Losing Labour's core vote, which has happened now in London to some extent, Crewe markedly, and Glasgow East devastatingly must be the chief concern of any Labour politician. The debate about the increasing of 'choice' over publicly provided services, or the outsourcing of service provision to private entities is by the board now. Labour needs to consolidate its very foundations. The 'choice' agenda has lost out to the 'survive' agenda imposing itself in every lower paid home in the United Kingdom.
So David Miliband has been forced to act earlier than he wished, proffering a New Labour programme for the future made up of the usual empty inanities dressed as policy, because the core has begun to act to protect itself. Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson, John Cruddas, and not so much the left as the old Labour members of the Parliamentary Labour Party have rooting systems spreading through the union and affiliated party, as well as the constituency parties - the Party most shocked by the loss of Crewe, and Glasgow East. The membership of the Labour Movement is embodied here, in the unions, affiliates, and CLPs, not in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Harman was voted into office as deputy Leader by all of these party votes, unlike the failed Leader. Others in the PLP are union-based and union supported, or affiliated with parts of the wider Labour movement. They know that the Party must exist either as its mass membership, both organised, and individuals, and seek their interests and their aims, or it will have no purpose and disintegrate. New Labour is not a purpose that interests working people and is becoming understood rapidly as inimical to their hopes and expectations now, in our changed economic circumstances made so much worse by Brown's policies.
Recognising that Labour cannot win a general election, and acknowledging that the Labour Movement has no wish to be involved in any anti-democratic manoeuvres or attempts to prolong artificially the current regime's hold on power, it is likely that David Miliband's weak and disloyal atttack upon his puppet master will be pushed aside. Pushed aside by the leaders of the Labour Movement who will accept the need to regroup, abandon the anti- working people policies of New Labour, limit the damage to the Movement and establish a firm resistance to any damage to the working conditions and lifestyles of the core Labour supporters, who will otherwise abandon the Party to oblivion.
This is not to say that people wanting a continuation of the last eleven years ahould vote Conservative. No Conservative government would engage in the financial incompetence and recklessness, the economic folly and disregard for manufacturing and infrastructures, the grotesque levels and complexities of the taxation system, the warmongering and wasted opportunities of New Labour and its punctured dreams.
It is to say that voting Labour must be a choice for the support of the working people and for their aspirations and security, not a vote for the ruined, lying, deculturalised, economic and financial wreck New Labour's idealogues have brought us to.
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8 comments:
I have a good chum who actually voted Nulabyrinthe because he felt tha continuity was a better ideal than a new deal with an untried Tory crowd.
Apart from disagreeing with him, I do feel that your last few words sum it all up - it would take a huge idealogical swing to make died-in-the-wool labour supporters change their minds, but once that happens like at Glasgow etc, there can be a hugely effective swing away - maybe for good, who knows.
Happened last time.
This is the first coherent analysis that I have seen concerning where Labour might be heading. Most of the press are fixated on personalities. Will it be Milliband, Johnson, Harperson etc?
I take it that circling their wagons around the core/union wing of the party will ensure a lurch to the left, hopefully from my perspective guaranteeing that the LibDems and Labour spend the next generation squabbling over who is the rightful opposition.
In 1996, lunching tête-à-tête at the late-lamented Vitello D'Oro (!) in Westminter with a journo well-acquainted with the People's Party, it was explained to me that the totality of actual NuLab supporters could all be accommodated comfortably in said restaurant at a single sitting: and that this lack of depth exercised Blair's crew considerably
(my reporter-friend surmised at the time that this might result in an anti-Blair coup shortly after he was elected: but obviously not)
it has to be imagined that the luncheon requirements of the massed ranks of the Milipede faithful would not inconvenience a taxi drivers' cafe-shelter
It was your observation that New Labour is so shallow, that you made months ago ND, that fed into this view. It is not all up for a party that represents the interests etc., of working people. What is all up is the last eleven years that has battened onto that party and unleashed such a mess of incompetence and immorality.
Labour will lose the next election but they would be only sensible to first ensure that it takes place at all, and second regroup on policies that will permit their supporters to vote for them again. Third, a losing but solid Labour party could represent the interests of people who are facing great economic difficulties with few resources; the German trade unions make their contribution to peaceful and accepted adjustment to changing economic circumstance, and its not all concessions, by any means.
Very kind to say that JE. There could be a lurch not to the left but to a reasonable and organised representation of some important sectors of our society.
There is no reason to think we are facing extreme-left infiltrated unions any more, or that core Labour would not be fairly socially conservative after what has happened under New Labour.
Brown destroying the Labour party and democracy has been a nightmare, but it looks as if the old party is going to pull up in time, Scroblene. The LibDems can't fill the gap, there has to be some representative organisation of one half of capitalism. Who knows, there might be a return of working class conservatism; more Angels! Models of continental large state authoritarianism are really not us, are they. Nor riding roughshod over the really needy
"No Conservative government would engage in the financial incompetence and recklessness, the economic folly and disregard for manufacturing and infrastructures"
Remind me how previous conservative governments managed our manufacturing base and invested in infrastructure again?
Roy, do your own research. Starting with which Conservative government you want to consider, and why. Hating the collapse of heavy industry in the Thatcher years is not good enough.
Longer time horizons; it helps.
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