Restoring Labour’s reputation for economic competence – or perhaps I should say resuscitating or even raising it from the dead – has to be the number one task for whoever becomes its new leader. It may sound, and it may well be, a lot less sexy than, say, holding endless seminars on how to win back the so-called working class. But, with all due respect to Blue Labour devotees who argue (not unreasonably, I should add) that identity politics matters too, it is the sine qua non of doing precisely that – indeed, of winning back voters of all classes and none.
There has been a lot of talk over the last week or so of the parallels between 1992 and 2010 – not all of them depressing for those on the centre-left. After all, John Major’s Tory government, re-elected after unexpectedly crushing Neil Kinnock’s Labour ended up tearing itself apart over Europe and then going down just five years later to one of its biggest ever defeats.
But this forgets one big thing. Europe may, indeed, have messed mightily with Major’s majority, but what really did for him was Black Wednesday. Britain’s exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism blew the Conservatives’ hard-earned reputation for competence almost overnight – a political catastrophe that not even Ken Clarke’s near-textbook stewardship of the economy between 1993 and 1997 could do anything about.
Obviously, Black Wednesday was also something of a black swan – an event with massive impact that almost no-one saw coming. By definition, then, it is not impossible that an economic shock that none of us can imagine right now could come along and do exactly the same to Cameron’s government as Black Wednesday did to Major’s. But, for the moment it looks unlikely.
That means that Labour’s recovery of its reputation for economic competence is going to be a matter of blood, toil, tears and sweat – a war of attrition than one of movement.
Whether Labour can win that war depends partly, of course, on whether it can capitalise on the government’s failings. It is easy to forget that Blair and Brown did not reduce the Major’s Tory rabble to rubble just by offering the country what Jon Cruddas would call a more convincing ‘national story’, but by pounding them day-in-and-day-out with relentlessly negative attacks. By the same token, it was not simply the ‘white heat of technology’ that won it for Wilson. It was his merciless pillorying of a prime minister who had once been unwise enough to make a self-deprecating joke about needing matchsticks to help him get his head around tricky economic problems.
Attack will only get Labour so far, however. Ultimately, restoring its reputation will depend on its own offer. Quite what that is, and how it differs from Ed Miliband’s, will need working out. But, whatever it is, it needs to be worked out quickly. Fearing hostages to fortune, and wanting to keep as much of the labour movement as possible on board for as long as possible, the two Eds only came up with something vaguely coherent a year or so out from May 2015. It turned out to be way too little – and, just as importantly, way too late.
Nor was the two Eds’ offer, or indeed their critique of what the Conservatives were doing, ever couched in words that made easy, common sense to most voters. Where, for instance, was the Labour equivalent of George Osborne’s masterly ‘maxed out the nation’s credit card’? And what could it be between now and 2020?
Finally, whoever becomes leader needs to decide what he or she is going to do and say about the accusation which that phrase so cruelly embodies.
It is not easy: it is clearly economically illiterate, and also politically risky, to admit that the last Labour government ’overspent’ and somehow got us into the mess that in reality was caused by a global financial crisis and the need to avert what might otherwise have been a full-blown depression.
Sadly, however, that is what far too many voters now believe. And the chances of getting them to believe anything else at this stage seem remote in the extreme. Trying to do so is tantamount to telling them that they are wrong and you are right – never a great way to win elections.
Maybe, then, to quote Blair’s public opinion guru, Philip Gould, it is time to ‘concede and move on’. There cannot be many of us who, in order to repair a relationship we really care about, have never said sorry even though we weren’t really sure that we were ever really in the wrong.
For those who can’t bear the thought of reducing high politics to the way we conduct our private lives, we should end by returning to the prime minister who first coined the phrase ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’.
Winston Churchill, addressing the Commons after taking on the top job after the debacle in Norway in May 1940, went on to say something that, seventy-five years later, should resonate with every member of the Labour Party. ‘You ask’, he intoned, ‘what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory, however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival.’
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Tim Bale is professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and the author of Five Year Mission: The Labour Party under Ed Miliband
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“Sadly, however, that is what far too many voters now believe. And the
chances of getting them to believe anything else at this stage seem
remote in the extreme. Trying to do so is tantamount to telling them
that they are wrong and you are right – never a great way to win
elections”
Well, they (the electorate) only believe this because they have been constantly and repeatedly lied to about ‘over-spending’, and how Economies actually work. How about constantly and repeatedly telling the voters than they have been lied to by the Tories and the Lib-Dems; telling the voters why the over-spending line is a lie; and they have been lied to about how a national economy is just like a household’s, by people who actually know that one is not the same as the other?
How about repeating, and repeating, that Labour invested in crumbling infrastructure (hospitals, schools, roads etc) after 30 years of no investment in these and had a massive back-log which had to be made up?
Admitting to something you know to be a lie is not only immoral, it will eventually come back to bite you.
Labour have about 6 months to really get across to the electorate that the Tories have lied to them, and are taking them for chumps. Labour have to do now what it failed to do for the past 5 years – nail the lies about the record and how Economcs works.
As for “..repeating, and repeating, that Labour invested in crumbling infrastructure after 30 years of no investment…” might I suggest you search for “One Constituency, Two Governments”? I wrote it for the 2010 Election, and am still trying to get some sort of response to it.
Drat! PS. The intro was changed to make it fit in with 2015…..not fully convinced it works….would’ve preferred it to have been left as it was in/for 2010.
I agree that the ‘overspending’ lie is probably beyond refuting – infuriating as that may be. Having said that, I don’t think Labour should ‘say sorry’ as in your relationship analogy – move on yes, concede no.
An alternative economic narrative for Labour could be the failure of Osborne’s austerity agenda. There is plenty of evidence (both empirical and theoretical) to show austerity has not led, and cannot be expected to lead, to increased growth in the economy. An end to austerity – if the electorate can be convinced that it will work – would be welcomed across a wide spectrum of voters. Labour MP’s would need to be well prepared with facts and figures (and maybe a crash course in macro economics) but I think it could be done.
Then, if the Tories reject this narrative any failure in the economy under further austerity will reinforce Labour’s position. If they accept it they are admitting that the last 5 years of austerity was unnecessary and damaging their own reputation in the process – a win-win for Labour
On the flip side, if Labour continue to accept austerity and simply argue for a less severe approach, whatever happens in the economy, the Tories can simply argue that austerity is working but it takes time and that it would have taken even longer under Labour’s ‘austerity lite’ – a lose-lose for Labour.
We tribalists would always prefer a half truth about our own party to a full truth expressed by the other side. That’s why we’ll never accept, nor apologise for, our continued undiminished spending in the teeth of falling revenues during the recession.
But ‘the otherside’ have continued to spend more and more and more and more. They have borrowed, in order to spend, more in 5 years than Labour did in 13 years.
They have indeed. And I look forward to writing the same about them when it’s relevant.
“Concede and move on” – that is what Labour did in 2010, and that is why the Tories rubbed their “Labour crashed the economy” in our faces for 4 years. Have you learnt nothing from the failure of the Miliband leadership? A bit of a stupid question as this article offers precisely nothing for the future – just a re-hash of what we all know about the past. If you have nothing to add to the argument – keep quiet!
Tim. It seems you are the “economically illiterate” one. Not the British public. Anyone with a basic grasp of macroeconomics would realise that Labour did indeed over spend, or under tax, between 2001 and 2008. One of the basic tenets of Keynesian demand management is that you have to manage demand! Not stoke it like there is no tomorrow! Public spending as a tool of economic management should be counter cyclical. Increase spending during a slow down or recession and then reigning in spending or increasing taxes during periods of growth and booms. Between 2001 and 2008 the last Labour government stoked demand and stoked an unsustainable boom by structural deficit spending. That was completely unjustified and exactly the wrong thing to do. Even with the economy powering away at historically high grow rates the public finances were inherently unsustainable. When the inevitable recession did happen the public finances were in such at state that the British economy was plunged into a massive fiscal crisis that has had to result in some pretty drastic and unpleasant remedial action.
Also this “Global Financial Crisis” line is also completely disingenuous. Which city was the capital of global finance during the boom years of the 2000s? London. Which government regulated and had statutory control over the City of London? Which government created the FSA regulatory regime which deliberately deregulated the City of London to attract business from New York? That was all Gordon Brown’s handy work. Brown also presided over an overvalued Sterling which again boosted demand but crippled the productive elements of the economy. There may well have been a “Global Financial Crisis” but London was the capital of global finance and Brown’s failed economic and regulatory policies were at the heart of why the British economy was so badly effected. Other advanced economies like Germany, Canada, Australia and Japan had much more robust regulatory regimes and more responsible fiscal policies and were much better off when the crash happened.
Until the Labour Party face up to and admit just how wrong headed the last Labour government’s economic policies were between 2001 and 2008 they will remain unelectable. Staying in the centre left echo chamber claiming that the British public are stupid and misinformed and that the Tories and the right wing press are lying just makes the problem worse.
I suggest you go and buy an A Level economics text book and read the chapters on Keynesianism and demand management and the differences between a cyclical and structural deficit.