John Harris' article in last Saturday's Guardian asked, 'When are Labour 'moderates' going to do more than moan?' It was a call for Blair-Brown pragmatic centrists to set out some concrete, forward-thinking policies rather than analysing the reasons for Labour's 2015 General Election defeat, pontificating on the Party's current predicament and speculating on who might be a post Corbyn era electable leader. I would add that it might help if supposed mainstream moderates would stop prioritising their Pavlovian rebuttal of any criticism of the last Labour administration's record in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nothing is more certain of getting a response, and a sharp one at that, from a 'moderate', than an expression of anything less than fulsome support for the Iraq War, especially if it's from another perceived sound moderate who is held to be someone who 'should know better'. I don't want to get into a debate on whether these military interventions were right or wrong. I simply express surprise that those who call for the party to concentrate on the centre ground and what really matters to ordinary people rather than obsessing about the ideological preoccupations of the radical few, appear to be the first to ignore this advice when it comes to the Afghan and Iraq Wars. I think it's fair to say that the majority of British people think that, at worse, the wars were a mistake and, at best they would rather forget all about what they feel was and continues to be a very sorry business. In such circumstances, you would think that the true political professionals on the centre right in the Labour Party who are serious about the acquisition of power would be seeking to close down the debate on this issue and move the discussion on.
It's now popular to say that Ed Miliband was a terrible leader of the party and never had a hope of becoming Prime Minister, but this is exactly what he tried to do. Speaking at his first Party Conference as leader in 2010 he said:
I criticise nobody faced with making the toughest of decisions and I honour our troops who fought and died there. But I do believe that we were wrong. Wrong to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that.
Again, whatever one thinks about the War, this can be seen as a genuine attempt to draw a line under the issue as an unwelcome distraction in order to enable the Party to move on to more politically fertile ground where it could finally breathe some fresh air. Surely this course of action would have been the wise advice of any impartial, objective campaign manager who saw it as their job to win elections. To his credit, Miliband the Younger then did try and move the debate on and tried to raise the issue of growing inequality of income and wealth. His characterisation of the 'squeezed middle' may have initially attracted ridicule but it has now become a mainstream concern with that pillar of fiscal rectitude the IMF, no less, citing it as a drag on global economic growth.
There are plenty of things that Labour moderates can raise to engage voters and Harris points to Tristam Hunt talking about inequality and Chuka Umunna talking about electoral reform. I noticed this good article by former Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary and Lewisham girl, Rachel Reeves, on the dangers of rising private debt and the need to reform the tax system to deal with the inequality that exists in tax reliefs applied to savings that favour the well off. The arguments for dealing with inequality that are most likely to gain the most traction with the electorate are the economic ones rather than those about fairness. Pointing out that inequality keeps us all poorer is harder to rebut than seeking to appeal to our notions of right and wrong. The call to reduce inequality in order to increase economic growth and address what's been described as secular stagnation gives Labour a chance to park its tanks on the Tories' lawn.
It is a shame, given these opportunities, that the moderates seem to have devoted more energy to defending Blair's record in Iraq than defending his record on the economy and management of the public finances. Consequently, the battle against self-defeating Austerity has, bizarrely, been left to the Corbynistas. The recent floods, whilst terrible for those suffering their indiscriminate effects, have been an absolute gift for any pragmatic centrist who wanted to appeal to all sections of the Party and the country by arguing for the need for an interventionist state and increased levels of public spending to 'fix the roof' when the low interest rate environment 'is shining'. (see here, here and here for example)
Rather than complain that Corbyn is a disaster and speculate on which 'moderate' from the PLP should succeed him when the time comes, perhaps all of us pragmatic centrists should concentrate on saying something that might have a chance of engaging the interest of people who didn't vote Labour last year.
PS It was nice to get such a good response when out yesterday telling commuters about Sadiq Khan's pledge to freeze bus and train fares if he is elected the next Mayor of London.
No comments:
Post a Comment