by René Lavanchy
LABOUR in power should listen more to the party and encourage more grassroots participation, deputy leader Harriet Harman said this week.
Ms Harman declared that “Part of the refreshing of our democracy beyond and building on “new” Labour is opening up our democratic structure”, and said the key to persuading people to vote Labour was “about opening up the process and being able to listen”.
She also described “new” Labour as merely a delivery mechanism for Labour values, raising the possibility that the Labour leadership is edging away from the electoral strategies of the past.
If so, Ms Harman is the most senior member of the Government to distance herself publicly from the Blair era.
Her remarks came at a debate organised by The Guardian and the journal Soundings, where MP Jon Cruddas and Labour parliamentary candidate Chuka Umunna appealed for Labour to develop a more positive and emotional language to explain its values – and to learn from Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign.
Asked if she believed in moving on from new Labour, she said: “Our policies are going to have to change. The way we communicate has got to change and we’ve just got to be more open and allow people to participate.” Later she added: “We have to listen to the party”.
Ms Harman, who is seen as close to Gordon Brown, conceded that ministers did not find it easy to listen to the party.
She said: “It was always easier to get into the Shadow Cabinet than it was in the cabinet. The more powerful you are, the more the old vested interests and owners of power expect it’s theirs.”
Chuka Ummuna, a leading member of centre-left pressure group Compass, argued that the Government had lost its way recently. “We’ve ended up doing sometimes authoritarian, non-progressive things for the wrong reasons”, he said, criticising the abolition of the 10p tax and attempt at 42 days’ detention.
But, he added, government needed the support of popular movements and urged people to “get involved”, as the Obama campaign demonstrated. “If you want people who sit at the Cabinet table to be bolder and more progressive, yes they need to do it but you need to open up the ground for them to do it.”
Peter Kenyon, a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, said: “If [Harman] was making those sorts of remarks in the light of people studying what’s been happening in the Democratic Party… then it’s a development I would welcome very warmly.”
