“It’s about we the people… Let’s make this the biggest call to arms the country has seen in a generation.” David Cameron’s words suggest a desire to channel Kennedy but they end up demonstrating Labour’s success at shifting the middle ground of British politics to the centre-left. Further proof of the pudding lies in the Tory manifesto, bubbling with talk of it being “time to say to those who think it’s all about unchecked individualism… no, it’s not about me, the individual. It’s about we, the people” and pledges that would “not allow the poorest people in Britain to pay an unfair price for the mistakes of some of the richest.”
Upon closer examination, one finds a different story. The policies do not live up to the lingo. The words are just a paint job, as David Miliband has pointed out, for the substance remains rooted in a Thatcherite past. Yet, cosmetic as it is, this paint job should make progressives cheer for it shows that the national debate is now being conducted in the language of the centre-left – on Labour’s terms. In the US, this is a battle that the Democrats have been trying to win for years.
For the most part, the Republicans have set the agenda, by building an ideological framework with a vocabulary to match. This has enabled them to dictate the terms of the national debate. This was especially evident during the Bush years when most issues were debated within a Republican framework, with Democrats using conservative language whether they were talking about “tax relief” or “the war on terror.” The Democrats were unable or unwilling to break away from this language invented by the right; they were also unable to put forth their own vision of what an alternative foreign or fiscal policy might look like.
The Democrats were only able to turn the tables on the Republicans once they had worked out the substance, the language and the political narrative then followed. Their ideas on healthcare, education, immigration reform, and open government have, under Obama, resurrected what Gary Hart, a former Democrat presidential candidate, referred to as the Democrat “ideological cathedral,” which dominated American politics in the years of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
The Tories have yet to learn this lesson in setting the agenda. It means figuring out the substance, which in turn means working out a larger vision for the country, and articulating its principles without being held hostage to the Europhobic, homophobic, statephobic, or other factions of the party. The current image makeover means that the Tories are talking about “making opportunity more equal, fighting poverty and inequality, improving the environment and general well-being.” But a “small state” and a “big society” are not going to solve the budget crisis, reduce inequality, or tackle climate change.
As Miliband argues, in order to make the paint job stick and present a coherent program, the Tories require to go through a “Clause IV moment.” At the moment, the Tories have neither a transformative agenda of their own to present, nor do they have plausible solutions to the parts of the Labour agenda adopted in their rhetoric. This might be a loss for them, but it is a victory for Labour that the Tories are addressing the fundamental issues of economic inequality and social justice, using the language of progressives, for it proves that Labour has managed to shift British political discourse to the centre-left.
For once I actually feel heartened – it may only be a victory of language but owning the playing field is a huge part of winning the game (as American Democrats are always learning when they have to fight issues using Republican language).
I think it is indeed very telling that the Tories have to bury the TINA speech even though sadly this is only rhetorics. Despite all the criticisms on the left that New Labour may have deserved for being more “new” than “labour”, their main contribution was to reposition the “public” at the centre of the political discourse in Britain, quite a edgy bet at the end of the 1990s…The only danger though is for voters to start imagining that the right has a transformative agenda that focuses on the most vulnerable strands of British society…The French made that mistake during the last presidential election, and here we are solving social problems with a state debate on national identity…(count on the right to revert to its favourite themes…).