In power, Labour has been strangely indifferent to the role of political parties within the new constitutional space it has created – locally, at Westminster, and in Scotland and Wales. Ministers make entire speeches about governance without once mentioning the word party, let alone Labour party.
In making public policy they seem embarrassed – even ashamed – by the connection, as if party were an elderly relative turning up at a posh wedding in a shabby suit. In reports about the regeneration of democracy from the Cabinet Office or the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, party gets scant mention.
This diffidence is puzzling. Partisan identification on the back of shared ideological commitment (to greater fairness, for example) remains a precondition for mobilising people and resources towards collective ends, whether that is within a tenants’ association, neighbourhood forum, local authority, Scottish parliament or the Westminster House of Commons.
However edgy the poll finds public attitudes towards party, however successful single-issue campaigns, no substitute has been found for political parties in preparing for government, locally or centrally. And Labour ministers have not ceased to be party animals. They depend on party workers; the party selects them; some continue to find deep friendship and support in partisan attachment to a common cause.
It’s time to think again. Political parties are distinctive forms of voluntary association. They are peculiar because on them depend the operations of politics and the legitimacy of state power. Perhaps because of their connection with the business of government, they will always have to be centrally directed, ‘led’, and subject to discipline. Labour’s recent history shows what happens when local diversity melds into ideological extremism and political irresponsibility, resulting in a refusal to take seriously one of the main objectives of Labour, old and new, which is the capture of government in order to introduce progressive policies.
This isn’t, to use a term from the dark past, ‘vanguardism’. It’s a recognition that our kind of party is realistic about power. Labour exists to confront the challenges of governmental office. Our objection to single- and special-interest pressure groups, even those with ambitions as big and challenging as Oxfam, is that they offer no basis for the wider judgements that have to be made in power, which necessarily embody compromise and ‘impurity’ of principle.
The question facing Labour – now, as before – is how to translate the intellectual and cultural challenges of exercising power into reasons for belonging to a Britain-wide voluntary organisation. Its reason for existence is the tempering of ideals to experience and principles to the practical demands of government in a pluralist society.
The Labour party is no longer dependent on specific ‘social interests’, to use the french historian François Furet’s term, though in its pursuit of greater fairness it will necessarily direct attention to the position of lower-income households, employees, children, and the socially excluded. This will make Labour, in accord with its history, sensitive to organisations that represent employees, such as unions, and deeply concerned about education, training and, always, the relative distribution of chances in society. That orientation means that, in principle, the party starts with a reservoir of potential recruits who understand the necessity of acquiring governmental power.
Having values is easy – that’s for the pressure groups and campaigns. Labour has values for power. Its business is negotiation and persuasion, translating the values into policies that are going to win acceptance in our fissiparous, individualistic society.
Being a member of the Labour party means more than joining a sort of Praetorian guard for ministers (or cabinet members in local authorities). Of course acquiring and using power demands leadership, which in turn implies a strong centre for the party – organisational and intellectual. But leadership is empty if it does not seek continuously to engage with that value base, to explain the challenges and affirm both the excitements and the inevitable disappointments of democratic government.