Banner since added; crudely - Red for the many; White for politics; Red for equality; White for accountability; Green for the environment; Pale Blue for peace.
Content below originally published @ 8:31 am, Mon 4th Jul 2011
And suddenly it's a time for critiques.
Blue Labour’s analysis featured on Thursday’s Daily Politics. New Labour’s purple book (which as I understand it is only a concept and not yet a book, but is inevitably bound to focus on the need to modernise). The re-publication of Tony Blair’s book in paperback with a new intro. And Ed Miliband’s speech to the Policy Forum in Wrexham.
The use of blue – however originally intended, even if only as a counter-action to the new defunct Red Conservatives - will (as Luke Akehurst said on TV) disconcert Labour party members by seeming to want to ditch Labour’s aims and values. Maurice Glasman said to Danny Finklestein, “read it carefully and don’t jump to premature conclusions”, but if you’re trying to reach out, the choice of colour is unfortunate since a good deal of what they might be talking about is still red.
Maurice was asked to cite the Blue Labour critique of New Labour and his reply was –
- Disrespect of the managerialism of New Labour; such thinking led to the banking collapse and led to the undermining of public ethos;
- Respect for the workforce. Blue Labour puts people and relationships first.
On Old Labour,
- a distrust of Keynesian economics (tied in with a narrow draw of leaders for people who took PPE at Oxford and a failure of working class leaders to come through);
- a rejection of the nationalisation model (preferring the German social market economy with co-determination, worker representation and an emphasis on vocation)
at which point he got cut of because of time. (Shame, cos I think Keynesian economics have worked, and just need to be applied at an international level, financed by a Robin Hood tax).
Bit worried that one of Maurice's first ideas is for schools to be run - one-third staff, one-third parents, one-third funders. Yet another re-organisation and why would one model down from the top be suitable? Had to smile though when Mauruice responded to a critic by saying "don't worry!" Entertaining on the TV.
Ed Miliband’s speech at Wrexham explored Old Labour and New Labour and summarised his critique as – “Old Labour forgot about the public. New Labour forgot about the party. And, by the time we left office, we had lost touch with both.”
Now this is way too harsh (parts of what Labour had to say in the eighties was vindicated by the banking crisis), but delivered harshly to prompt change.
As no doubt is Tony Blair’s latest, reported in the Guardian – http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/jul/01/tony-blair-says-politics-conspiracy-against-rational-decision-making?INTCMP=SRCH - which summarises his critique as -
1. Political parties are bad for politics; specifically, he says they turn good ideas into "mush"; “though the people distrust ideologically driven politics, party activists are even more wedded to them”;
2. Special interest groups block reform; this is a problem that has got worse in recent years;
3. Bright outsiders are not involved in politics; for this, he partly blames the press.
4. Politicians are too similar to each other; “The gene pool going into politics is now frighteningly limited.”
5. Civil servants are too conventional.
6. Overall, the system is almost incapable of allowing leaders to take good decisions.
Well, yay to point 4, but the rest kinda emphasises Blue Labour’s concerns about New Labour being managerial. And the odd thing about all of that is that if Blair had only made a mantra of the good managerial prtactice that were being developed during his time (which were applied to local government & schools and which had developed well towards the end (early Ofsted was just horrible)), he might have made more progress with the civil service and focussed on service delivery instead of re-organisation.
The re-publication of Alastair Campbell’s diaries prompts a different dynamic. Beyond trying to tell Prince Charles to butt out, the terrible relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is portrayed as being picked up by other countries as a device to undermine Britain’s negotiating position. Not good. The Guardian reports – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/03/diaries-alastair-campbell-purity-personal -
“A dismaying truth for political commentators is that much of what we say turns out to be wrong. We are brought up to emphasise ideology, to neglect psychology and to observe government as a series of clashes between big people with big ideas acting in ways that are by turns manipulative and idealistic but explicable. Yet emotional irrationality is a primary influence on the conduct of power.”
Nobody can want that as an epitaph. Clearly undermining the notion of good decision making.
And so to the Purple Book. http://www.progressonline.org.uk/purplebook/ “Why purple? Purple is where red meets blue; it's the centre ground of British politics where elections are won.” Oh dear. I mean, if we went purple, doesn’t the centre ground then become a purpleish-blue?
But Progress does almost recover – “The book will set out a winning agenda for Labour in 2015 by addressing the challenges Britain will face in 2020. It will focus on the redistribution of power and the rediscovering of Labour's non-statist tradition. Its focus moves beyond the traditional New Labour concern for empowering public service users, to the question of how we redistribute power in the economy, society and the state more widely.” We can also be assured that Progress are still in favour of modernising; indeed the moderninsing message is getting rather old. .
Really, to win in 2015, we will have to talk about Britain in 2015. But the key question is how they say it “addressing the challenges Britain will face”. Being ambitious for Britain.
So back to 2010.
We lost because we lost permission to speak to a large number of voters for a good part of 2009 and 2010. Primarily the expenses scandal, but also perceptions about the emotional maturity of Gordon Brown. All rammed home by a media that either serves the moneyed elites or often trivialises politics as a force for good and for change.
And we lost because of the bad things that fell out from the bankers’ crisis, and we did not have a sufficient critique to explore how the markets might fail the people. From that, too many people are in too much debt, too many people feel insecure at work, too many people don’t feel they can be a part of the mainstream (getting a job or owning a house) and too many people are poor when the country has massive assets and huge economic power. All made very bitter by the reminders of the bankers doing very well indeed for themselves and not in the least bit accountable for the damage they’ve done.
This all overwhelmed the massive progress we’d made in bringing children on and improving people’s life expectancy and health services – in part through technology and reform, but in large part spending much more (through freeing money up via getting more people into work and paying in taxes). In looking to the future , we need to address the criticisms and the existing & foreseeable challenges the world presents us with – globalisation, an ageing society, climate change and peaks in natural resources available, especially oil.
I wish I had the ability to write my own book. But it couldn’t just be one colour. But a combination. White for embracing politics as the way to resolve differences between conflicting demands within society. Red for achieving more together than we do apart. Red again for helping those who need most help. Red again for a more equal society. Perhaps white for accountability and better management. Green for the environment. Pale Blue for peace and negotiated nuclear disarmament. Definitely not orange – the creed of personal liberty at the expense of rights and responsibilities. No scope either it seems for yellow or purple, but I guess the rainbow stands for tackling inequalities generally.
So perhaps a book of many, many colours. But mainly red. Mailnly red, and not blue and not purple.
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