Tonight:
9°c
Who killed New Labour? I enquire only because the most successful political creation of the past 20 years is dying on its feet. Peter Hain, an amiable weathercock, says “more New Labour” would not be enough to win the next election and that New Labour has “lost five million voters”. He advised attending to the core vote and some “rebalancing”.
All of these conversations take place in a loud code in politics. When Mr Hain lauds the “core vote” strategy of supporting “job security and employment rights”, defends the Royal Mail from part-privatisation and adds in “crime and migration” for good measure, we hear the distant sound of yet another leadership challenger getting his fighting boots on.
Add him to Harriet Harman wooing “the court of public opinion” (which sounds like revolutionary China) and Ed Balls, the only one of the Left-of-Centre candidates who can be let out to speak in a boardroom. He has been running seriously for the job since last summer and is adopting a more humble tone on the recession and its causes than his old boss, Gordon Brown.
All certainties have been thrown into the air by the scale of the financial crisis, and Labour isn't alone in its confusion.
George Osborne has just cast a gimlet eye on that spatchcocked creation of the Brown years, the Financial Services Authority. But his era and ilk of Conservatives were also enthusiastic deregulators — it's not so long ago that complaining about all that “red tape” under Labour was as a cliché of Tory conversation. This lot were more likely to take Ayn Rand with them to a desert island than The Road to Wigan Pier.
Now they are repositioning themselves at some speed as the pro-business party which will re-invent better regulation for that hazy place, the post-recession world. At least they have a solid top team and relatively few major differences to hamper them along the way.
Not so the Government, where fissures are widening by the week. It is now very easy to see which way ministers will fall out: we know that Commissar Peter Mandelson, with James Purnell, an increasingly assertive Liam Byrne and the Pasionaria of modernisation Hazel Blears, form the heart of the new Centre-Right of the party. Probably with Jacqui Smith riding shotgun and Tessa Jowell as the stalwart.
We know Andy Burnham can't make up his mind where he stands, and that David Miliband is concerned about a vote-losing move off the centre ground but nervous of doing much about it after a false start last year.
And we know that Ms Harman and Mr Hain are seeking to redefine Labour as a force which is — broadly speaking — high tax, business-sceptic and sees in the ruins of the financial collapse an object lesson about free markets which requires traditional remedies from the Left.
Superficially, this is appealing. The end of capitalism is back in vogue as something to chatter about, without much balancing thought about how on earth we are gong to recover British competitiveness and a high standard of living if we are to lapse into a New Collectivism.
These arguments are only beginning here but they are urgently necessary. What is shocking is that so little of it is aired by those in New Labour who need to engage the Conservatives on the battle for the centre ground.
Almost every senior Cabinet figure I have spoken to in the past week has said two contradictory things at once. All have similarly fretted that they are losing the battle of ideas to the Conservatives. But no one says very much about it all for fear of splitting the party and adding to Mr Brown's woes (an honourable exception is the Cabinet Office minister Mr Byrne, who did a good speech on why reform politics should not be left to the Tories). But they are terrified of the appearance of disunity. Alas, the party appears disunified for one very good reason: it is.
Fear of the Sadlands of a major Labour defeat and what will happen afterwards runs deep. “We have to fight for every single vote,” says one minister tipped as a possible heir, “because the worse we lose, the greater the chance of the party going completely crazy.” Camp Cameron rubs its hands at the thought of a Harman/Hain-led Opposition: “We'd be in for decades!”
The Prime Minister is as much part of the problem as the solution. Because his own commitment to the Blairite direction of Labour was so partial and his attitudes in Government on everything except economic action are so vaguely defined that he cannot really claim to be New Labour at all, let alone promise to develop it.
Mr Cameron lays it on a bit thick with his mawkish “broken Britain” but there is a genuine sense of despair and concern about the British underclass, which Mr Brown's boast about tax credits fails to satisfy.
Ministers such as Welfare Secretary Purnell, who do want to change the dire structures which trap so many in poor and chaotic lives, are fearful of making a broader thematic argument out of their policies, lest it be interpreted as running for the top job. Guys, you might as well. Everyone else is.
Here is Ed Miliband (another hotly tipped etc etc) speaking to a party gathering: “We need an economic vision, an environmental vision and a social vision.” Do resist the temptation to add: “And 20/20 vision.” The art of saying nothing is coming along nicely.
With so many of the best brains determined to keep shtoom, all that can happen is a build-up of tension towards the June local and European elections, a sour sense of suppressed division and a criminal waste of time when it should be girding itself for a major intellectual fight with the Tories.
I don't blame Mr Hain or Ms Harman for trying to corner the coming fight. They're not the worst Labour can be and they're entitled to their convictions. But they are the road to political ruin for Labour. I only wish that the best were full of more passionate intensity to take them on.
Reader views (10)
with some luck the labour party will implde under the massive weight of leadership egos.
we could be looking at the last labour government for 20 years, with one part fighting to good fight to bring britain into a new communist goldenage, andthe other side pretending they are tory extra light.
great days lie ahead for britain
- Ngg, belfast
If only they'd let Charles Clarke / Frank Field implement the reforms to police/welfare we would have had a set of reformed public services fudging it now during a recession is to late.
- John P Reid, upminster Essex
Cameron is way too wet. What Britain desparately needs is red in tooth and claw capitalism to boost the small businessman and entrepeneur! These are the people who create jobs, take risks and create wealth ... which the Socialist losers then want toi tax to death! The influx of hot money from the rest of Europe and turbo charged by loose monetary policy created an illusion in London which is now being shattered. Labor = Losers.
- James Macleod Ritchie, Oyster Bay Cove
"Cameron and co may appear to have little to offer by way of remedy becasue they are truly astounded at the depth and breadth of the damage done to the country over the past twelve years"
- Robin, London
How feeble an excuse can you get? What, the poor Conservatives are stunned? Robin, they appear to little to offer for one very good reason: they haven't got anything to offer.
- Robert C, London UK
How can so many people think that a different crew running more of the same old failed pre-1997 policies and with cuts to essential services will turn the tide and make everything better again.
This is a global problem that will not be made well by rushing backwards to older failures. It's infantile wishful thinking to imagine that a Conservative govt would make it all right again.
Cool heads are needed to stabilise and secure as much of the situation as is possible, and some fresh thinking about how we manage the economic and ecologic messes of our own making in future.
- Barrie, essex UK
Well said indeed, Ms McElvoy. A genuinely impartial but accurate description of the useless party that is newlabour.
Still born will be the epitaph of newlabour as it has achieved nothing short of the disintegration of much of Britain's social fabric with absolutely no attendant benefit to their own constituency.
The sooner this bunch of goons get off the stage the better.
Caameron and co may appear to have little to offer by way of remedy becasue they are truly astounded at the depth and breadth of the damage done to the country over the past twelve years. Better that they are just returned to power and given a chnace to start to put things right.
Keep up the good work; more headlines like this and they will lose the will to live and fall on their own sword
- Robin, London
Calm down dears! Gordon is the 'no return' PM. Remember his oratory, 'No return to Boom and Bust', now we have 'No return to Irish killings'. What we all want is 'No return to No. 10' and do you know what?, I think that we are going to get it. Savour and enjoy!
- Alan, Surbiton, UK
Anne, you want to know what killed New Labour? It was the mistake of following an essentially Thatcherite agenda,
They mistakenely believed that privatisation creates more efficent companies - it doesn't, that low taxes for the rich and other "incentives" create trickle down wealth - they don't, that low regualtion and few controls creates wealth - it doesn't, and that fincance was more important than industry - it isn't.
The economic disaster still unfolding around us, is not due to this government being too left wing, and yet you seem to think that better regulation, a more equal society, fairer taxes, and a publically run post office are unpopular policies.
I think Peter Hain and Harriet Harman are closer to mainstream opinion than you realise. Political ruin has come from the "free market" fundamentalists.
- Rob, London, UK
We are in a far worse position than we were in 1997, New Labour have well and truly ruined us for decades. Bring on David Cameron and the Tories, they will need alot of support to repair the damage of the last 12 years - as for Labour they deserve to be totally finished off by the electorate.
- Mark Burton, St. Ives Cambs
It just goes to show that all this talk about ideology is total nonsense......
The electorate expects results. After 12 years we should quite rightly expect a totally transofrmed set of public services. Even more so given the money that has been ploughed into them.
We need peopel as Ministers who know what it is like to run small, medium and large businesses and how frustrating it is to have to spend time and money on what is perceived to be pointless legislation. Every minute spent on needless regulation is a minute not being spent on developing a business.
Guess what millions of people will be doing this Christmas? Prepearing for the re-increase of VAT back to 17.5%. What an idiotic time of the year to implement such a change.
Is this country in a better position that 1997? Can anyone evidence that we are.
- Ian Gilbertson, Newcastle
