The fact that the two main proponents of the ‘New Labour is dead’ argument are David Cameron and Neil Lawson has got me thinking about dogma. Dogma has always been the mad relative of the Labour family, but rather than turn up to the odd gathering it’s starting to look like they’ve moved in altogether.
The so-called left have proclaimed the death of New Labour with steadfast regularity, and Cameron’s crowing should have been the ultimate wake-up call – but instead he has become a conductor that got them all singing along to his tune.
Had the Libs annihilated Labour in the recent by-election, or ‘real Labour’ mounted a successful campaign, it could have been a signal that the electorate wants the government to move leftwards and adopt a pre-’97 leftist agenda. But the truth is that our vote was down 18 per cent (the Libs down 4 per cent) and it near-as-dammit all went to the Tories.
Lets face it, it’s not a subtle message from the good people of Crewe and Nantwich, and it stretches credulity that some are using it to assault New Labour ideology from the left.
David Cameron has every reason to will the end of New Labour because it has kept his party out of power for 11 years. Now, oddly, some of our own want it all to come to an end too. I really wouldn’t be surprised to wake up tomorrow morning and find that David Cameron and the entire Tory front bench have become fully paid-up members of Compass, they seem so united in their political objectives these days. Ironically, they’re both so light on policy they could probably muddle through on that front too.
Where’s the sense in all this? I’m reminded of something that happened to me earlier in the year.
Back in January, I was called to give evidence by the Public Administration Select Committee of the House of Commons. They were investigating the growing use of charities in the delivery of public services (which I think, providing it’s in the charity’s strategic interests to do so, is a good thing – after all, charities were doing this more than 800 years before the state ever got interested in it).
Early on, my position was characterised by a Labour MP as nationalisation by default. This was all fine and to be expected and led to vigorous discussion. But towards the end of the session, another Labour MP said my position was ‘a Trojan horse for the private sector’. I was amazed that two MPs from the same party could think the same statement represented both nationalisation and privatisation. How naive I was.
In this tenuous political landscape people can be seduced by those who speak with evangelical certainty, yet lack a framework that has the entire population at heart in order to continue Labour’s programme of redistribution, fairness, and modernisation.
The greatest shame of this domination by the dogmatists is that it is preventing us from having the conversation we need most – a fair and frank evaluation of the policies and approaches that have been most and least successful in the past decade, which need to be jettisoned and which accelerated.
This is the renewal that we were promised, and still seek, and is made impossible by screeching proclamations by those lacking the imagination to see that New Labour’s achievements in government have gifted the next generation all the tools needed to accomplish more for every section of our society.
Peter Kyle is a former aid worker, academic from the University of Sussex, and Special Adviser at the Cabinet Office. Now he is a director of a leading third sector organisation, but writes here in a personal capacity