Were the Conservatives still talking in 2000 about 1992, when the Tory chancellor Norman Lamont, in a vain attempt to keep Britain in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (a precursor to the euro), raised interest rates from 10 per cent to 12 per cent and then to 15 per cent and finally back to 10 per cent within barely 24 hours? Not that I recall. Were they talking in 1982 about 1974, when Edward Heath, in an equally vain attempt to see off a miners’ strike, put the country on a three-day working week? I think not.
Yet here is a Labour leadership contest in which the contenders have begun by discussing whether Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were guilty of overspending before the world financial crisis struck. The party should have buried this argument long ago. Lest we forget, public services were then so popular that the Tories promised to match Labour’s spending plans. And unlike Lamont and Heath, Labour ministers successfully dealt with the crisis that they confronted, not only rescuing British banking from collapse but persuading other countries to take similar action and then restoring economic growth by 2010.
It is, however, Labour’s fate always to be reliving the past: the “great betrayal” of 1931, the devaluations of 1949 and 1967, the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, the 1983 “suicide note”, Liam Byrne’s “no money left” note in 2010. The Tories treat their disasters as mere aberrations. The message of the departing Tory chancellor Reginald Maudling to his Labour successor in 1964 – “Good luck, old cock. Sorry to leave it in such a mess” – was forgotten within a year. To listen to the Tories, you would think that Heath had nothing to do with them. A highly intelligent and politically aware young man once told me that he was 30 before he realised that the three-day week didn’t happen under Labour.
Labour’s abiding problem is that it doesn’t think it really belongs in office and must therefore apologise for occasions when it was. Tony Blair’s ambition was to turn it into the “natural governing party”. The test of that was whether it could bounce back quickly from the defeat it would inevitably suffer eventually. This uninspiring leadership contest, combined with the defeat that prompted it, shows how badly he failed.
Mr Blue Sky
For examples of what prospective Labour leaders should talk about, turn to Steve Hilton. Yes, that Steve Hilton, the shaven-headed, bicycling former provider of “blue-sky thinking” to David Cameron. He supported £25bn in welfare cuts and an end to unfair dismissal laws before, frustrated by Whitehall, he fled to California in 2012. Now, in a Sunday Times interview alongside an extract from his new book, More Human, he says: “Our democracies are increasingly captured by a ruling class that seeks to perpetuate its privileges”; governments listen only to those who have money; and it is “outrageous that we should tolerate a situation where people work incredibly hard yet can’t earn enough to live on”. He argues that, in return for a cut in business taxes, companies should pay the living wage. (Why didn’t Labour propose that?) He says that supermarkets and other big companies (he seems to hate Tesco particularly) should pay for the social and environmental damage they cause. He rails against “vast corporate machines that treat people as an afterthought whether they work for them, supply them or buy from them”.
I don’t agree with everything he says or even most of it. But this is the territory that Labour’s prospective leaders should explore.
Dead man’s shoes
Some Labour insiders suggest that the winner of this year’s contest should face a new leadership election in three years’ time. This sounds like a desperate device to insert
David Miliband, the “right” brother but not currently an MP. It occurs to me, however, that, since 1945, Labour has twice changed its leader in the middle of a parliament while in opposition. On both occasions, 1963 and 1994, the incumbent leader died (Hugh Gaitskell and John Smith). In both cases, Labour had performed below pre-poll expectations in the previous election, then went on to win a majority in the next. This little history lesson may be a bit of a downer for current leadership hopefuls but, in these challenging times, we must cling to those straws we can find.
From free trade to free-for-all
I was planning to vote in favour of Britain’s continuing EU membership, as I did (when it wasn’t the EU) in 1975. But I now think that, if Cameron recommends staying in, I shall vote against. With his small majority, he will make a pro-EU case only if he is sure that his Eurosceptic backbenchers won’t rebel. They want a deregulated Europe, in which countries compete to cut wages and taxes, reduce employees’ and consumers’ rights and abolish health, safety and environmental safeguards. That is what they mean by a pure free-trade area with no “interference” from Brussels. If an EU like that is in prospect, we should leave immediately.
Mansions of menace
Released from the terrors of Red Ed’s mansion tax, London’s high-end property market booms again. The Qatari ruling family, it is reported, has snapped up a six-storey Victorian town house in Mayfair for £40m and is close to creating a “Qatari quarter” in the area. As thrilling as it is to welcome such distinguished guests, instead of having Labour spurn them with its inhospitable taxes, I am just a little worried. The press is exercised about Islamist militants possibly being smuggled into Europe on flimsy refugee boats crossing the Mediterranean. But Qatar has been criticised for tolerating jihadist fundraisers and providing support, including weapons, to Middle Eastern militant groups. I am sure that Qatar’s rulers mean us no more harm than do the many genuine refugees trying to reach safety but are we quite sure that there’s no danger of an Islamist terrorist finding a safe haven in some corner of a Mayfair basement? Just asking.
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