With the launch of the Tory ‘pre-election manifesto’, it’s beginning to be make-your-mind-up time about a second Labour term of government.
Yet I still find some surliness amongst those whom I marched alongside – either actually or metaphorically – in various struggles for freedom and justice from the late 1960s onward. Perhaps I am different. I was never an all-or-nothing person. Rather an all-or-something person.
There is an endemic culture of betrayal in progressive circles. Leaders are always accused of selling out. For some, being in Opposition is actually easier. It is rather comfortable, just attacking the Tories. You don’t have to make tough choices, face difficult compromises, grapple with the detail, answer awkward questions, or win the subsequent argument with voters.
The progressive media tend to be similarly afflicted. Take a recent Guardian headline: ‘Labour ditches ethical arms trade bill’. Simply not true. The Bill is in draft and we remain committed to it. We may or may not get our tougher controls or arms exports enacted before the next General Election. That will depend on when it is, and the enormous pressure on parliamentary business.
A Guardian headline focussing on that would have been explaining the truth to its readers, but it wouldn’t have been as grabbing, would it? I wonder whether the real spin doctors these days are the journalists concerned.
Where has it ever been properly reported that this Labour Government has made our arms exports more accountable and transparent than almost any other country, with annual reports of 300 pages detailing the licences we have agreed? That we have established for the first time a tough code blocking exports of arms for either internal repression or external aggression, and a European Union arms code doing the same thing?
With Labour, Britain has been doing more to promote arms control than any previous government and certainly any likely alternative: by banning landmines and the sale of torture equipment, promoting a ban on small arms to conflict zones, ratifying the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and pressing for effective implementation of the Biological and Chemicals Weapons Treaties.
At the Non Proliferation Treaty conference in New York in May we played the key role in achieving an unprecedented agreement to the global elimination of nuclear weapons. I accept this may not satisfy unilateral disarmers. But instead of complaining about Government ‘betrayal’, they should acknowledge we have a bloody good record on disarmament and re-double their efforts to press us for improvements. If people want us to do more, then stick by us and we will deliver more: but don’t overlook, or try to deny, what we have done already.
We will soon have increased our overseas aid and development budget by a massive 72 percent in real terms, reversing savage Tory cuts. And we have led the way on providing 100 percent debt relief for the poorest countries.
Pretty well everywhere in the world, I find that Labour’s foreign policy is widely admired as progressive, modern and on the side of justice, human rights and freedom – in stark contrast to the Tories.
So we should reject the cynical view that, because we cannot make the world perfect, we should stop trying to make it better. Because we cannot do everything, does not mean we should do nothing. For instance, credit for our military intervention to stop atrocities in Sierra Leone should not be withdrawn because we were unable to prevent atrocities in Chechnya.
Much the same story applies to domestic policy. Of course there is pressure for the minimum wage to be higher. But from some of the grudging gripes about its level you would never have imagined that Tony Blair has achieved a 100 year dream of Keir Hardie, nor that 1.5 million workers, overwhelmingly women, have benefited. Although £3.60 an hour may not seem much, it has doubled the income of some of my South Wales constituents.
And don’t we deserve at least some credit for establishing the minimum wage with hardly a murmur from a previously hostile business world, and in defiance of all those Tory scares about millions of job losses?
Again, on poverty, instead of sneering about the Government only looking after ‘Middle England’, why not acknowledge our attack on poverty? It’s only a beginning. But our Tax Credit reforms mean that no family with someone at work will be on less than £10,000 a year, benefiting nearly one and a half million families, some hugely.
You cannot turn everything around in three years after eighteen destructive Tory ones. But wouldn’t Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan have been proud to have one million more people in work since the election? Or to have got over 200,000 young people off the dole and into work through the Government’s New Deal programme? Some people might even call that a ‘socialist’ policy – but then that really would be giving us too much credit, wouldn’t it?
And on the economy, some take it as a badge of final betrayal that Labour enjoys the confidence of the markets, business and the City – as if it’s better to have IMF crises, high inflation, runs on the pound and the general impression that Labour couldn’t run a whelk stall let alone the country. Bring back the good old days of Labour Governments – without exception, until now – running into an economic crisis and then losing the election afterwards. Much better to feel pure, than achieve the kind of economic stability which is now allowing us to expand and invest rather than retrench and cut.
Hard decisions were taken to achieve this stability. Financing record government borrowing cost taxpayers £28 billion a year under the Tories, more than was being spent on schools. Reducing public borrowing and the national debt means Government interest payments are down a whacking £4 billion annually – money we are now spending on education, health and other public services, instead of throwing away to the capital markets. Low inflation and reduced borrowing also mean historically low interest rates, benefiting home owners and businesses alike.
The truth is, we are more progressive than any previous British Government on tackling poverty, on far-reaching constitutional reform, on record investment in education, health and infrastructure – and, yes, on promoting international human rights and justice, too.
Of course there is a lot more to do. As everyone knows from their own daily lives, changing things can take a long time. Ahead lies the great prize of being able to do all the things that Labour supporters really want us to do – and which we will do, step by step – if we win that historically unprecedented second full Labour term. We do not want another century like the last one dominated by Tory governments.
But this is not a plea from a minister for sycophancy or blind loyalty. Merely for fairness, instead of corrosive cynicism. Yes, the Government must be held accountable, especially if we make mistakes. But our considerable achievements should be recognised, too. And the alternative of an extreme right Tory administration never forgotten.