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  1. Politics
25 January 2013

Lib Dem Minister: Ed Miliband’s “One Nation” Labour is a delusion

Perhaps the Labour leader’s brother could assist him in coming up with a more economically literate policy platform, says Lib Dem minister Jeremy Browne.

By jeremy Browne

We’ve had “Old Labour”, “New Labour”; now it’s “One Nation Labour”. Ed Miliband is staking a lot on this rebranding. It is not, he insists, just the appropriation of the most hackneyed old cliché in British politics, it defines his ambitions for office.

It is easy to criticise the emptiness and evasiveness. And the vagueness; the lack of meat on the bones. To be “One Nation Labour” is to defend child-benefit hand-outs for the wealthiest 15 per cent of the population, including asset millionaires like Ed Miliband, paid for from the taxes of much poorer people, on the unintelligible basis that the richest section of society constitutes “the squeezed middle”. To be “One Nation Labour” is to believe that it is immoral to have a top rate of tax lower than 50 per cent, but not to have the moral fortitude to commit to reinstating this rate in office. To be “One Nation Labour” is to claim a preference for democracy over unaccountable entrenched privilege, only to connive and vote to scupper House of Lords reform.

But the deepest criticism of “One Nation Labour” is more profound than just dithering policy indecision and ducking difficult choices. The fundamental flaw with “One Nation Labour” is its crushing parochialism.

To believe in socialism in one country is fantasy. The big fact of life today is how many different nations are rising in global importance. The world has never been more inter-connected; more globalised. There is a revolution taking place, with the dramatic rise in Asian prosperity and political influence, that seems to have escaped the exponents of “One Nation Labour”.

That is surely because Ed Miliband is a highly conservative and nostalgic politician. He takes his slogan from a nineteenth century Conservative Prime Minister. He becomes most animated when idealising the shared hardship of ration-book era Britain. He reserves his greatest ideological admiration for a recently deceased historian who championed the virtues of the Soviet Union.

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But Britain will not thrive in a bubble of isolation floating somewhere in the sepia-tinted past. To prosper now we have to be internationally interconnected and competitive.

So, for a start, “One Nation Labour” would have to set tax rates that were globally competitive. To do otherwise would be ruinously destructive of our tax-base and our ability to fund good public services. That is why this coalition government is cutting corporation tax in Britain to the lowest level in the G7 to attract new investment and jobs. And it is also why Ed Miliband needs to be aware that globalised businesses and entrepreneurs are unlikely to chose to pay avaricious rates of tax under “One Nation Labour”, to the detriment of our public finances.

“One Nation Labour” would need to understand that we live in a far more globalised employment market. That explains Polish plumbers and Indian call-centres. And this market is getting far much competitive. It is getting more highly skilled. That is why this coalition government is reforming education to raise standards. Britain has fallen down the league tables in childhood numeracy and literacy. We will not succeed as a “knowledge economy” if we have a less knowledgeable workforce than our competitors. “One Nation Labour”, if it remains in cahoots with militant teaching unions wanting to protect the past, will oversee a Britain that becomes less competitive and less attractive to inward investors. The children forging ahead in South Korea and Singapore will not make allowances for an inward-looking British education system that fails to equip our children for the modern world.

And “One Nation Labour” would be forced to understand that no country can live beyond its means and borrow money without reference to the outside world. What vanity to believe we can ignore pragmatic welfare reform and the financial implications of a rapidly aging population. The countries that spend money they cannot afford and shirk reform – Greece is a good example – certainly don’t live in splendid “One Nation” isolation. Quite the opposite: they become wholly dependent on others, forfeit their self-government and self-respect, and the poorest and most vulnerable people end up suffering the greatest hardship.

When it comes down to it, “One Nation Labour” is a delusion. It sounds reassuring precisely because it is backward-looking, nostalgic and implies a comforting isolation from the rest of the world. It suggests that Britain can go it alone, without reference to others. And crucially, it implies that the hard choices facing other countries around the world need not apply to us. On our island we can spend money and dodge difficult decisions without consequences.

Where can Ed Miliband turn to try and devise instead a more plausible ideological platform? Maybe he should start close to home. David Miliband has a reputation for being personally aloof. It probably cost him the Labour leadership in 2010. But he could possibly help his brother now, if Ed Miliband wants to be helped.

After two-and-a-half years travelling the world as Foreign Secretary, and two-and-a-half more benefiting personally from his internationally marketable skills, David Miliband must at least understand the parochial limitations of “One Nation Labour”. Maybe he could assist his leader by encouraging Labour to have a more outward-looking, up-to-date, globally aware and economically literate vision than Ed Miliband, with “One Nation Labour”, has managed to come up with on his own.

Jeremy Browne is a Home Office Minister and the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Taunton Deane.

 

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