Robert Taylor argues it is time for the unions to come to Labour’s aid and undo the damage done by Blairism

LET US hope the current public displays of loyalty to Gordon Brown from his Cabinet colleagues after Labour’s disaster at the hands of the voters in Crewe and Nantwich are not reflected in their personal machinations. The likes of David Miliband and Alan Johnson may like to assert in the media that the current Prime Minister is the right man to see Britain through hard times. But such reflexive demonstrations of personal commitment – if genuine – suggest Brown’s senior colleagues seem quite ready to stagger on for two more years and go down with him in what threatens to be one of the worst electoral defeats in Labour’s history. Do the Miliband brothers, Ed Balls and the rest of the younger generation really want to spend their mature years in the political wilderness? If so, they should just carry on the way they are doing and maintain a hubris and complacency worthy of French aristocrats before the revolution of 1789.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, if change at Number 10 Downing Street is to be done, it must be done quickly. Of course, there is no tradition of regicide in the Labour Party. Moreover, the introduction of the cumbersome and time-consuming electoral college has made it very difficult to force a leadership election. As many as 71 Labour MPs have to demand the start of such a process – 20 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party – and that is a tall order.

But let no one be in any doubt. The “new” Labour project is finished – thank goodness. It has failed. There can be no hope of rescue. Labour has to change and change utterly. If anybody wants to know what has been going on, they should read the two tawdry but revelatory volumes by Cherie Blair and Michael Levy. In their different ways, they both reveal a world of greed and moral corruption without ethical principles or sense of shame. Even Lord Levy says he was taken aback at the avaricious conduct of his friends, the Blairs, who demonstrated a display of sheer vulgarity that makes Ramsay MacDonald’s love for duchesses look of no importance by comparison.

What Levy shows is that Blair and Brown created what amounted to a parallel party within the party, complete with its own exclusive financial resources drawn from a range of billionaires. It is no wonder that “new” Labour’s greatest achievement has been to make the City of London a centre of global capitalism. Compare the amount of time and sensitivity that Blair and Brown have spent on bowing the knee to the rich and powerful with their approach to the poor, old, weak and the manual working class in general.

But now the party’s once core voters – the so-called C2s, the skilled manual working class – are deserting the party in their hundreds of thousands. Far more  are shifting their allegiances to the Conservatives than at any time since in the late 1970s. And the unskilled – The Ds and Es – are doing the same. They will not be seduced back with the kind of technocratic and authoritarian policy agenda that satisfies the young and ambitious apparatchiks who attend Progress conferences and worship at the shrine of Blairism. Sadly, it seems this is what we can expect over the next two years.

Labour’s hateful campaign in Crewe and Nantwich, with its demonising of Polish immigrants, phoney class war attacks on the Conservative candidate and draconian threats to bring law and order to the streets through encouraging an “in-your-face” policy from the police, looked like the kind of approach we would expect from the British National Party. What is so encouraging is such repulsive dog-whistle politics disgusted working-class voters. The Government seems to believe you can pander to the white working class through an appeal based on racism and intolerance. It reflects just how out of touch they are to the complex realities of our society.

The utter destruction of the “new” Labour project must become the top priority. A good start would be to revive the role of the trade unions in the party as a crucial power and influence.

Levy’s memoirs reveal that “new” Labour was an anti-union project from the beginning. As Blair told him in 1994, as he promised to raise £15 million from fat-cat donors for his personal use: “I am absolutely determined that we must not go into the next election financially dependent on the trade unions.”

The unions, which founded the Labour Party, were to be marginalised and treated with contempt, even those run by leaders who were sensible and responsible social democrats. For too long, Labour’s elite treated the unions in the way Lenin allied tactically with his enemies as “useful idiots”. That time is over.

The 16 unions affiliated to Labour want a new Warwick agreement with the party based on fairness, social justice and equality. This agenda will be published next month. It must be substantial and radical and appeal to working people in general. There needs to be a return to progressive taxation. Why not take anyone earning less than £15,000 a year out of paying tax at all and increasing the tax paid by those earning over £100,000 from 40 to 50 per cent and those earning more than £150,000 to 70 per cent? An independent standing commission on the distribution of income and wealth should be created and in addition a royal commission to investigate the world of casino capitalism.

The European social market model must become the centre of the party’s commitment to quality and decent jobs, comprehensive affordable childcare, training facilities and pensions. The TUC is producing some sensible and long overdue proposals that Labour needs to accept. Its recent report on vulnerable employment reveals the widening inequalities in the labour market and in work places under Blair and Brown. Instead of smug ministers threatening the poor if they do not work, we need politicians who are prepared to develop a progressive agenda for the disabled, low-paid women workers, the sick, immigrant workers and the many millions who still endure some of the weakest enforced rights of any in western Europe.

The unions must insist on a new deal for the public services with a return to a commitment to professionalism and the public interest and an end to privatisation. Too much taxpayers’ money has been wasted on private contractors, accountants, lawyers and consultants.

The trade unions need to demand that, unless the Government agrees to such a radical agenda, they will cut their financial support to the party. As Labour’s wealthy fair-weather friends stop pumping money into the project’s coffers, the unions will once more become an important source of party finance. This gives them leverage. They should use this wisely and not make sectional demands. Instead, they should speak up for working people in general across the whole country. The unions created Labour. Now their urgent task must be to save it from oblivion. “New” Labour is dead. Long live the Labour Party. Let us hope it is not too late.