Some years ago, a working-class based party with strong links to the trade unions was purged as a new wave of “modernisers” took control in an exercise of wholesale re-branding, pushing the unions and the “old guard” left aside. The party swept comfortably to power, driving out a tired and discredited conservative party that had been in office for more than a decade. It was a new dawn. But then the leader made the error of burying the party’s key policies, and with it his own and his party’s public standing. The public stopped listening and certain defeat loomed at the next election. Step forward Julia Gillard to become leader of the Australian Labour Party and the country’s first woman Prime Minister.
Comparisons have been readily made between the British and Australian parties, not least because of the extent to which they swap aides and advice. The swift demise of former leader Kevin Rudd and the overnight election of Ms Gillard strikes a note against analogy, given the recent British Labour experience. Gillard’s bloodless coup has raised hopes and expectations. First, that Labour will win the election she says will take place “in coming months”. She has promised to “re-prosecute” the case for an emissions trading scheme, the shelving of which triggered Mr Rudd’s collapse in the polls. She has a chance to change the face of a country still seen as a bastion of male chauvinism. Above all, she has the chance to change the world in a pan-Asian region where stability is in short supply and a bulwark against the hegemony of the United States is required. Should she choose to take it.
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It generally ill behoves the dignity of the boastful to say “We told you so”, even when it’s true. Better to let the truth sink slowly into the consciousness of those whose eyes are being opened. But in the case of the effect on unemployment of the Tory-Liberal Democrat Budget it is worth making an exception. Last week, Tribune highlighted the probable catastrophic job losses that would follow the Budget. Not because we were being alarmist, clever or had insight into secret Treasury papers, but because to anybody looking at the George Osborne economic model it was obvious. The point being that the social savagery inherent in his plans must have been obvious to the Chancellor, too. Now, thanks to the exposure in The Guardian of secret Treasury data, we know that the Government was well aware that 1.3 million jobs would be lost as a direct result of the Budget.
Mr Osborne presented himself to the House of Commons as being open and honest about the pain that was coming. He wasn’t. He said the cuts were unavoidable. They aren’t. They are a matter of choice, ideological choice, with blame laid against the last Government as camouflage. Mr Osborne knew of the damage the Tory-Lib-Dem plans for this country will cause and he chose not to say. We did and we will continue to say it until this Government is exposed and driven from office.
