Robert Taylor says a new leader will not reverse Labour’s fortunes – only a return to core values can do that
ANY attempted removal of Gordon Brown from Number 10 Downing Street this autumn through a backstairs Cabinet intrigue or a rebellion in the Parliamentary Labour Party (however unlikely that may be) might succeed, but will not be enough to save Labour from devastating defeat in 2010. In this, the Prime Minister’s dwindling band of supporters are correct. Labour’s deep-rooted troubles are more about policies than personalities. So far, none of the possible successors to Brown has spelt out an alternative narrative that draws on social democratic principles and practice. On the contrary, they seem barren of ideas and prisoners of the “new” Labour project pioneered by Brown and Tony Blair.
This has become even clearer in the aftermath of Labour’s catastrophic defeat at the Glasgow East by-election and the timid outcome of the much-vaunted National Policy Forum at Warwick. Some of the trade unions seem ready to argue that the party must move from its centre-right position and reconnect with the values and traditions it used to stand for. This is what Labour’s core supporters want, as the economy moves rapidly into a recession in which they will be the primary victims.
A more youthful figure as Prime Minister is of no consequence if a change in Number 10 is not accompanied by a radical change in policy direction towards a new progressivism. But so far all that is on offer is still more of the same: attacks on the living standards of the manual working class, an acceleration in the great sell-off of what remains of the public sector to private companies, an assault on the socially excluded in the name of responsibilities in return for rights, an unseemly surrender to business lobbying to appease the City of London and the non-domiciled profiteers of neo-liberal capitalism, along with a Government-imposed incomes policy for public sector workers that will inevitably mean falling living standards as fuel and food prices soar and mass unemployment returns.
Manual workers know only too well what is happening to them in a market economy that is becoming increasingly dysfunctional, even if the London metropolitan elite does not. Labour’s former stronghold on the Clyde has exposed the utter failure of this Government to modernise and transform the lives of those who live in what is a post-industrial wilderness.
What few political commentators outside Scotland have recognised is that it is now the Scottish National Party under Alex Salmond and not Labour which is the credible political force on the progressive centre-left. Forty years ago, the SNP could accurately be described as “Tartan Tories”. Today, however, it is broadly social democratic. The SNP rejects any replacement for the Trident missile defence system and favours a non-nuclear Scotland. It demands a public inquiry into why Britain went to war against Iraq. It calls for a fuel price regulator to trigger lower fuel taxes when fuel prices rise. It wants to abolish the council tax and replace it with a local income tax. It opposes post offices closures. It pledges to abolish prescription charges by 2010. It favours free personal and nursing care for the elderly.
Labour opposes all these admirable social policies for England, although they resonate with its core voters. Such policies would reflect the existence of an active and benevolent state that seeks to protect those who find it hard to cope in an economic recession caused by an irresponsible financial sector.
Instead the Government offers a tax increase from next year for more than an estimated 18 million low-income earners with the abolition of the 10p tax band. This autumn’s concession is only a one-off compensation for the present financial year that does not go to all who have lost out.
A retrospective vehicle duty increase on many lower valued cars will also hit the poor disproportionately from next year. It will be coupled with horrendous surges in gas and electricity prices that have already begun to bite and will force many of the old and poor to choose between eating or keep warm this coming winter and beyond.
The Government’s green paper on welfare reform is a coercive document full of threats against the millions of people in the labour market who are either genuinely disabled, have not worked for years, lack skills and education and live in areas where jobs are already hard to find. It is difficult to understand why Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell should believe his illiberal workfare strategy might enhance his leadership potential. Selling off public employment services and introducing a sanctions regime of punishments that involve benefit withdrawals from the most vulnerable may “thrill” David Cameron’s Conservatives, but it ought to repel anyone decent who still remains in the Labour Party. Instead the National Policy Forum last weekend endorsed Purnell’s draconian prescription. And yet it is a deliberate assault on the manual working class.
If Labour was genuine in its rhetoric about bringing the poor into the employment market, it would set out a credible programme of skills training and free childcare, as well as remedial support for drug addicts, more support for single mothers and focus on assistance to the older male long-term jobless. But all this would cost far more than the Government could ever contemplate in present dire financial circumstances, if it was serious. It is hard not to conclude ministers believe – like Cameron – that the socially excluded owe their plight to their own personal inadequacies rather than an unjust economic system or the arbitrary ups and downs of the business cycle. Why should people who are being threatened with punishment in this way rush out to vote Labour any longer?
It is time to challenge the hollow mantra of fairness and “doing what is right”. Since 1997, this Government has helped to create an increasingly inequitable society where the super rich have been the real beneficiaries and the poorest have received inadequate support. Those who express their anger at what they regard as the ungratefulness of Labour’s core supporters need to look at the realities of our society and economy which have moved closer to the American and not the European social model.
This is why Brown’s removal from Number 10 may be necessary, but in itself is not enough. What we want urgently is the creation of a genuine social democratic strategy that restores a key role for the state as an instrument of redistribution and protection, reclaims the public interest, reverses the marketisation of education and health, and brings greater public control and regulation to the utility companies with a determination to return water, gas and electricity to public ownership as soon as possible. Instead, it seems the Government intends to spend its last two years – if it lasts that long – preparing the way for the Conservatives and their own neo-liberal agenda.
This raises a crucial question for Britain’s centre-left: just what is the Labour Party now for? At least a leadership election would provide the opportunity to hold a national debate on what are the available public policy options for responding to a global recession that threatens to reshape our politics in a cruel way which will most hurt the millions in the manual working class whom Labour long ago deserted.
