Society
Good Labour. Bad Labour
Published 19 June 2008
The efforts to divide Labour into two camps - "good" Compass Labour and "bad" new Labour - are leading the party forward to its past
Slowly but ineluctably, Labour is reverting to its binary nature. On the right, the Blairites with journals such as Progress and networks like the Policy Network. On the left, Compass and the comment pages of the Guardian denouncing Labour ministers. There is a wearying Seventies and Eighties feel to this. The efforts to divide Labour into two camps - "good" Compass Labour and "bad" new Labour - are leading the party forward to its past.
Today, there is a whiff not of revolutionary, but of reformist defeatism, as MPs and party activists talk of trying to hold an inevitable Labour ejection from office to a minimum loss of seats, as a springboard under a new leadership and a new programme for the reconquest of power.
Let's get real. If the Tories return, they will be there for some time. Right now, they are thin on policy and offer a Les Dawson approach to relations with Europe. But with the authority of the state behind them, the Tories will consolidate their hold on power. Labour is cursed by having to be a national party based on a class tradition. The Tories pretend to be a national party but always favour their class. The point is not that Tories are toffs, but the new Tory frontbenchers are wealthy, without mortgage or pension worries. They treat state education and the NHS as an excuse for seminars, as they send their children to private schools and use private medicine.
A Tory government will move swiftly to build a new alliance of class, just as Margaret Thatcher did, in contrast to Labour, which has to find a language for the businesses of Britain as well as the trade unions. Labour also has to find a language for public sector employees who have enjoyed a boost in numbers without precedent in recent labour market history. Yet, far from forging an alliance with the government that has delivered this increase in union membership, their unions use a language that is almost uniformly hostile, as if they imagine they will do better under the Tories. Jon Trickett MP, the shrewd former leader of Leeds City Council, issued a stern warning last week to Compass and the new union critics of Labour: "It is important that the progressive left does not lapse into an intolerant and strident opposition which is the hallmark of sectarians through the history of our movement."
The same is true of the aggressive language of the right, exemplified by the attack on the Fabian Society made by Phil Collins in Prospect. On the contrary, the Fabian tradition of patient, ameliorative reform is more needed than ever.
Let's reject the tired idea that there is only the state or the market. Between these two lies the individual. The disaster of the 10p fiasco was that no one worked out the impact on individuals, as attention was over-focused on the state's need for revenue. Yet the state today may be as much a problem for, as it is a solution to, what Labour needs to do. Every minister talks privately of sums of taxpayers' money spent on the state's projects with no benefit to the citizen. Can Labour de-stateise itself? Can a boost of citizens' spending power be shaped by cutting taxes paid by low- and middle-income employees?
In an important article in Foreign Affairs re cently, Robert Kuttner, doyen of America's progressive economists, examined the Danish model of high social welfare and full employment. He noted that Danish unions never go on strike, and that they support companies as they downsize and outsource. In exchange, Danish capital accepts a strong social welfare network. Kuttner further argued that Danish schooling and health provision embrace private money. "Choices are offered to accommodate individual preferences so that the model enhances liberty. Consumer choice also allows the discipline of competition to keep social providers on their toes and to retain the support of more affluent Danes."
But the language of choice, competition, private delivery of public goods and unions that reject strikes is anathema in the current debate on Labour's future. Instead, we can hear the drums beating for a return to a binary Hattersley-Benn or Gaitskell-Bevan Labour Party. My constitu ents deserve better. If Labour cannot fashion a new synthesis as powerful as the coalition that took shape 15 years ago, and then won power in 1997, we do not deserve to stay in office.
Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
