‘Labour lost the last two elections because too many voters saw it as ‘Tory-lite’ and decided they might as well vote for the real thing’, was the narrative born in the months after the party’s general election loss and became one of the main explanations for what happened. However, since the summer, it has been the Tories who have been trying to occupy the centre-ground through policies such as introducing a ‘national living wage’.
It therefore seems odd that Labour has not mounted the accusation that the Conservatives are ‘Labour-lite’.
After two election defeats it would be natural for any political party to lack confidence, but this has been compounded by the notion that has gripped Labour that, when it was in power, it was not really a Labour government at all. If this were true then we have effectively had a continuous Conservative government of one sort or another since 1979. Some on the hard left of the party genuinely believe this; for those of us who lived through the transition from Tory to Labour in in 1997 the reality was very different. No wonder it feels as if the Tories are the only party capable of setting the political agenda.
In fact, if we look back over the months since the election, the political headlines have been driven by Labour. Sadly, most of the coverage has been about our contortions over the leadership, but even the moments when the government managed to seize back the headlines were ultimately defined by Labour. The ‘national living wage’ was a straightforward steal from Ed Miliband’s manifesto.
The other headline-grabber was the cut to tax credits, the attempted reversal of a Labour policy. Unsurprisingly there was an equal and opposite reaction to the acclaim for the living wage.
The Tory rebranding as the ‘party of working people’ is essentially an admission that they want to be ‘Labour-lite’ (as of course, working people are labour). The debacle over tax credits demonstrates the problems with ‘lite’ – of governing by calculation not principle. It leaves you completely adrift when things go wrong. The severity of Osborne’s self imposed fiscal constraints mean that he is going to have to bludgeon further billions of pounds of savings out of other budgets, which have already been savaged once in the last parliament. Meanwhile, the right of his party will not let him get away with dropping measures such as the inheritance tax cut – which only benefit the better off. This makes a nonsense of the idea that the Tories are the party of all working people, as opposed to just the well-heeled ones.
This hands Labour a much-needed opportunity. However, our reaction to having our clothes stolen by Osborne while we have been out at sea playing at drowning each other, has ranged from helpless dismay to indifference (‘We’ll just get some new ones from somewhere else’). Instead, we should be vehemently telling the Conservative party that our clothes simply do not belong to them. But we are in no position to attack them for not being the party of working people, unless we can convincing say that we are. This is also difficult if we are really saying that, up until September 2015, the Labour party was basically led by Tories.
Appreciating Labour’s past is not the same as idolising it, or saying we should return to it. A continuation of the principles of the last Labour government must be about developing new policies which are as game-changing as the minimum wage and tax credits, but are relevant to 2020, not 1997. Labour is the party of radical change brought about through government, for the benefit of the working people of Britain. This remains true whether the leadership chooses to deliver this through the free market and individual choice; or through state control of industry and centralised public services – or through any mixture of the two.
Tax credits have exposed the Tories, but that itself will not be enough to change voters’ minds. We have a job to convince the electorate that we are the true party of labour. This is a much more believable message if we ourselves believe and say that this is what we always have been.
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Christabel Cooper is a member of the Labour party
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Photo: Louisa Thomson
Good luck. As a mere voter but not a party member, I supported Mr Blair three times. He was a giant compared to Goedon Brown who stood tall over Ed Miliband who towers over Jeremy Corbyn. Who next? Perhaps the much-respected (!) Dianne Abbott. Don’t laugh anything can happen. Well done to the people whom Margaret Beckett described as morons for nominating Jez.
The last week to 10 days – post Paris atrocities’ – has changed everything for Labour. Our brand has gone ‘toxic’ with many voters associating our leader Corbyn with an unacceptable foreign and national security policy. It’s my firm conviction that Labour should in no way stop our UK government taking military action in Syria. To do so worsens our credibility as a party able to handle defence policy and drives more voters towards the Conservative party.
This is a serious moment for the Centre-Left because with the Lib Dems in meltdown and I believe following the Corbynites in opposing military action- there is no way for voters to turn but the party run by David Cameron and soon Boris Johnston The importance of this ‘SDP like moment’ is underestimated by most in Labour. For me it is an existential moment; can I remain in a Labour party so marginal to what our voters think and feel.
I know a couple of people who have quit the party in the last week for similar reasons. The YouGov poll the other day made particularly depressing reading:
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/24/analysis-corbynistas-stay-loyal-few-others-share-h/
But it also highlights why those of us who believe that Labour needs to be electable, should stay – if we go, then there might be no stopping the party turning into a marginalised protest movement. My hope is that once all the newly fired up members actually start speaking to people on doorsteps (rather than just tweeting each other), then they’ll get some idea of the general sentiment in the country.
Most of the public oppose bombing Syria . They are right, just as they were in 2003, in agreeing with Corbyn
NO …The majority support on balance military action against the greatest threat to our civilisation and many of us are proud of the 70 or so Labour MPs who voted with the majority of the other parties to help our allies and help Syrians stop the caliphate.
Sometimes I divide the Blair years into Blair Mark 1 (good) and Blair Mark 2 (bad), a sort of political Jekyll and Hyde, after he was infected by Bush and the neo-cons.
A better way of describing the Tories’ political cross-dressing would be “wolves in sheep’s clothing”.
“Wolves in sheep’s clothing” is exactly what they are! Though after the spending review they may well end up as “wolves in a wolf-fur coat with 5% wool mix”.
A good line, I hope someone feeds it to the PLP for the debate.
They should also point out how every Osborne budget has been immediately praised to the sky by the Tory press, even ‘omnishambles’ 2012 and the post-Election. It was only when the truth emerged that the press revolted with even the Sun campaigning against tax credit cuts.