There are a number of overly-complicated accounts of what ‘One nation’, in its latest reincarnation, is about. One interpretation of ‘One nation’ is that it is literally that; scottish citizens can feel proud that ‘Team GB’ has won another Olympic medal, an example which Ed Miliband actually gave in his conference speech. The general consensus is that the speech was very well delivered, but lacking in firm policy. This is clearly unfair as a number of examples were given in that speech given last Tuesday, and Labour is currently undergoing a detailed, complicated, policy review, being led by Jon Cruddas. Describing the next steps in Labour’s policy review, Ed Miliband has said it would focus on three themes: rebuilding the economy, rebuilding society and rebuilding politics. Jon Cruddas has indeed previously provided that, “For me, politics is more about emotion than programme; more groups, community and association- imagined as well as real- rather than theoretical or scientific.” The significance of this is not to be underestimated, as the three planks of policy review, namely economics, society and political process, if executed correctly, would be more than sufficient to rebuild ‘One Nation Labour’. What is clear is that ‘One Nation Labour’ is not a slick re-branding exercise; it could provide a natural break from the neoclassical or neoliberal approach taken by New Labour, and it is clear that Ed Miliband wishes to make it a sustainable political ideology for the party which he leads.
The economy
Peter Kellner argues that Labour needs a new doctrine of equality.
Kellner argues that,
“If Britain is to remain a part of the global economy, in which trade and investment ignore national boundaries, it will struggle to fight the forces that are driving low incomes further down, and high incomes further up. Symbolically, we can and should clamp down on the worst excesses, such as bankers’ undeserved bonuses; and more could be done to banish poverty by, for example, raising the minimum wage and enforcing it properly. But these policies will make only a slight difference to the normal measure of income inequality, the Gini coefficient.”
There have been countless descriptions of why the deficit exploded in the global financial crisis of 2008/9. For example Nick Thornsby describes that,
“Whatever Ed Miliband’s claims, the Labour party clearly have to take a significant share of the responsibility. Firstly because the government was spending more that it was taking in before the recession, clearly putting the UK in an unusually bad position (by international standards) when the recession began. And secondly – and more significantly – because they assumed they had done away with the business cycle – they believed they had “abolished boom and bust” – when actually the truth was that Britain was living through an enormous boom, and consequently underwent an enormous bust in 2007.”
Peter Kellner has further argued that,
“Labour has less to worry about on that front (though other YouGov data suggest that the party is vulnerable to the charge that it is too soft on illegal immigrants and welfare claimants). On the other hand, it can’t shake off the charge that it messed up the economy when in office; but there’s not much it can do about that now. What Ed Miliband does need to do is persuade voters that he heads a competent team that is in touch with their own supporters, that Labour has learned from its failures in office, and that he, personally, has the backbone as well as strength of purpose to take the tough decisions that will enable it to govern Britain effectively.”
Ed Miliband has some economic priorities for this.
The Guardian noticeably gave its support for Ed Miliband in his approach to banking regulation. Ed Miliband does not feel that the Coalition has gone far enough in implementing the recommendations by Sir John Vickers, and interestingly the Guardian editorial uses an experience from across the Atlantic to support its argument:
“… , Congress has failed to put in place a coherent set of rules to offset the eye-watering amount of money the Obama administration pumped into the banks, leaving the US with much the same arrangements as before the Lehman Brothers crash. Banks, awash with cheap funds, lend to the same people under the same rules and pay the same bonuses to their executives. Senators Dodd and Frank, who put their name to the new banking regulations, have sadly found their legislation lobbied to death, increasing the danger of another crash in a few years. Miliband is right to say the same is happening in the UK.”
Sustainability is critically another key factor. In law, there is a duty of directors to promote short-term profitability, as judged by the shareholder dividend, and sometimes corporates can prioritise this above business ethics. For example, it is said that it was many years before RH Tawney defined socialism in terms of its objective of resistance to the market and its constraints to private profit. He had identified two approaches: ethical and economic. The ‘responsible capitalism’ narrative, firmly footed in the ‘strategy and society’ work of Prof Michael Porter from Harvard concerning how corporates can be good citizens like everyone else, was of course famously introduced by Miliband in his 2011 conference speech in Liverpool. There has always been disquiet about why corporate citizens should voluntarily wish to embrace good citizenship, but the recent LIBOR scandal has demonstrated how potentially the City could lose its competitive advantage by not being a safe place to do business.
I spoke to an expert in wealth management at a Fabian Society event last week and he echoed what a fellow panel member from Which? suggested – that corporates, including banks, could publish transparently hard data on its business activities, such that customers could make an informed choice as to whether to transact with them (this is otherwise known as the “differentiation” strategy). Miliband interestingly highlights that it could be possible to legislate for this: “You see businesses tell me that the pressure for the fast buck from City investors means they just can’t take the long view. They want to plan one year, two years, ten years ahead but they have to publish their accounts in Britain every 3 months. In line with the wishes of the best of British business, we will end that rule so companies in Britain can take the long term productive view for our country.” Also notably, Ed Miliband has also started a debate about immigration within Europe, and the effect particularly that the behaviour of some some multinational companies and recruitment firms in employing workers with poor standards, for example: “So the next Labour government will crack down on employers who don’t pay the minimum wage. We will stop recruitment agencies just saying they are only going to hire people from overseas. And we will end the shady practices, in the construction industry and elsewhere, of gang-masters. So we need a system of immigration that works for the whole country and not just for some.”
The society
Welfare for many in Labour will be of concern; disabled citizens are irritated that their living allowances have been mixed up with the “lazy benefit scrounger” rhetoric, particularly as disability living allowance is not an employment allowance. Many have felt indeed that welfare might be the next “big” issue, closely after the NHS and the economy, particularly after the handling of work capability assessments by ATOS.
The NHS is often cited as a “national treasure”, but certainly an institution which is well cherished amongst the vast majority of members of the British Public. In relation to this, it is indeed interesting that Jon Cruddas, when talking about institutions in general, says, “… socialism is about the creation of institutions that allow us to self realise, to flourish. Vaclav Havel once said that we ‘ are capable of love, friendship, solidarity, sympathy and tolerance…:we must set these fundamental dimensions of our humanity free from their ‘private’ exile and accept them as the only genuine point of meaningful human community’.” It is indeed particularly noteworthy that Ed Miliband wishes to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012), and to eliminate competition from the NHS. While it appears that Ed Miliband will keep NHS Foundation Trusts and commissioning in some form (possibly through retention of the clinical commissioning groups and the NHS Commissioning Board), Miliband appears to signalling that activities in the NHS will not be caught by the competitive legal definition of the word “undertaking” in domestic and European law, and Labour will return to a NHS built on traditional values as provided in the speech: “Not values of markets, money and exchange but values of compassion, care and co-operation.” This is fundamental, as it appears that Miliband and Burnham would be prepared to legislate for the NHS, asking existing structures to do different things, to avoid another costly reorganisation of the NHS which could potentially cost billions, at a time when England is struggling to meet the efficiency demands of the Nicholson challenge anyway.
Ed Miliband admits that the focus on universities was incorrect, in that 50% of individuals were failed by an academic drive which put little value in vocational qualifications. Andrew Adonis in “Education, Education, Education” has certainly started the ball rolling, and the growth of a skills-based economy (and indeed the Technical E-Bacc which Adonis himself is an architect of), and the idea that the private sector would have a psychological and social contract with the state is indeed a concrete policy proposal. Labour latterly has tried not to use the term “industrial policy” of late, but the issue that Ed Miliband does not see a distinction between private and public sector is a useful one in framing the future policy. No vested interest will be overly powerful in Miliband’s one nation; whilst Ed Miliband explicitly refers to bankers (and he has said that he will work closely with anyone wishing to introduce a ‘mansion tax’), Miliband is mindful that members of the Unions only constitute 40% of Labour’s funding, and that Conference last year agreed to implement a different means of electing its Leader. Miliband will be fully aware, however, that many members of the public do not feel that the pay of the “super-rich” is fair, and indeed this is a concern shared by the Chartered Institute of Management Consultants for both private and public sector. A criticism of the ‘One Nation’ speech is that it is something which potentially could be attractive to workers, if there were an emphasis on building affiliations of working class individuals in communities consistent with Maurice Glasman’s goal for Blue Labour, but New Labour and Progress (amongst others) will be keen to ensure that ‘One Nation Labour’ is also attractive to floating voters who might otherwise not vote for Labour. A number of Union leaders broadly welcomed the speech, ranging from full-on acceptance to caution saying that it was lacking in policy. While Vernon Bogdanor in the New Statesman in an article entitled “Half echoes of the past” this week has warned that Labour should perhaps be keen to keep a safe distance from Blue Labour, it is likely that Jon Cruddas will not wish to see any watering down of socialism and working class values in the policy review, whatever the recent history of the Labour Party.
The political process.
There is of course a concern that ‘for one nation’ to succeed, it has to do so on a number of levels. Harriet Harman in Progress Online described it as, ” With the Tories’ collapse in Scotland, Wales and much of the north, and Labour making progress again in the south, we are now the only ‘one-nation party’.” This is reflected in Ed Miliband’s observation that, “So we must be a One Nation party to become a One Nation government, to build a One Nation Britain. “Currently, in the three southern regions, where Labour have 24 target seats, Labour have only 10 Labour MPs and far fewer councillors. Here, the Fabian policy document, “Southern discomfort again” might provide some useful clues in particular about how Labour might form new connections with potential voters:
“Any party seeking to recover from electoral defeat has to develop a coherent analysis of why it lost, and what ought to be done to put it right. For a decade after New Labour’s 1997 election triumph, the Conservative Party refused to listen to voters and, as a consequence, suffered its worst sequence of election defeats since 1832. In the 1950s and the 1980s Labour made a similar mistake which condemned it to long periods out of power. If the party is to escape the impotence of opposition, it will need to shape a political strategy that will enable it to win next time.”
The critical aspect about all of this, thankfully, is that Labour has got time on its side. There is no point in Labour publishing its policies way in advance of 2015, particularly since the economic performance of the UK is declining by the second (as illustrated in the latest Labour initiative, “the borrowing counter”). Labour has said it regrettably that it would not be able to reverse many of the cuts, such as the closure of the law centres, or certain NHS institutions being abolished (e.g. PCTs or SHAs), but the approach taken by Ed Miliband indeed is a practical one for the time-being. Ed Miliband’s leadership is now a curious mixture of ‘charismatic leadership’ and ‘crisis leadership'; ‘charismatic’ in that Ed Miliband pulled off a performance which meant that people have not written him off, and seem prepared to give him and Labour a chance, despite Labour’s potential mistakes, because the Coalition’s performance has been so poor. If a week is a long time in politics, two to three years constitute an ever longer period.
