Labour now might seem it has more factions than ever before and these variations are both disconcerting and confusing for an electorate that voted out of office a divided and disunited government. Only through the progressive, fair, and embracing policies of new Labour will the party be re-elected as fit for government.
On accepting the Labour leadership, Ed Miliband spoke of the ‘new generation now leading Labour’. This new generation ‘is different. Different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.’ His words echo suspiciously Tony Blair’s conference speech in 1994. He said that it was ‘not just that our vision for Britain is different, but also our means of achieving it. A new politics.’
Miliband’s ‘new generation’, not quite New Labour, not quite different, mirrors what we have seen throughout the party.The vacuum left after the First, Second, and Third Man’s departures has been filled with a surfeit of new and old ideologies. Blue Labour, Old Labour, New Labour: each with something borrowed from another party or previous Labour administration. Most must be left as fringe ideas.
Blue Labour has been called ‘toxic’. Its combination of economic socialism and social conservatism misunderstands the progress that the country has made since the divisive 1980s. Its orthodoxy and its ‘misplaced, romantic ideas about turning back the clock’ blend the worst elements of Blue Conservatism and Old Labour into a lethal poison of election-losing rhetoric.
A return to old Labour is equallyfatal, although old Labour is growing in popularity within the party and its grassroots. Ed Miliband is wise to remember that old Labour looks backwards, to an era when Clause IV made sense. It looks inwards rather than outwards, trying to reform the party with zeal and preferring righteous opposition rather than reforming the country with principled government. Miliband was therefore right to denounce the July strikes when talks were still ongoing.
Then come those who still support New Labour. The social democratic ‘Third Way’ of 1997-2010 Labour government was the only time in its electoral history that the party was truly electable for more than one term, not simply as a party which was not Conservative, but as a governable party, governing in the public interest. We must remember this success, the reasons for it and imitate with our new generation, reminding ourselves that we now face new challenges and that we must adapt to our new environment. In his speech to Progress, Tony Blair said:
‘We won three successive full terms and governed for 13 years. As a result the Tories, to win, had to start borrowing from us, not from them. That is a sign of our success not our failure. So when they goad you by saying they’re carrying on my policies, it’s not because I believe what they believe; but because they want YOU to believe that I believe what they believe.’
Indeed, in 2005, the Times called the new Tory leader’the young pretender to the Tory throne’, but, by 2006, David Cameron was really the pretender to the Tony throne. It was an empty gesture given away by his lack of ideas and false progressive realignment of the Tory party through gesture politics such as mirroring Labour’s commitment to 0.7 per cent of GDP spent on international development and a commitment to increase funding on the NHS, Labour’s NHS. He has lost his progressive edge since entering government and Labour should retake the mantle.
And now that Miliband has shown real leadership and ‘earned a hearing with the electorate’ he must, according to the architect of new Labour, Lord Mandelson, use this opportunity to speak about what really matters to the country: taxes, the economy, welfare. In each of these he must fight progressively, recognising the balance between the private and public sectors.
We must resist the urge to look too far back in history, lest Bennite and SDP factions split the party. We must continue to speak of the squeezed middle and reach out to the aspirational classes that were harnessed in 1997. Only a new generation of new Labour can put our party in the middle of the political centre once more.
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Alexander Glasner is a member of Progress
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“Blue Labour has been called ‘toxic’.” – mostly by the hard of thinking. I struggle to see how, even if you disagree with it fundamentally, you can call it ‘election-losing’. It’s equally been criticised as ‘populist’. I don’t think either charge wholly sticks, but it’s certainly not possible to have it both ways.
I’m wholly unclear what ‘progress’ since the 80s fundamentally damages Blue Labour’s critique of the neoliberal model of finance-dominated capitalism. If anything, the relative performance of different countries since then demonstrates that Thatcherism was a big wrong turn, and New Labour’s failure to challenge it (while understandable in context) a great shame and to our long-term detriment.
As to social conservatism, I think this week is an illustration of where the ground lies. By and large New Labour and Blue Labour have both, though they would analyse the fundamentals differently, been on the side of working class communities who don’t want their homes burnt down, and public sector workers who have been trying to stop those homes from being burnt down. There is a fringe, somewhere, cheering on the rioters, though I think louder on the internet than on real life. They are the people Labour must reject, if it is to a) win and b) govern in the interests of working people.
“pretending to help him whilst trying to rob him” lawks Dave, we are sorry ,but where do you suppose they got that idea from.
“da Torwies make us gwumpy ,da Torwies make us bad make da Torwies go away and we’ll be vewwy glad” “oh,grow up “! “why , whas da POINT ” ? !
Hi, I think blue Labour has a point in terms of economic socialism in that government must play a better role in regulating financial services, the difference between Tory and Labour should be that the Labour party accepts markets but is unsatisfied and critical of some of the outcomes that they produce, especially if left alone over time unsupervised (and indeed state-provided services for that matter as well).
If the government can’t do anything productive to regulate the banks – such as excuses over globalisation and that working against any national laws and banks threatening capital flight to other nations if there is too much regulation- and if excuses are made that that industry is too complex and hi-tech to regulate properly – then Labour should consider proper nationalisation.
I think it is the only way to limit personal profits in that sector and CEO bonuses etc, if you can’t beat the system – you simply legislate to join it.
Perhaps it is time for a proper publicly owned bank – one that takes part and plays the markets itself, return profits to balance sheets and down and out into small businesses etc, than into the pockets of individuals. Some of whom have no commitment to Britain / UK plc.
What we have at the moment is a disgraceful situation of bankers bonuses being paid out despite some of these banks being in fact technically bankrupt and only psuedo-nationalised. If they were properly nationalised, bonuses running into the millions would not be paid out into personal accounts of these certain CEOs etc, but instead returned to the bank to help repair the hole in its balance sheet and to reduce taxpayer liabilities in the process.
I’m beginning to understand that public owernship isn’t just a means to an end, it is actually an ‘end’ in itself, for the simple reason that if these banks were properly nationalised and under proper public ownership none of us today would be debating bankers bonuses because government would be in control and have the power to control this sort of behaviour!
Remember – power is nothing without control.
This isn’t 1997 and those early Blair of positioning into the slipstream of a very tired and out-going Tory government.
Times have changed. For instance, in August 2008 the banks phoned up Gordon Brown and Darling advising them that if they didn’t do something that cash machines across the country would soon stop working!
Progress’s strong point is that it is in support of public and private sectors and being in support of markets not hostile to them as per old Labour, so this is a good platform to build on, but returning to the Blair formula isn’t going to work simply because the healing hand of a growing economy has vanished. This is what kept the Centrism alive, private sector led growth and restribution of taxes over to the public sector/services.
Labour should never lose its ability to think critically – especially being critical of capitalism, neither should progress. The Blair days of being ‘intensely relaxed’ are over, because – as we have seen – the tax take from the banking sector fell trillions short of what was needed to cover its very own systemic failure!!!