The result of the Labour leadership election was hurtful – to pretend otherwise would be untrue. I think the candidate that I supported did a brilliant job – tough though her task was. As Jeremy Corbyn said, Liz Kendall ‘absolutely stands up for what she believes in’. Yvette Cooper came out and changed government policy on refugees. Andy Burnham showed he was one of the nicest guys in politics. Congratulations are due to Jeremy Corbyn and his team.
It is horrid losing elections. Internal ones are often more painful. While May’s general election result was hard to take, losing within the party for which you have worked your whole adult life is more personal, especially when your very motive for doing so has been brought so firmly into question.
Not content with simply winning, Corbynistas want to rub moderates’ noses in it, dishing out advice as if they totally understand the surprise victory. Owen Jones tweeted, ‘A thought for New Labour supporters. Turn away from the negativity of your media champions. Come up with a vision. That’s how you win.’ Such fortune cookie wisdom is always helpful, but hardly necessary.
A period of reflection is needed. Writing this month’s editorial was almost heartbreaking. It starts with the words, ‘A chapter has closed. The era of New Labour is over.’ It is right – obviously – but not without regret. I say this not to show my reluctance to accept this reality but because it did not have to be this way and some of us fear that we risk missing the important lessons that took Labour into government.
But also – to be frank – because it is personal. The last Labour government changed my life in profound ways. No one in my family has ever been interested in politics let alone worked in it. My great-grandfather once wrote to his member of parliament and was granted his request but that is it. Equally, as a child we were hardly loaded; the exact opposite to be precise. But the change ushered in by Tony Blair was palpable. First, the government – I assume we have Harriet Harman to thank for this – changed the rules, allowing single parents to keep the maintenance money and not have it deducted from benefits as it had been before. Real money in our pockets. Second, that government’s changes to compulsory competitive tendering meant the GMB was able to win compensation for my mum – then working as a dinner-lady. This in turn paid for us to be able to have our first family holiday. Third, Aim Higher – the then Department for Education scheme – came to my school to dispel myths about free school meal kids being ‘more likely to go to prison than university’. And, as a young gay man, I cannot tell you how the changing nature of the law towards LGBT people gave me the confidence to hold my head high. Every change was voted on by parliament and only granted because of a Labour majority in the House of Commons.
So if you ever detect a reluctance to trash the record of the last government, it is real. It gave thousands, if not millions, the opportunity to reach new horizons.
It is also true that this sense of rejection of the moderate and modernising wing of the party is not without historical parallel. Every Labour government has left power with the left of the party claiming the term of office was a letdown. New Labour was no different. Forget that this is just uncomradely, it is simply ridiculous. Even fair critiques should not be used to tarnish the entirety of Labour government successes. It was Hugh Gaitskell who promised to fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love’, as the party took a hard-left turn away from the electorate in the 1950s. We must do the same.
What will come next is not easy, nor obvious. But one thing is for certain: it will require a radical shift in how we approach our politics.
It is time for the ‘Blairites’ – for desperate want of a better word – to take some of their own advice. Dan Jarvis told Progress annual conference on 16 May this year to, ‘Remember how you felt when they called Nuneaton, and Vicky Fowler lost. Bottle that feeling and hold it tightly for the next five years.’ I was with Vicky the day Liz got 4.5 per cent of the party selectorate and will bottle that feeling forever more.
Progress is here to stay. Moderates and modernisers need a home in Labour. A platform for new ideas. Someone needs to be a bulwark against the bullying and intimidation already channelled towards supporters of the ABC candidates by some on the hard left. Talk of ‘virus’ in the party should not be tolerated, and definitely not rewarded. We know from when we interviewed him for this magazine in July that Corbyn, ‘would never be so intolerant’. The attacks on our organisation and politics over the last five years have ranged from the fair and comradely to the downright untrue and unwarranted. I know Progress cannot carry on as it is. It must change and reach out further. This will be tough. Those who will never be convinced will try and act as judge, jury and executioner. They are not. Change, if real, is neither quick nor painless. My rule for the coming months as we head ‘into the unknown’ is this: if it is not hurting, it is not working.
———————————
Richard Angell is director of Progress
———————————
Soul searching is definitely in order after such a humbling defeat, but I’m not sure you’re getting anywhere close to the real issues, Richard.
I’d agree that Liz was an excellent candidate. She came out of the blocks flying, and made a huge impression at the first televised hustings – including the standout quote around country first. And all this was reflected in her status at the start of the campaign as second favourite, with pretty much all of the momentum behind her.
That the wheels subsequently fell off has to be down to the quality of the campaign. The failure to negate the Red Tory label or to establish a compelling positive narrative was disastrous. Focusing the messaging purely on Liz’s ability to win elections as she slipped further and further behind was frankly embarrassing. As a number of Corbyn supporters took great delight in pointing out to me, if she knows how to win – why isn’t she winning?
It’s easy to say that this was a change election, and nothing anyone could have done would have stopped the Corbyn tsunami. To me that just seems like an excuse for avoiding the pain of looking in the mirror properly and identifying why we didn’t perform as well as we should, nor why the term Blairite (and indeed Progress) has become so toxic. Unless we’re prepared do this, we’re all going to have to get used to that bitter taste of defeat.
If there is to be a criticism of Liz’s campaign it was that she sought to reach out to the country before the Party. This is what a Labour leader who is serious about being PM needs to do, but they need to remember who the electorate are in each election.
In contrast Corbyn reached out to the largely already converted with no great concern about the wider electorate. This may win an internal election, but if we are not to have a repeat of the Milband era, Corbyn will need to demonstrate that winning his election was not the end goal.
That’s certainly a fair criticism of the campaign strategy, but far from the only one.
Did Corbyn reach out to anyone? I think he said ‘here I am, this is me and what I stand for’ and people bought into that in preference to the blandness offered by Andy and Yvette.
I disagree that Liz was excellent. I really wanted to vote for a female candidate and someone new who was a break from the Blair/Brown years. However, she failed in my estimation very quickly as she just lectured the party about the past 5 years being terrible and that she would be different. First, as Tony Blair wrote in his autobiography you have to change the Party with the grain not lecture it on where it is wrong. Secondly, not everything Ed M stood for as L of O was wrong. Our opposition to a welfare cap that was not regional was absolutely correct and is now even more correct following Osborne’s disastrous changes on 8th July. The fact that the Kendall camp wanted to go along with the Tories was a serious error of judgement. No Liz was not excellent. None of the three candidates who opposed Jeremy were outstanding and that was the real problem. Whatever one thinks about them Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were big political beasts and merited respect. Where is the Progress big beast?
Blair and Brown were big beasts sadly the expenses scandal truly put an end to big beasts. Labour are now in opposition due mainly to the issues of trust, people will say you cannot blame labour for the banking crises the pension crisis, but they do , and I do not blame them, now of course the Tories could have a crises they are not winning elections by that much themselves./
Michael foot was a thorn in the side of Gaitskell in the early 60’s and then when he became leader,much to the agaitskellites dismay, they had the last laugh, when he lead labour to a humiliating defeat
Bit unfair of Charles Clarke to say that Yvette ran a useless campaign,the things she wanted to talk about,weren’t things the public or press were interested in,Kendall got attention because she was prepared to step out from the miliband line which was odd considering how many of her supporters had backed Ed miliband in 2010; but Cooper appeared to be saying it wasn;t the policy but the message was off from Ed miliband said time,and. That just conceding that the Tories win, because they must have been right about everything would have signaled defeat in fighting what she stands for
I’ve just joined Progress today. Why? Because I believe that the moderate wing of the Labour Party genuinely best represents the people of the UK and that it is the best hope for the people of the UK for a fairer, more socially inclusive and more successful society.
Why Now? Because I have rarely felt so frustrated with the moderate wing of the Labour Party – we convinced ourselves that, simply by being relatively safe and uncontentious, we could not only continue to lead the Labour Party but also the country. Forget whose fault the May election was, we had a responsibility to set out a programme which built on the achievements of the Blair/Brown years but which would really address the issues of the 21st Century with a progressive agenda on tax, welfare, education, justice, health, social care, defence and foreign affairs. I struggled in May to find anything really progressive in our manifesto and the single thing I can remember was that we, unsuccessfully tried to convince voters that David Cameron would dismantle the NHS. Is it any wonder that the country chose Cameron and now the party has chosen Corbyn.
We have no-one but ourselves to blame. We really believed that the 1997 recipe would still taste good in 2015.
Now is not the time to cry over spilt milk (especially as we we responsible for spilling it). Now is the time to create an agenda which will, over time, attract the massively expanded membership to the progressive cause (as opposed to the blurry version of a “lost Labour past” offered by Corbyn and his team) and then get real leverage amongst an electorate – who must quite soon tire of the choice between single issue politics (SNP, UKIP, Greens) and a continuation of Tory mediocrity.
Finally, I do want to get involved. I have 40 years experience in Government and as the CEO of one of the UK’s largest IT companies behind me as well as a lifetime in the Party. I was regarded for over a decade as one of the top public sector consultants in the country. I do not believe we can afford to let our progressive future rest, solely, in the hands of our MPs and Councillors (very good though most of them are).
Please let the disaster of the past few months be the trigger which leads to a new progressive agenda AND a new progressive way of constructing it. And, please, let those of us outside the mainstream of the party machine make our contribution!
Progress are usually extremely keen to report on any statements made, or reports published, by Jon Cruddas. Is he their new Messiah, after the old one proved so toxic? However, they seem strangely reticent when he expresses the opinion that Compass, Progress and the Fabians appear to belong to another era and that perhaps all of them, possibly just one or two, could be replaced by his new group.
The Fabians did help shape the Labour Party, have a long and illustrious history but have now become more of a publishing house and have grown somewhat stale in recent years. The latest article, by their Research Director Olivia Bailey, appears to indicate that they are still struggling. like Progress, following the leadership election and wondering what role they might have in rebuilding the Party. The analysis is probably better than in most articles on this website but still manages to include multiple patronising phrases, starting with he last sentence in the 9th paragraph.
http://www.fabians.org.uk/understanding-corbynmania/
Compass appears to be a relatively inactive site but the latest article by Peter Hain, although containing a plug for his current book, is worthy of a read.
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/back-to-the-future-of-socialism/
So which of the three organisations: Progress, Compass and The Fabian Society are most likely to be supplanted by a new group, capable of generating radical ideas and solutions, rather than fixated on the Blair/Brown era? I suspect that the Fabians will adapt and survive but not so sure about the other two.
For those who missed the post on the Jon Cruddas interview, with Isabel Hardman in the Spectator, this can be found in the comments section of the Left Right Centre article, published one week ago. See link below:
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/progressonline/left_right_centre/#comment-2261601391
The Labour party could be out of power for another decade if it lurches to the left, Tony Blair warned today.
The three-times election winner told the party he led for 13 years: ‘Don’t for heaven’s sake move back.’
As
an extraordinary opinion poll showed hardline leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn
is on course for victory in the Labour leadership contest, Mr Blair
insisted: ‘You don’t win from a traditional leftist platform.’
And he mocked people who say their political heart wants to support Mr Corbyn, telling them bluntly: ‘Get a transplant.’
Moderates hahahahahahahah Your joking.
Progress needs to affiliate to the Labour Party. As does Movement for Change.
What are the moderates?. They are those who lost us the last two e ections, an d cannot accept that Jeremy Corbyn won by a landslide.