June 2015: after defeat

I wrote this after Labour’s defeat in 2015 for a previous version of the Novara website. It seems to be a little bit relevant now in 2022, too.

The Political Is Personal: New Labour and the Corrosion of Character

With the current leadership contenders squaring up on the basis of who
can be more business-friendly, tough on immigration and increasingly
open to ‘public sector reform,’ there is talk of a return to New Labour.
The right of the Labour Party, having been partially stymied by the
Miliband leadership, now practically controls the flow of events and
appears to have a grip on the surrounding (and possibly defining)
discourse of the 2015–2020 opposition. But at this point, it may be
worth taking a step back and investigating what New Labour actually was.

The first Blair ministry in 1997 included only around six ministers who
could be described as truly Blairite, or in some way dedicated to Peter
Mandelson’s ‘project.’ Back in 1997, there was a striking continuity
between the John Smith (and Neil Kinnock) version of Labour. There was a large contingent of Gordon Brown’s supporters, many of whom were hardly the storm troopers of ‘fearless’ public sector reform, old Labour right-wingers (George Robertson), ex-Bennite Keynesian leftists (Robin Cook, Clare Short,
Frank Dobson) and a large grouping of middle-of-the-road social democrats (Margaret Beckett, Mo Mowlam, Harriet Harman) and even one or two actual Bennites (Michael Meacher). Looking at this list, one could just about argue that New Labour was, beyond the rewriting of Clause IV, simply a case of
repackaging. Many of these politicians had forged their political
identities in the late 1970s and early 1980s as radical trades
unionists, activists or municipal socialists.

If New Labour didn’t necessarily extend across the top team of the Party
back in 1997, then what was it? It was founded primarily in the party
apparatus, in the different offices and regions which comprised Labour’s
core infrastructure. Appointments from 1994 onwards were increasingly
captured by insiders who then appointed more insiders. Starting from
Labour Students, Jim Murphy, Stephen Twigg, James Purnell, Blair
McDougall, Ben Lucas, Richard Angell and others established a mafia-like grip upon the levers of a machine which was to rapidly propel themselves, and others connected, into Parliament, and into positions of influence, through the 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010 elections. Naturally, this New Labour elite also featured other dynamics; as the prodigal sons of the then-closeted Peter Mandelson, one might surmise that many enjoyed a ‘casting couch’ relationship with their erstwhile mentor. Additionally, there were also the networks of consultancies and think-tanks, the ‘post-collective’ thinking of Demos, the ‘radical reformism’ of the IPPR and of course, the ‘stormtrooper’ ethos of Progress.

To understand the current state of the Labour Party, and the limited
demographic profile of most of its current parliamentary group of MPs,
it is necessary to understand the manipulation of the party behind the scenes
from the late 1980s onwards. It was a period in which the Labour left’s
influence dwindled to a tiny fringe, and the majority of branches,
especially in the North and Scotland, virtually conceded control over
selection of candidates to London.

Here comes the tricky part. Those of us who know, and are ‘of’ the left
of the Labour Party, would probably have to concede that remorselessly
effective execution has never been an especially strong characteristic.
The brilliance of Peter Mandelson has been horrendously exaggerated — in
his career he has been deeply involved in three big defeats — 1987, 1992
and 2010. Yet he gave an impression of competence, of being able to
communicate to a wider audience, of sharpness. From the late 1980s
through to the 2010s, the Labour left has manifested itself through the
Campaign for Labour Democracy, through the LRC, through a myriad of
different organisations. They have helped individuals, and certain
groups. But they have failed to sell the idea of a Labour left as being
a valid positive way to organise — one which could be intellectually and
politically worthwhile. Perhaps worse, they have failed to reflect
properly upon their failure. It isn’t always clear that the Labour left
is self-aware. This is indeed possibly an unfair criticism, given that
Labour has, on the whole, been entirely unaware of what its mistakes
have been — but nonetheless, it reflects that Labour left operate within
Labour, and have problems differentiating themselves.

By the time Tony Blair had stepped down in 2007, and Brown had assumed
his ill-fated premiership, there was no basis for a broad-based shadow cabinet as there had, perhaps, been in 1997. The balance within the Labour group of
MPs had changed, and has continued to change, with only limited
redress as unions belatedly started to force their candidates into
winnable seats in the last few years. Arguably, Labour has been in an
internally-directed state of perpetual motion towards the right since
1988, independent of outside pressures.

However, the Brown administration left a residue of ambiguity, switching
between populist left rhetoric and somewhat unconvincing, if alarming,
authoritarianism, which allowed a certain amount of leeway for the more
cautious, social democratic wing of the party to regroup. Ed
Miliband’s victory was indicative that some senior figures wished to
stabilise the party along Kinnockite/Brownite lines. The administrative
core of the party, its officials and MPs, hated this idea from the
start. Ed Miliband was a stranded leader, offered little or no support
by his right-leaning shadow cabinet, and forced to rely upon his own
people, rather than a party machine which despised him as an interloper.

The irony is, of course, that Ed Miliband was himself parachuted into a
safe seat, on the same basis that many others were, in the clear
expectation that he would support the prevailing political line, as did
his brother. The real sense of resentment towards Ed Miliband was based
on the feeling that he had betrayed New Labour and the basis of his
political existence. The money from rich donors, having slowed somewhat
during Brown’s leadership, soon slowed to a trickle. This led to Labour
being comprehensively outspent by the Conservatives in the runup to the
2015 election. Labour’s voice, not always clear, not always consistent,
was always going to be smaller.

In the aftermath of a poorly-conceived campaign,
there is scant consolation on offer to the left of the Party, and it is
unlikely that any of the current candidates, once victorious, will pay
much heed to the few MPs who comprise the left bloc of the parliamentary
party. The possibility that a neo-Blairite leadership might offer PR may
help piece together a coalition on a temporary basis; yet evidence from
Germany suggests that dreams of a left pluralism, as envisaged by the
sunny liberalism of Compass, may still only realise a minority electoral status, in the absence of a self-confident and assertive form of democratic socialism — and this, of course, is in a country where there is a sizeable force to the left (Die Linke). Such a model of a right-wing Labour Party, having accepted much of the Conservative’s stance on austerity and privatisation, would be
especially prone to hemorrhaging votes from all sides. It is doubtful
that the promise of PR would sustain a political force through the
resulting turbulence.

It’s always risky making political predictions. I suggest that Labour’s
electoral problems are not necessarily terminal problems; that a more
energetic and hopeful vision of the British Isles, combined with Harold
Wilson-style political acumen, might actually succeed in enthusing an
electorate enough to ensure a minority Labour administration at some
point, given the likely trajectory of a Conservative government. One
answer to the different demands within Labour’s incredibly broad
coalition would be to allow different voices to emerge. There has not,
for example, been a high-profile Eurosceptic in the party since the
early 1990s, illustrating that one of the biggest mistakes made during
Ed Miliband’s catastrophic party management was to focus on a
presidential style, rather than attempting to broaden the range of
accents and personas representing Labour in the media.

A very simple change would be the encouragement of mavericks and outliers on different issues, with Labour policy then being seen as partially determined
through a process of debate, rather than direction from an
Oxbridge-based central elite. This would allow people with different
sympathies to identify themselves with Labour in one way or another.
Belatedly, Labour may finally realise that it needs John McDonnell and
Jeremy Corbyn more than they need Labour. Unfortunately, however, apart from a few exceptions, mavericks in Labour politics are not what they used to
be.

One of the big understated problems, as a result of continued right-wing
mobilisation over the last twenty years, is that Labour has chronic
personnel problems. Put simply, it is about who they actually are, what
they represent and what they believe (or, if you like, the absence of a
system of values). Because the Labour right mobilised from within
student politics, the voice of Labour has become, at best, couched in
the tones of a seminar, and at worst, becomes a braying form of
condescension.

Yet it should be restated that anything that raises the profile of the
left — such as a stalking horse leadership contender — can and does have
the effect of educating, if not mobilizing, the television audiences and
red-top readers who might not otherwise be exposed to socialist ideas in
any form. It’s a somewhat rotten job, but arguably, someone has to do
it. At the same time, it is divorced from the real battles of mainstream
politics, those orchestrated by Big Media. We cannot blame the Labour
left for this. At the same time, the fact that many Labour leftists tend
towards Marxism, when even social liberalism is beleaguered in what
passes for Labour ideology, leaves a large space on the left between
Blairism and Marxism — a space where, arguably, most Labour voters
reside, and where the SNP and Greens have made particular inroads.

The emergence of zombie voices in the few days following the defeat, as if choreographed by a particularly lugubrious ringmaster, was especially symbolic. The Labour Party cannot now escape its 1997 past, as it escaped its 1983 past, through the repackaging of itself as New Labour. Its attempt to adopt ‘One Nation Labour’ as a brand was weakly formulated, and then discarded, like so much other detritus abandoned in the last few years. As a result, the electoral problems, as a party beset by more or less credible challenges to Labour’s working-class vote across the country, may become especially acute. Renewal will be extraordinarily difficult to achieve. It is
impossible to see how austerity can be reconciled with any kind of
functioning Labour Party. If Labour cannot defend the common wealth,
then ultimately, we will need to find another way to do so.