The Labour party has become an effective opposition. As someone who desperately wants to see our party back in office, that’s a terrifying prospect . Every step we take towards being an effective opposition runs the risk of taking us further away from being a government-in-waiting.
An effective opposition does what Labour has achieved in recent months. It aligns itself to those opposing the government’s changes – for example the BMA over the NHS bill, or the Daily Mirror over the budget. In parliament, it makes ministers lives a misery, harrying them at every question time and second reading, firing parliamentary questions like poison darts, and every now and again bringing down a big beast. In the country, it organises street stalls, demos and vigils. Governments win parliamentary votes and pass legislation. Oppositions win council seats, and pass the time until the next election.
At the height of New Labour, disgruntled Labour members used to say to me ‘this isn’t the party I joined’. One, when I was a candidate in Billericay in 1997, refused to help our campaign when he found out I supported the leader of the Labour party. The terrible ignominy and humiliation of Labour’s landslide caused his resignation from the party altogether.
I joined the Labour party in late 1986. Today it feels almost exactly like the party I joined. My first Save the NHS march and rally was in 1988. We organised ‘hands across Britain’ to protest against mass unemployment. How we railed against the Tories and their millionaire mates when Nigel Lawson reduced the top rate of tax from 60p to 40p in his 1988 budget.
Living at that time in a northern post-industrial city, with demolitions of empty factories happening all around, it was hard to fathom the results of the 1987 general election. After mass unemployment, soaring NHS waiting lists, the miners’ strike, the abolition of Ken Livingstone’s GLC and eight years of Thatcher, the best the Labour party could manage was to beat the SDP-Liberal Alliance into third place. At that election, Labour lost six seats, in Walthamstow, Thurrock, Ipswich, Fulham and Battersea. The net gains of 20 seats for Labour masked the collapse of the Labour vote across the south of England.
It is important to understand the Tory strategy. On the surface it was all about destroying Neil Kinnock’s credibility on nuclear weapons, tax and links to the trade unions. But underlying it was the creating a coalition of families who had done well out of Thatcherism. Not millionaires in mansions. But middle-income earners who bought their council houses, and stayed in work throughout the 1980s, like the apocryphal man Tony Blair met in the Midlands polishing his Mondeo.
Butler and Kavanagh’s election study concluded that:
‘the Conservatives had located a large constituency of ‘winners,’ people who have an interest in the return of a Conservative government. It includes much of the affluent South, home-owners, share-owners, and most of those in work, whose standard of living, measured in post-tax incomes, has risen appreciably since 1979.’
Twenty-five years ago, and again 20 years ago, the Labour party failed to reach out to this huge section of the electorate. Tony Blair managed to persuade five million of them to switch sides in 1997, delivering a landslide. But since those halcyon days, they’ve deserted the Labour party. In 1987, Labour won 31 per cent of the popular vote; in 1992 it was 34 per cent. In 2010, it was 29 per cent.
To win next time, the Labour party needs to stop acting like an effective opposition, and start behaving like a government-in-waiting. It should be easy for a frontbench who as ministers or special advisers are used to being in government. That was not a luxury enjoyed in previous periods of opposition by Kinnock, Cook, Brown, Prescott or Blair.
It is increasingly clear what we’re against. We will repeal the NHS bill says Andy Burnham. We don’t like the 45p top rate of tax says Rachel Reeves. We think the welfare reforms are unfair and ill-thought-through says Liam Byrne. We don’t like police commissioner elections says Yvette Cooper.
Fine. But what are we for? As each statement of virulent opposition to the latest calumny perpetrated by ministers is voiced, it adds to a growing canon of things we oppose. It’s enough to organise a street stall. But as things stand, we don’t even have enough official policy to draft a pledge card. Will Labour say to Tony Lloyd and John Prescott that they are one-term police commissioners, as the incoming government presents the Police Commissioners (Abolition) Bill? Is our message to the tens of thousands of GPs who will be commissioning NHS services by 2015 that their services are no longer required, and we will bring in new laws to get someone else to do it? If so, then who? Are we going to campaign in 2015 on a pledge to raise the basic rate of tax to 50 pence? Do we think it’s a vote-winner to tell the voters Labour will spend more on welfare benefits? Even the five-point plan on the economy, a robust and useful short-term device, will be outdated by 2015.
The policy review being conducted by Liam Byrne takes on a new, pressing urgency with each day that passes. It’s not like Meet the Challenge, Make the Change in 1989, which was designed to eradicate the policies identified as the biggest vote-losers. Nor is it like Cameron’s after 2005, which was designed to obfuscate the fissures within the Tory party. Instead, it must come up with a credible economic and social programme which attracts the kinds of people who hear the word ‘millionaire’ without frothing at the mouth.
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Paul Richards writes a weekly column for Progress, Paul’s week in politics
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Photo: UK Parliament
but surely we are in opposition even when in government,because, are we not the party permanently opposed to VIRULENT Capitalism ? that’ s the objective I thought ,to always temper the run a way greed of the only system we ,well and the world ,the free world, can muster- until a miracle or virtually free nuclear fission comes along !
I’m not sure what you think we lost in Fife in 1987. Of the five seats there, Labour held four with majorities over 20% and the fifth was a Lib Dem gain from the Tories.
He means Greenwich, Richard Livingstone.
Another laughably shallow piece to accompany the similarly daft article Paul Richards wrote on LabourList the other day. This sort of silly dichotomy between ‘a good opposition’ and ‘being an alternative government’, is precisely what the Labour Party doesn’t need. In case you haven’t noticed Richards, neither the abolition of the 50p tax rate, nor the NHS reforms, are particularly popular with the electorate. It seems Ed Miliband can’t win. He stands on principle and is accused of being naive. He takes positions in line with the electorate’s views and is accused of opportunism.
Of course, accepting all your opponents policies is an easy way of accounting for a policy deficit. Why Labour should start formulating precise policies now when they’ll be, as you put it, ‘outdated’ by 2015, is beyond me. Equally, I must have missed the poll that suggests people in the south-east don’t care about the NHS, or are wildly enthusiastic about Police Commissioners – bigging yourself up a bit eh Richards? Declare your interest perhaps?
Oh and Tony Blair gained 1,957,654 votes by the way (13,518,167 in 1997 vs 11,560,484 in 1992). Stop stealing Neil Kinnock’s hard work and giving it to your idol.
An opposition which doesn’t oppose.
I’ve heard it all now.
You’ve got to laugh.
Paul, I respect your writings but on this you are so wrong.
On the NHS Burnham clearly stated the commissioning was something we could work with and help develop a long lasting solution. It has a lot going for it within the right frame work, namely PCT’s with far more GP involvement.
However what we wanted and heck even Shirley Williams did until she was brought off/threatened was the dropping of competition and thus for that the whole Bill as Burnham said has to be repealed. The truth is that commissioning needed no law anyway.
so when Suffolk NHS privatises community health to Serco (let me point anyone here to Walsall Education and the complete shambles they made there) then are you saying we SHOULD allow that ?
the fact they signed a three year contract ONLY should give a signal that people believe we will repeal and all of our CLP believes that, the vast majority of Labour do, majority of LD’s do and a significant amount of tories do.
Which side are you on ?
Thinking about winners, it will be interesting to see how people view the relationship between their own success / avoidance of hardship and the policies of a coalition. Is it the Tories or the Liberals who upped the tax threshold?
I think you do pose a false dichotomy between effective opposition and policy development for a future Government. Obviously we need to think through the mechanics of, for example, repeal of the Health and Social Care Act, but unless our opposition to the Act is clear we won’t get to put any plans into practice anyway.
Tony Blair did the Labour Party no favours. On his watch he allowed and encouraged the increase of anti welfare feelings. It was the Labour Party who introduced the Employment and Support allowance with the so called medical assessments being carried out in a hurried way by computer check list type programme. Are you honestly saying that if the arguments are put clearly, forcefully and persistently that the people of this country will still turn around and say that they disagree with welfare payments being so high etc? Of course they wouldnt —— not if they saw the whole thing as a vast insurance system there when they or their families need it. Labour need to promote the security of having a welfare state not bash it as hard as the Torys to get votes in the short term. It is because they did that that we have this extreme right wing govt now. Back to basics please. Back to trying to be a decent society which cares about everyone not just those able to work, or able to earn shed loads of money etc.
Paul has also conveniently forgotten to mention that, even though we won, in 2005 Labour’s share of the vote under Tony Blair was a paltry 36% – the lowest share of the vote for a winning party in modern times. Labour also came second in the popular vote in England in 2005.
An article which explains very clearly why the party is right and why Richards’ ideas must be opposed at all times and in all places. In the wrong party, Paul – the Tories would welcome you with open arms. Do us all a favour and see that for yourself.
//Instead, it must come up with a credible economic and social programme which attracts the kinds of people who hear the word ‘millionaire’ without frothing at the mouth.\ – An explanation of the way the world we currently live in works, without the rhetoric, is sufficient evidence and justification to pose an alternative based around human needs, genuine democracy, a co-operative and mutually supportive future. The whole cabinet, and indeed the whole of the PLP, patiently explaining the failings of capitalism and the socialist alternative would transform the political scene.
What a pity that our Labour representatives are mostly a million light years away from doing any such thing. And ‘Progress’ is anything but…..