004). But there is concern about the speed with which the notoriously secretive and repressive regime is issuing visas. Offers of assistance from the US have already been refused.
The Irrawaddy Delta, the country's rice production centre, was one of the worst-hit areas, news that could not be worse for local populations in the region who are already threatened by drastic price rises for rice, the staple food, especially for those on low incomes - which means the overwhelming majority in this cruelly impoverished state.
The generals insist the "referendum" on a new constitution will still take place. But the people's only real hope is that a tentative opening up to foreign relief agencies may encourage the first shoots of pluralism in Burma. The junta must realise that continued isolation, both internal and external, is no solution at all.
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