In Labour, we have an obsession with trademarks or brand names. We invented ‘New Labour’, and then had trouble defining the moment of its precise dissolution partly because we couldn’t define what it was. Tony Blair’s ‘fans’ continue to cite that he never lost a General Election, but do not seem to concede that Margaret Thatcher was so deeply unpopular that he could have achieved very much more. Certainly, we need now to examine what exactly Labour is doing. It has coined the term ‘the progressive left’, but it threatens to be a repackaging of an ill-defined concept.
The attractive notion for Labour, including socialists, is that there remains a body of voters who vote against the right, including Labour and Liberal Democrat voters. It is then easy to call them ‘left’ and ‘progressive’. As a pendulum of national feeling, the latest by-election was useless, although many congratulations to Dan Jarvis for winning the Barnsley by-election with approximately 15,000 votes (10X the LibDem vote, at least). But it is too early to write off the ‘progressive left’.
The reason for this in my opinion is clear. Labour has made massive mistakes in civil liberties, although it did enact the Human Rights Act to enshrine in law the European Convention of Human Rights. The problems with human rights have come from the legislature misapplying the Convention, not the Convention fundamentally itself, in my view.
Also, it can’t be ignored that the Gini coefficient of inequality shot up under Tony Blair, following Margaret Thatcher, not ameliorated by Gordon Brown whose moves on corporation tax was very inequality-friendly. Labour and the Liberal Democrats, as personalities, i.e. Ed and Nick, do not hold the solution to forming the ‘progressive left’. The party members do. We need to take account of those people on the left who don’t feel that such massive and fast cuts are unavoidable. We need to articulate the fact that we do not make an assumption of marketisation. In other words, if we are to maintain the NHS as measurable-outcome driven, we need a proper formulation of the measurable outcomes in wellbeing which must be developed for assessment of healthcare interventions in dementia and other care of the elderly. If not, we cannot simply assume marketisation.
If Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow (the Liberal Democrat health and social care minister) can, with the Liberal Democrat party, define that it agrees and will vote with marketisation for the next five years, for example, then good for them. Otherwise, they should acknowledge that there is a ‘progressive left’ – but we should avoid using the title unless we can define it with precision. The reality is that many innocent LibDem councillor candidates may take the hit for the unpopularity of their national policies, but in that case such candidates should really take a long hard look at where their party is heading. And for that matter – so should we, in Labour. For example, we are only just kept afloat by Union money – the overriding consensus is that we don’t listen to the Union members enough. If we become elected, we should not misuse the privilege of power, as we have done so so often in the past.
