The ‘project’ for New Labour was to be a two-staged affair. Stage one was about electability and was defined by being everything ‘Old’ Labour wasn’t. But there was to be a second stage – the realignment of the centre-left to reunite the strands of liberalism and socialism that were ruptured 100 years ago. This second stage was personal and particular to Tony Blair. He revered Gladstone, he cited Beveridge and he dinned with Jenkins. Ultimately, he struck up a unique courtship with Captain Ashdown. The church was booked and the suits were ordered. All the people had to do in May 1997 was not return a Tory government. They didn’t – but they went a bit further than anyone expected.
We now know what happened to stage two of the project. Nothing. It failed because it was rooted in just a few personalities and seemed to be based more on electoral pragmatism than principle. As such it was always doomed. Does it matter? Yes. Let’s be clear why.
I am a social democrat because I believe in a more equal society. I also adhere to the adage that the role of Labour governments is to ensure that markets should fit people not vice versa. In simplistic terms I want Labour to be more leftwing not less. So my interest in liberalism isn’t about a dash for the centre in a bid to ditch traditional values, core voters or the trade unions. Quite the contrary. Exposure to liberal thinking will enable us to be more radical, not less.
In government we are slowly finding that you simply can’t do everything from the centre. Effective and lasting reform will only come by decentralising decision-making and empowering people to take more control over their own lives. There are risks attached of course. Mistakes will be made. And there are tensions between liberty and equality we must recognise and work our way through. But at the end of the day we have no choice but to let go and trust the people. These were the instincts of the left before the rupture with the liberal tradition in the early 1900s when, unfortunately, the greatest influence on Labour became the Soviet model.
In this sense New Labour has ended up with a rather muddled and unhelpful inheritance. Too few of the traditional values of socialism, most importantly a commitment to equality, permeate our thinking and too much of the old top down paternalism and centralism dominates our practice.
As such the revival and renewal of the social democratic project requires the infusion of more liberal thinking. This doesn’t mean deals, pacts or mergers with the Liberal Democrats. But it does mean openness to liberal thinking and practices. The model is not a big tent on the soggy ground of middle England, but a campsite of shared values where liberals and social democrats can both cooperate and compete. If your instinct here is to recoil from those ‘opportunistic local Lib Dems’, just remind yourself of the uncomfortable truth that the Liberal Democrat manifesto at the last election was to the left of Labour’s, and was far ahead of us, on key issues such as taking Railtrack out of the private sector. On issues such as public services, the economy and the environment we face the same agenda and are struggling with the same issues.
The Joint Cabinet Committee with the Liberal Democrats may be dead. But an enduring progressive left politics was never going to be forged around the Cabinet table. Instead, it will require adherence to a strong set of values, an underpinning ideology, imaginative policies and a coalition of support to sustain it.
The conception of a more liberal socialism is taking root. Ministers like Patricia Hewitt, Margaret Hodge and Alan Milburn seem to know that things have to change. Labour has to ditch the baggage of centralism and paternalism and accept the need for a more liberal and pluralistic approach. This is the real ‘project’ for the progressive left that must not be allowed to fail.