‘Where is the kerosene?’ was the question posed at a Q&A session with Liz Kendall I attended a couple of days ago.
What the questioner wanted to know from her moderate, centre-left platform was going to light up our imagination and put fire in our bellies – suggesting that ‘sound public finances’ as a rallying cry was not going to cut it.
Kendall’s answer was that, of course, there was not a choice between principles and power – ‘we did both’.
But the problem for the centre left is it seems that the devil has all the best tunes. We call Nye Bevan (of all people) in aid, rejecting the sort of policies he called an ‘emotional spasm’, but we have to be clear that, while promising to govern in prose, we can still campaign in poetry.
Everybody wants to empower their arguments through boldness, which drags to the extreme. Robbed of saddling up as Don Quixote, the centrist is forced to be the nagging Sancho Panza. This means the arguments become about electoral success – and through this prism – the moderate cause can be dismissed as less lofty, less worthy of a political movement.
There is a bizarre, nihilist quality to the kind of rhetoric we are hearing from many supporting Jeremy Corbyn it is not the winning that matters, staying ideologically pure is the priority.
Politics, for all those who are serious about changing things for the better (however you perceive this, and whatever your idea of the best way to achieve it) is about power. Labour has never been a debating club for abstract theorists.
The party was created by trade unions in order to change the law to benefit workers. I will not rehearse the arguments made so ably by that former union general secretary Alan Johnson that much of that original workers’ wishlist was finally delivered by the last Labour government, but Labour’s purpose has always been power, not protest.
It is surreal now to consider the strong chance that our next leader will be borne to power on a tide consisting of many who now consider this delivery to be a secondary concern.
We call out the Tories for shamelessly stealing our policies wholesale, embracing a ‘national living wage’, calling themselves the workers party and wanting to devolve power in the north.
But David Cameron and George Osborne understand one thing very clearly: that you win from the middle ground, which is why they plant big flags there (even as they enact pernicious anti-union measures and seek to tear up human rights law on the side).
We lost to them in May. Failure to understand that we need to win votes from people who chose to vote Tory – especially those who actually stuck with Labour in the low point of 2010 – can only take the party further from regaining power.
Could it be that most of these people we need to win back work (or are trying to), want a decent job with prospects, a safe and secure home which they can afford and which leaves them with some spare cash to save or spend on enjoying themselves and their family and friends?
Could it be that they like the NHS and want well-run council services, but they probably do not work in the public sector? That they are not racist or isolationist, but have questions about Europe and immigration that need addressing?
Thanks to Jon Cruddas’ independent election post-mortem we have clear evidence that they first and foremost want fiscal responsibility and that they do not want to be patronised by us on social issues. But, as the TUC’s research found, they thought Labour was too profligate and too incompetent.
They aren’t bad people, or beyond redemption, because they voted Tory in May.
This is hardly the heady romanticism of the Corbyn surge. But it is vital that those of us on the centre left do not allow our views to be presented as some kind of necessary evil we need just to win elections.
Perhaps we need some better tunes. About the waste of spending more money on servicing our debt than on educating our children.
About how Labour wants to level up life chances from birth and invest as much in early years as we do in schools, and give people the skills they need to make their way in the modern economy.
Or how we see our mission as winning power in order to give it away, devolving power to communities with real conviction and meaning. That government should not be in the business of subsidising low pay by businesses, but that we care as much about the self-employed as the global corporations. And that Labour embraces its proud internationalist tradition, and our place in the world through Europe and Nato, rather than turning inwards.
For me, that is the platform and fresh start which Liz Kendall represents.
But for everyone in Labour who believes that its true purpose is power, that the only way to win is by beating the Tories on the centre-ground and that this is as noble a tradition and cause as any other in Labour’s history. We need to stand up and be counted, as we cast our votes now, and in the weeks and months to come.
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Mike Katz is a member of Progress. He tweets @MikeKatz
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Photo: Christiane Wilke
I found this article difficult. If ever there was an article that represents ‘Labour has never been a debating club for abstract theorists’ it was this one. At least to the extent that I could grasp its message. I will assume it was saying something profound and deal only with that which I could grasp. I will tackle some of the often repeat mantras:
“Jeremy Corbyn it is not the winning that matters, staying ideologically pure is the priority.”
This is the caricature of Corbyn supporters position. Do you not understand that for most of his supporters they actually believe that the only way to win is to adopt that ideological standpoint? They have no more interest in purity than does anyone else. Although I must admit their expression may sometimes gives this impression since it is said with more honest enthusiasm.
“…one thing very clearly: that you win from the middle ground…”
Difficult to grasp this idea of ‘from’ somewhere. Do we not win by adopting the winning policies? ‘From’ suggests some vague appeal to something that is not well understood. Of course it is not well understood because it changes between policy areas; it makes appeals to differing groups of people at different times – and they are usually undefined and no one actually understands them. It is just too general and vague to communicate anything but ‘moderation’ (and at a time of the appeal to something radical?). The centre at the moment is probably not thinking moderation it is thinking radical. In any case this is just an opinion captured from an impression of past historical periods.
“…to understand that we need to win votes from people who chose to vote Tory”.
This is probably the least likely future supporters. Working class Tories in particular are particularly unmovable. I would suggest that winning disillusioned past Labour; non-voters; the non-voting young; Greens and former Labour UKIP and SNP is a considerably easier target with much richer takings. The desire to focus on taking votes from the Tories arises from a wish to mimic some of their polices and then work backwards to saying they are who we want. In the main those voting Tory are more convinced they will get what they want from the Tories than from a reformed Labour.
“…or how we see our mission as winning power in order to give it away”, This argument would carry more weight if it was expressed by those less committed to centralised top-down politics that those current claiming it with a supposedly new found enthusiasm
Great headline, but downhill from there. But there is this core problem. We don’t articulate why Labour is better. The Tories have wordsmiths who coin phrases that articulate resonating phrases whether they are designed to encapsulate Labour’s alleged errors (“maxed out the credit card” “didnt repair the roof when the sun was shining” etc) or their own policy aims (“Northern powerhouse”) however daft in reality the phrases may be. It’s partly because we eschew descent to caption politics.
But we seem to have lost the art of capturing in a few words our ambitions. “Vote Labour for them” in 1945 captured the altruism Labour offered, even if, quite possibly, it was the soldiers overseas whose votes made the difference while England remained enamoured just that bit still with Churchill (though many saw through him). “Let’s Go With Labour” suggested economic growth, not looking back, just get up and go. However you see it, it suggested dynamism. “A Better Tomorrow” was always going to be too bland. And as for “The Labour Way is The Zbetter Way”, well really!
In 1964 Wilson spoke of the white heat of the technological revolution. It doesnt matter that it was bosh, or that he knew it was bosh. It expressed a contrast to Douglas-Home, Macmillan, the whole shooting set, the country houses and tweeds.
Our more recent Tories have been careful to avoid guilt by asociation. They would have us believe theyre just ordinary folk, almost like those living in semi-detached houses in Stevenage. But we know they’re not but cannot nail them for wat they are. When we observe how many are public school educated, Bullingdon Boys by nature and by expberienve, so many voters just chortle ‘what wags’ and cheer them on. Thus we drift from one OE toff Bullingdon Boy as Mayor of London to another, this time the son of a billionaire, grandson of an earl, born to rule airbrain.