After top-up fees and foundation hospitals there will, we are assured by Downing Street, be no more ‘policy first, explanation later’. The Prime Minister and the government have apparently learned from their near-defeat of last month and promise that they’ll prepare the ground and consult before launching on the party in parliament and the country any more surprises dreamed up by the Number 10 Policy Unit.
Without doubt, this is a welcome development. Progress has consistently argued that it is often not the substance of government policy which irritates party members but the sense that they have had no opportunity to have their say on it.
Even issues like military action in Iraq, where passions run high on both sides of the argument, were probably made more difficult to handle by the government’s consistent unwillingness, almost up until the moment when the bombs began to fall on Baghdad, to allow the party to have a debate on the issue.
Those of us who still believe the action in Iraq was justified recognise the frustration caused by the sight of a government saying it would only debate the issue once military action became a necessity while it was shipping half the British army across the world.
Greater consultation and debate can, therefore, act as an important safety valve that needs to be loosened to allow some of the tensions and passions caused by the difficult decisions of government to be released. But there are other reasons why the government should not fear listening to the party. First, the party in the country – because it is embedded in the communities in which people live and work – should be an essential partner for any successful progressive government: offering new ideas, warning of potential problems, feeding back on the success or failure of government policy. An engaged mass membership party should be viewed as a friend, not a millstone around the neck of the government.
Second, there are growing signs that Labour in the country has changed – it’s by no means as out-of-step with ‘New Labour’ as the media and some on the left would have us believe. Take, for instance, the vote at conference last year on foundation hospitals, where CLP delegates voted to support the government (with union delegates voting to oppose). Over the past two or three years there have been similar indications of this trend at conference. During the debate on tuition fees, it was widely reported that many of those rebelling against the government were not doing so at the behest of their CLPs.
But with power comes responsibility. If party members are to play an increased role in the policy-making process it is incumbent upon them to remain in-touch with, and representative of, the communities from which they come and the country at large. The Big Conversation provides such an opportunity, but it is by no means the only one. As Progress magazine has reported on a number of occasions – http://www.progressives.org.uk/magazine/default.asp?articleid=331 and – the opportunities to serve and shape local communities are multiple. Moreover, as Hazel Blears has argued -http://www.progressives.org.uk/magazine/default.asp?articleid=501 – the need for new forms of activism which reflect the new ways in which people do politics is overwhelming.
Some MPs, too, have some hard thinking to do about how they exercise their increased responsibilities. Some Labour MPs appear to have forgotten both the lessons of the past – that voters rarely support disunited parties – and that the PLP has to be more than the sum of its parts. We accept that there are a small group of MPs who are ideologically opposed to much of what New Labour stands for. They have never accepted the need for the modernisation of the Labour party and, wrongly we believe, think that Labour could have been elected in 1997 on an old left programme. Even if we disagree with them, there is, at least, a principled core at the heart of their opposition.
That, however, cannot be said of some of those – the former ministers, never-promoted and overlooked – whose opposition to the government on issues like tuition fees and foundation hospitals has a rather more malign motive. It’s surprising, for instance, to find in the ranks of those who rebelled on tuition fees former cabinet ministers who showed little concern as they voted to bring in upfront fees in 1998 (arguably, much more of a deterrent to young people from poorer backgrounds). It’s even more startling that some of those individuals chose to vote for foundation hospitals in earlier stages of the legislation, only to oppose them when they left office. Such individuals need to think hard about what exactly their behaviour is contributing to the success of a government they once served – and asked others to support.
MPs of all ideological stripes, though, need to recognise that a broader question now hangs in the air: can the left govern? For much of its history, Labour has performed primarily the role of a pressure group, only occasionally able to take the reins of government from the Conservatives and then surrendering them all too quickly. This has been principally due to the failure of the party to renew itself in government in order that it can respond to, and meet, the changing aspirations of those it claims to represent. In the 1950s and 1970s, Labour governments ran out of steam, and then fell, for this very reason. The result was a pronged period of Tory rule.
Most MPs are aware that the country is changing; that the expectations and demands which people have of our public services, for instance, are radically different from those made fifteen, let alone fifty, years ago upon them. MPs are indeed right to demand a role in shaping the policies upon which they are not simply expected to vote, but also to offer themselves for election. They need to recognise, however, that Labour’s members and voters will be pretty unforgiving of those who squander that opportunity by settling petty scores rather than playing a role in the renewal of the progressive project in government.