The first time I met Ed Miliband, I was in a rather swanky room in Canary Wharf, surrounded by some of Britain’s most important business leaders. Ten years ago the meeting would have been better attended by that particular demographic than it was this year, but ultimately the annual event put on by Labour to say a ‘big thank you’ to British business leaders can still pull a decent crowd. Ed Miliband was one of two ministers in attendance, the other one being then business secretary Lord Mandelson. This is telling.
That Mr Miliband accounted for a full half of the Labour government’s delegation to such an important ‘thank you/please give us more money’ shindig in the glitziest business zone this side of the Atlantic, shows that he might not be as tone-deaf to big business as some might have you believe. Of course, if we listen to the reactionary response to Ed’s election as leader, from pundits like John Rentoul and Tim Allen, we might be worried that the bosses of some of the largest companies in Britain are starting to feel a lack of love from the opposition.
There are arguments that the public fell out of love with New Labour because it was too close to big money. The pundits on the left wing of the party use this assertion to suppress New Labour supporters. But they are wrong. The public fell out of love with New Labour as a reaction to the global economic crisis, not with the principle of supporting business as well as the worker. The left also ignores the fact that the leader we went into the general election with was one of the least popular prime ministers in history. The core principles and values of New Labour are still those of the public, and will be central to electing Ed Miliband the next prime minister.
For the next century, barring a world war, or a global revolution, the tenets of New Labour – encouragement of enterprise and building a good social safety net, the best of free market principles and the best principles of socialism working hand-in-hand to benefit not just slim interests at the margins – will be the tenets of any and every successful government and opposition. The days of dogmatic politics, from the left or the right, are over. Developments over the last century or so have made centrism the only way to govern, and the reforms of the Labour Party in the 1990s radically reframed British politics to such an extent that even the Conservatives had to play our game in order to get elected (and they failed at that).
If Rentoul and Allen are the only ones defending New Labour, we can expect a bleak future. They might raise valid points, as Tim Allen did in the Observer this weekend, but there is a sense of dogma coming through which is damaging. Ed Miliband is no Tony Blair, but nor is David Miliband. Being angry at the winner because he didn’t kowtow the New Labour mantra over the summer is a waste of energy. As much as it benefits Ed, at least internally in the Labour party, for us to believe that New Labour is dead, it simply isn’t.
That energy would be best placed explaining how the 2010-2015 period of opposition for Labour can be used to figure out what the natural evolution of New Labour is. For the movement must evolve if it is to survive. In many ways, Tony Blair was a great leader and prime minister. But Tony’s days are over. We don’t know if Ed Miliband will have what it takes to win the next general election, but we can be sure that if he does, it will be because he has understood and adopted large chunks of the New Labour approach. We can’t just hope to shift the centre ground to the left, because that wouldn’t be the centre ground.
We need to be a loud and proud force inside Ed Miliband’s Labour party if the party is to stand any chance of re-election this generation. To do that, we have to be constructive, avoid succumbing to the attempts of certain journalists to talk the new leader down, and give Ed not only the chance, but the support in the form of ideas and policies, to help the New Labour project to evolve during this testing period. If we simply rant and rave, as some will have us do, we will only end up damaging the party we love, and leaving the country to the whims of the blue and yellow Tories. And that would indeed spell the end of the New Labour project.
I agree with you Luke. There are some people in the Labour party that think Labour lost because it did not look after the least well off. This is not true. They need to read Tony Blair’s book “A Journey” page 679. He quotes “Labour won when it was New Labour. It lost when it stopped being New Labour” and “The top rate of tax was put up to 50 per cent; the 2009 Budget signalled a return to tax and spend”. Tony also goes on to talk about the thirty chief executives coming out against the national insurance increase which helped lose Labour votes. Tony says if Labour does not go back to being New Labour it will lose the next general election more heavily. Tony is right. If Labour is seen as a left wing tax and spend party it will lose the next general election. It was these policies that kept the Tories in power for 18 years. The Tories are going to do a lot of damage to our public services in this parliament. Imagine what they would do if they get a second term. The working class core Labour vote is no longer enough to win general elections. If Labour is seen as a left wing party that taxes people to help the least well off it will lose the general election. The 50 per cent income tax rate needs to be brought back down to 40 per cent some time. Labour needs to reach out to all the electorate including those with aspirations. What Tony Blair says in his book is correct. To win the next General Election Labour needs sensible policies for the many and not just its traditional working class voters.
New Labour was a Scottish invention, and I think England has had enough of Scottish overlords for the time being. Probably best to bury New Labour and to try and connect with England.
“We can’t just hope to shift the centre ground to the left, because that wouldn’t be the centre ground.” I’m not disagreeing, but this line is really tortured. If you drag the centre to the left then the centre changes orientation and becomes ‘recentred’? There isn’t a magical objective centre out there. The centre is simply what most people believe as a mean, pretty much, and that changes.
Luke – New Labour’s problem was that it never became evangelical for the organisational form that best represented its ideals – that of the co-operative or mutual enterprise. Sure, there was manifesto commitments and legal changes. But when you think that the Tories during the 80s and 90s promoted a business model that put shareholder value first, New Labour was not able to coherently champion an alternative model of the firm that could internalise social and environmental costs. Chris – for the party to have policies which appeal to the many, there’s obviously going to be a turn-off for the capitalist class. It’s not as if the bosses of capitalist firms are going to be coming out for policies which benefit the squeezed middle. I find it hard to believe that there were many votes lost because of the top rate of tax – here Tony is forgetting where he is right now. Sure, the circles he’s now mixing in might find it a turn-off, but to most it seems fair that to reduce the deficit, those with the most should contribute a bit more.
Read Tony Blair book are you a moron, I’m at the bottom of the pile after losing the use of my legs in an accident, after 40 odd years in labour I know what that Pratt did for the poor NOTHING. Read his bloody book I rather read the sun. The fact is this site is about New labour it always was it was born to try and keep Blair at the top now he has gone your looking around to see if you can get Ed to do your bidding. I’m more inclined as a disabled person to vote Tory after all they have done more for me then Labour have ever done.