It is tempting to treat George Osborne’s claim this week that the Tories are the true progressives with the contempt it deserves. The danger in a throwaway remark such as Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Osborne is a political ‘cross-dresser’ is that it lets the Tories off the hook. For keen observers of the political scene, Osborne’s speech to demos on Tuesday is no more than an obvious continuation of the Tories’ strategy since Cameron became leader. From the sleigh ride through the glaciers, to the support for co-ops, from articles in the Guardian, to promises to keep on funding overseas aid, Cameron has had a simple aim: neutralise the charge of right-wingery that did for Hague and Howard, colonise the centre ground and drive Labour off it, and make a play for the ABC1s and C2D voters who backed Blair three times in a row. The Tories have engaged in the most daring political raid into enemy territory since, well since we did it to them in the 1990s.
Most people do not follow politics that closely. They pick up bits and pieces along the way. They pick up the aroma. They do not read articles by George Osborne, but they might hear some vague notion that the Tories are safe to vote for again, that that nice Mr Cameron says he’ll keep on funding the NHS, that it’s time for a change. So Osborne’s latest smash and grab on Labour’s valuables needs to be stopped in its tracks, before he makes off with the swag.
Let’s start at the beginning: what do we mean by progress? When a small group of us came up with the name Progress for the Labour modernisers’ group whose website you are reading, it was a deliberate attempt to anchor the Labour party in a broader trend in human history. From the dark ages onwards, people have strived to improve their health, their education, the quality of their environment, their material well-being, and the quality of their relationships with others. Occasionally feats of individual brilliance, such as the discovery of penicillin, have improved the common good. Mostly, human beings have found that individualism is useless, and often counter-productive, as the optimum method to improve their lot. The lesson of history is clear: people working in concert is the surest route to a better life. This collective effort is what gave us the vote, clean water, public parks, slum clearances, the National Health Service, and free schooling for all. The Labour party is the political expression of this natural human instinct for advancement.
For every popular advance, there was a roadblock. The extension of democracy to working men and women was opposed by the Conservative party. The right to roam in beautiful countryside was opposed by the Conservative party. Public housing was opposed by the Conservative party. The National Health Service was opposed by the Conservative party. The Conservative party is the political expression of the desire of those with wealth and power to keep a tight hold on it. Its historical role has been to stifle and restrain the human instinct to get on and do well.
So if we loosely define progress as the collective march forward for humankind, from the darkness to the light, then it is hard to imagine George Osborne at the front of the column, waving a flaming torch. I’m not saying it’s not clever. Attempting to frame the political debate as ‘Tory cuts = social progress’ shows a degree of chutzpah. It’s a more than worthy answer to the increasingly redundant Labour lines about ‘investment versus cuts’. But it would be a monumental travesty.
Labour needs to offer a different frame for the debate. Polling suggests that most people hold two contradictory views: they want lower taxes and at the same time they want rising investment in public services. Yet people also know that there is waste in the system, that some government programmes are a luxury that can no longer be afforded, and that budgets can be cut without services suffering. What they want is a government which can cut the waste and also reflect their values, which remain wedded to publicly-provided schools, hospitals, parks, roads and care for the elderly. What they don’t want is a government committed to shrinking the state for ideological reasons, and using the recession as cover to do so. If you seek a dividing line between the parties it is this: Labour will cut where necessary, the Tories cut where possible.
Osborne is trying to trick us. He’s trying to con us, hoodwink us, bamboozle us, and take us for a ride. He speaks with forked tongue. He’s telling porkies. He’s being economical with the actualite. No matter how you say it, he and Cameron want to win an election based on a lie, and it is up to Labour party members – the true progressives – to stop him.