James
13th September 2005, 17:30
Good article, second half more so than the first.
Its got me looking forward to party conference fringe, and also to see what this group Compass do actually suggest.
Clearly we have come to some crossroads.
+ + +
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/comm...rticle_continue (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/comment/0,9236,1567698,00.html#article_continue)
The danger is that Brown will be another Callaghan
Labour has lost its way and faces political meltdown if it can't find a new direction for the post-Blair era
Jackie Ashley
Monday September 12, 2005
The Guardian
Is Labour dying on its feet? As Tony Blair returns, briefly, from his latest tour of China and India, some of his ministers fear the party that took him to power is rotting away. Like a great galleon it sails on impressively enough, with its 356 MPs, its ministers, its rich backers. But below the waterline the picture is uglier. Membership has crashed, down by more than half since 1997 from more than 400,000 to just over 200,000. In that time it has managed to get through four general secretaries - the latest, Matt Carter, has just announced his resignation, one of a line who felt they weren't listened to. More than a million fewer people voted Labour in 2005 than in 2001. But, worse than all the figures, the party doesn't seem to know what to do with its third term. It has lost its identity.
The great danger for Gordon Brown, some leading figures in the party say, is not that he fails in the end to become prime minister, but that circumstances conspire to make him a second Jim Callaghan, struggling through the dog-days of a dying administration. By the time of the next election he'll face a new Tory leader, perhaps with a new big idea - the flat tax - that is anathema to Labour supporters but has a simplistic electoral appeal. So Brown could lose the election, and Labour find itself once again in the wilderness.
Of course, you can turn all this round and focus on the fact that Labour is still celebrating its third election victory. It has already survived eight years in power and is still functioning effectively while its only real opposition has become the media. But without a vibrant party, you have only a leader cult to rely on. And when people weary of that, the whole house of cards can collapse in an instant. We know Blair is leaving office. The question is: will there be much of a Labour party left to survive him?
His promise to return with renewed vigour to the domestic agenda so far looks hollow. He is off to the US again shortly, while G8 and EU business will preoccupy him until the end of the year. The woeful situation in Iraq, further troubles in Afghanistan and the continuing preoccupation with the threat from al-Qaida mean his attention will continue to be dragged away, week by week, from the mere governance of Britain.
He does have a domestic agenda, of course. It will feature heavily in his conference speech. It consists of more of the same in the public services - more city academies and foundation hospitals. The theme will be enabling and empowering the individual citizen rather than leaving it up to the state to provide. And, above all, there is "respect", a subject close to the prime minister's heart, which brings with it more uniformed police officers, another look at the national curriculum and parenting orders.
Some measures may work better than others, but as several senior ministers point out, slapping parenting orders on families is not what they came into politics for. Nor is respect the core of Labour's purpose, compared to greater equality and help for people at the bottom. It is the sort of thing Margaret Thatcher and John Major banged on about during their years of political decline.
Foundation hospitals and city academies will never get Labour's heart pounding faster. There have been serious funding problems and disappointments over standards, fears of fundamentalist influence on teaching, and a notable lack of enthusiasm - or downright hostility over the role of the private sector and the market - in the party or in the unions. Ministers, both loyalist and not-very-loyalist, agree that this is too-thin gruel to keep the government occupied for the next two years, if that is the time Blair expects to stay.
None of this is likely to come to a head during the Labour conference. As one key New Labour player puts it, normal party politics remains suspended while the Tory leadership contest continues. In a sense, we have not really had proper party politics for more than a decade. After 1992, Labour was turned inwards as Blair and his followers transformed the party, while the Tories decayed in office. After 1997, the Conservatives were never able to give New Labour a serious run for its money. That was Blair's luck but not, perhaps, in the best interests of good government or Labour itself.
Does this matter much to the prime minister? One senior colleague speculates that when he leaves office, Blair will cut all his remaining ties with Labour anyway. He will return to the people he seems more comfortable with already: the tycoons, American property developers, Italian princes and media magnates. He will make huge amounts of money and at best move in the same circles as the Clintons and the affable rock stars. And if Labour seemed to crumble without him, he could merely smile and ask: "Miss me now?"
It doesn't have to be this way. We are in the middle of an unreal hiatus in politics, partly because of the London bombings and partly because everyone is waiting to see what kind of Tory party emerges from the leadership race. But Labour cannot afford to drift. A quiet conference, which is what everyone predicts, would be a wasted week at the seaside and hasten Labour's demise.
The interesting stuff, I hope, will be on the fringes, because there are ministers working hard to forge a harder-edged, progressive agenda. David Miliband is touring the big cities to try to find ways to reconnect. He admits that the big enemy in modern politics is "a sense of powerlessness". Harriet Harman is working on ideas for voter registration to end the class divide scarring our democracy, whereby the poor don't vote and so get brushed aside. Other ministers are talking about how to restore parliament to the heart of politics.
Meanwhile, the Brownite, centre-left Compass group has brought together academics and thinkers to draw up a manifesto for the next election, based on three themes: a sense of the good life, a new collectivism and a left political economy. The aim is to challenge not only Blair, but Brown too - there is widespread concern over his enthusiasm for market solutions. Brown himself, meanwhile, talks constantly of connecting Labour to its roots and is expending much energy trying to untangle the notion of Britishness and citizenship.
These initiatives prove Labour politicians are aware that if the years ahead bring nothing but more academies and police powers to combat terrorism, the party really will die. But what they need is leadership and focus, a new "story" that takes Labour into a second decade of power. Unless that story is developed sooner rather than later, Labour will remain on the critical list.
Its got me looking forward to party conference fringe, and also to see what this group Compass do actually suggest.
Clearly we have come to some crossroads.
+ + +
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/comm...rticle_continue (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/comment/0,9236,1567698,00.html#article_continue)
The danger is that Brown will be another Callaghan
Labour has lost its way and faces political meltdown if it can't find a new direction for the post-Blair era
Jackie Ashley
Monday September 12, 2005
The Guardian
Is Labour dying on its feet? As Tony Blair returns, briefly, from his latest tour of China and India, some of his ministers fear the party that took him to power is rotting away. Like a great galleon it sails on impressively enough, with its 356 MPs, its ministers, its rich backers. But below the waterline the picture is uglier. Membership has crashed, down by more than half since 1997 from more than 400,000 to just over 200,000. In that time it has managed to get through four general secretaries - the latest, Matt Carter, has just announced his resignation, one of a line who felt they weren't listened to. More than a million fewer people voted Labour in 2005 than in 2001. But, worse than all the figures, the party doesn't seem to know what to do with its third term. It has lost its identity.
The great danger for Gordon Brown, some leading figures in the party say, is not that he fails in the end to become prime minister, but that circumstances conspire to make him a second Jim Callaghan, struggling through the dog-days of a dying administration. By the time of the next election he'll face a new Tory leader, perhaps with a new big idea - the flat tax - that is anathema to Labour supporters but has a simplistic electoral appeal. So Brown could lose the election, and Labour find itself once again in the wilderness.
Of course, you can turn all this round and focus on the fact that Labour is still celebrating its third election victory. It has already survived eight years in power and is still functioning effectively while its only real opposition has become the media. But without a vibrant party, you have only a leader cult to rely on. And when people weary of that, the whole house of cards can collapse in an instant. We know Blair is leaving office. The question is: will there be much of a Labour party left to survive him?
His promise to return with renewed vigour to the domestic agenda so far looks hollow. He is off to the US again shortly, while G8 and EU business will preoccupy him until the end of the year. The woeful situation in Iraq, further troubles in Afghanistan and the continuing preoccupation with the threat from al-Qaida mean his attention will continue to be dragged away, week by week, from the mere governance of Britain.
He does have a domestic agenda, of course. It will feature heavily in his conference speech. It consists of more of the same in the public services - more city academies and foundation hospitals. The theme will be enabling and empowering the individual citizen rather than leaving it up to the state to provide. And, above all, there is "respect", a subject close to the prime minister's heart, which brings with it more uniformed police officers, another look at the national curriculum and parenting orders.
Some measures may work better than others, but as several senior ministers point out, slapping parenting orders on families is not what they came into politics for. Nor is respect the core of Labour's purpose, compared to greater equality and help for people at the bottom. It is the sort of thing Margaret Thatcher and John Major banged on about during their years of political decline.
Foundation hospitals and city academies will never get Labour's heart pounding faster. There have been serious funding problems and disappointments over standards, fears of fundamentalist influence on teaching, and a notable lack of enthusiasm - or downright hostility over the role of the private sector and the market - in the party or in the unions. Ministers, both loyalist and not-very-loyalist, agree that this is too-thin gruel to keep the government occupied for the next two years, if that is the time Blair expects to stay.
None of this is likely to come to a head during the Labour conference. As one key New Labour player puts it, normal party politics remains suspended while the Tory leadership contest continues. In a sense, we have not really had proper party politics for more than a decade. After 1992, Labour was turned inwards as Blair and his followers transformed the party, while the Tories decayed in office. After 1997, the Conservatives were never able to give New Labour a serious run for its money. That was Blair's luck but not, perhaps, in the best interests of good government or Labour itself.
Does this matter much to the prime minister? One senior colleague speculates that when he leaves office, Blair will cut all his remaining ties with Labour anyway. He will return to the people he seems more comfortable with already: the tycoons, American property developers, Italian princes and media magnates. He will make huge amounts of money and at best move in the same circles as the Clintons and the affable rock stars. And if Labour seemed to crumble without him, he could merely smile and ask: "Miss me now?"
It doesn't have to be this way. We are in the middle of an unreal hiatus in politics, partly because of the London bombings and partly because everyone is waiting to see what kind of Tory party emerges from the leadership race. But Labour cannot afford to drift. A quiet conference, which is what everyone predicts, would be a wasted week at the seaside and hasten Labour's demise.
The interesting stuff, I hope, will be on the fringes, because there are ministers working hard to forge a harder-edged, progressive agenda. David Miliband is touring the big cities to try to find ways to reconnect. He admits that the big enemy in modern politics is "a sense of powerlessness". Harriet Harman is working on ideas for voter registration to end the class divide scarring our democracy, whereby the poor don't vote and so get brushed aside. Other ministers are talking about how to restore parliament to the heart of politics.
Meanwhile, the Brownite, centre-left Compass group has brought together academics and thinkers to draw up a manifesto for the next election, based on three themes: a sense of the good life, a new collectivism and a left political economy. The aim is to challenge not only Blair, but Brown too - there is widespread concern over his enthusiasm for market solutions. Brown himself, meanwhile, talks constantly of connecting Labour to its roots and is expending much energy trying to untangle the notion of Britishness and citizenship.
These initiatives prove Labour politicians are aware that if the years ahead bring nothing but more academies and police powers to combat terrorism, the party really will die. But what they need is leadership and focus, a new "story" that takes Labour into a second decade of power. Unless that story is developed sooner rather than later, Labour will remain on the critical list.