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A poverty of aspiration is killing the parliamentary Labour Party
Somebody defined ‘insanity’ as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It might have been Einstein?
Labour has in fact had some time to get to grips with the ‘post Thatcher settlement’. Whether or not you happen to agree that a Labour pig with a rosette could have been elected in 1997, it is a material fact that the New Labour administration was the continuity candidate in reality but the change candidate by name.
The private finance initiative had been incubating under the administration of Sir John Major from about 1993, at roughly the same time fellow Conservative Lord David Willetts had written a pamphlet on it for the Social Market Foundation. As an example of public-private initiatives, it could be argued that the PFI was brought in with the best of sincere intentions. However, it has seen a lot of taxpayers’ money being siphoned off pursuant to unconscionable interest rates on loan agreements from the public sector to the private sector. Call it what it is – even if emotionally – this is privatisation.
As it was, ‘ready to go’ contracts under Coopers and Lybrand were launched with gusto in 1997 with the accession of St Tony The Blair. It is a policy which has persisted, no matter who is actually in government. The other policy in the portfolio of privatisation, this time at the individual level, called personal budgets (but consumer-directed care in other jurisdictions) has likewise been introduced, without a clear democratic mandate, whoever is in office and in power.
The setting up of autonomous NHS Foundation Trusts competing with each other to drive up quality was a nice idea, but deeply flawed. What was seen in the NHS Act 2006 of the dying days of New Labour was later to be invigorated in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. The 2012 legislation from the Coalition contained an explosive clause, known as section 75, which would obligate the outsourcing of services through competitive tender unless there was a sole bidder.
Competition, under both New Labour and the Conservatives, provided extra costs for example through corporate legal disputes, did not drive up quality, and most damagingly could mean that decisions about the provision of healthcare were not made on the basis of clinical need but on the basis of economic regulation. This was at a time when competition in oligopolistic economies, such as utilities, had blatantly failed.
The resentment for many Labour voters who left, and want to return to support Jeremy Corbyn, is that there was no point supporting New Labour if it, to all intents and purposes, is a carbon copy of the Conservatives. The term #ToryLite reflects this, and the rather naive belief has been that New Labour, resurrected as ‘Saving Labour’, can only possibly win if the Labour Party adopts the same centrist position as the Conservatives.
Nowhere was this more obvious was in Ed Miliband MP’s reaction to Theresa May MP’s speech on the steps of Downing Street as she (not he) assumed the mantle of Prime Minister. Ed Miliband not only will have seen the echoes of the meme ‘making the economy work for all’, which he had argued in his leader’s speech as ‘responsible capitalism’ but also led to a profound deconstruction of where Labour had lost his way.
Quoting Tony Benn in his speech reacting to #Brexit, Ed Miliband pointedly has said that #Brexit demands the left to have an intelligent look at why many voters, perhaps the ones who had not benefited from free movement of workers, had voted for #Brexit. And, oddly enough, Lord Mandelson in a speech just days’ previously had come to the same conclusion – except Ed Miliband MP pointedly added that ‘the reasons for #Brexit went far beyond the campaign’, parsimoniously as a rebuke of those who had criticised Jeremy Corbyn MP.
The uncomfortable fact for many Labour MPs is that Jeremy Corbyn is no more ‘responsible’ or ‘at fault’ for the #Brexit result, than he is for a sizeable number of free-thinking reasonable MPs voting against Trident in a wide ranging debate on defence diversity.
Hilary Benn MP is somewhat pathologically obsessed about ‘winning’ and seems quite determined to encourage fellow Labour MPs to jump off the cliff with him. Benn Jnr. said pointedly to Sarah Montague on the #r4today programme this morning, “I would happily die in the Labour Party.” It is unlikely, however, that the Labour Party will die in the near future, despite the set of events he started leading to the indignity of sitting MPs refusing to support Jeremy Corbyn. Only nine months previously, Umunna, Kendall, Cooper and Reeves had run off the pitch in protest, even before the starting whistle had blown on a new match.
Rather, the Labour Party appears to have been invigorated with a surge in membership. As Steve Richards, leading political commentator, advised on Sunday Politics at the weekend, “It is actually quite simple – the parliamentary Labour Party can’t work with Jeremy Corbyn”. It is a moot point whether Corbyn particularly wants to work with these Labour MPs, on the other hand.
The strangest thing about the whole fiasco has been the abject failure of the parliamentary Labour Party to mount successfully an ‘Anyone but Corbyn’ candidate. And even a small panel of current Labour MPs last night on #newsnight, following a strange hagiography of Owen Smith MP from Nick Watt, pointed out that there were no points of divergence on policy.
The question must remain why there has been such a strong hate campaign against Corbyn. If you take as red the assumption that the leader’s office needs to work much better with parliamentary MPs, after 9 months it makes sense to do rigorous performance management of the Labour Parliamentary Party. Theresa May MP, the current Prime Minister, has made it emphatically clear that there will not be an early election, consistent with the notion that a huge number of MPs will NOT vote against her in a vote of ‘No Confidence’ pursuant to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.
But if Jeremy Corbyn MP wins the leadership contest (again), the current Labour MPs will have a huge amount of egg on their faces. One of the complainants against Corbyn’s style complained her press release got binned despite months of planning. The reason? Corbyn had, in fact, to do another reshuffle forced upon him due to Labour MPs acting like petulant schoolkids AGAIN.
All of this is dreadfully sad, as the UK does need serious questions answering like devolution and #Brexit.
And the risk is unless the Labour Party can get its act together there will be no serious opposition to the Conservative Party, and even the Tories will implode.
There is another big risk – that various other deadly policy developments, like forcing in the junior doctors’ contract, adding top up fees to use the NHS, the forced academisation of schools, the repeal of the Human Rights Act and leaving of the European Convention of Human Rights – will all occur while the current MPs refuse to serve the current leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn MP. They all tend to say that one day of a catastrophic Jeremy Corbyn government will be infinitely worse than a day of a Conservative government.
The definition of ‘insanity’, whoever said it, is important.
Labour seem to have forgotten – or maybe Hilary Benn would not like to admit it – that the conversion to not signing up to austerity, justifying NHS cuts and social security abstentions, was very late in the day.
Also, Labour about a decade started losing the share of the vote ‘despite winning’.
They emphatically lost Scotland.
Even with blissful ‘moderate’ leadership, Labour lost the 2010 and 2015 general elections.
And yet – you could have easily imagined Labour under Ed Miliband wishing to introduce smartcards to harmonise personal budgets for health and universal credit for disability benefit. This is an extremely sad state of affairs.
As for neoliberalism – same meat, different gravy. Or put another way – same script, different newsreader.
Despite the lack of policy and inability to lead MPs, which can be ameliorated between now and the third thursday of may 2020, Jeremy Corbyn and colleagues are not suffering from a poverty of aspiration. Ironically, all the things think tanks have been banging on about, like aspiration and freedom from insecurity, mysteriously do not seem to apply to Jeremy Corbyn according to Labour MPs.
Say – for example – you wanted to improve the quantity and quality of social housing stock, do something at long last about aggressive tax avoidance, re-analyse the use of PFI in NHS finance, or even renationalise the railways or social care – Jeremy Corbyn might suddenly be your man, and curry enormous favour with members of the public, not just ‘traditional Labour voters’.
Time is not on Labour’s side. Most of the points made by Simon Stevens in his vision for the NHS, published this morning in the Telegraph, were actually made by Andy Burnham MP, when he was shadow secretary of state for health prior to the 2015 general election.
It is well known that Andy Burnham lost the battle twice against the parliamentary Labour Party in calling for a national care service. Burnham said clearly in the 2015 leadership hustings at the Guardian event he had become ‘disillusioned’ and that he felt that the ‘modern Labour Party would be incapable of having the vision of introducing the National Health Service’.
Later today, the Parliamentary Labour Party will endorse Owen Smith MP to be the preferred candidate to go against Corbyn – and Smith will in reality not offer much apart from a bit of a tinkering – e.g. wages councils. This ‘son of Nye Bevan’ once supported PFI. The ‘new deal’ which has been resuscitated more times than Corbyn has had jeering will be crippled by media attacks on its likelihood of ramping up even further our burgeoning national debt.
Owen Smith MP despite claiming to be a socialist is the polar opposite in government style to true socialist Tony Benn who saw the Callaghan era as doing things ‘slightly more efficiently than the last lot’. The PLP will reject Angela Eagle.
But the membership will reject Smith, much to the chagrin of the Labour PLP. And meanwhile Angela Eagle MP’s career, despite enormous talent, will have been comprehensively annihilated.
Divided parties don’t win elections. But it is clear that cheerleaders of #SavingLabour don’t want to support the current leadership, whatever. This of course is a massive tragedy for the whole country.
Aspiration is still pivotal for Labour, but so are the insecurities of citizens
Aspiration is incredibly important. My late father came to this country £10 in debt, and then did nearly 30 years successfully as a Doctor in the NHS. He is a totally self-made man. If there were ever a better ‘advert’ for ‘education, opportunity, aspiration’, it is he. All three are critical ingredients that help take people out of poverty and help create new products that make a contribution to humanity. But we definitely need to add to that genuine aspiration the concession that people are frightened by real threats in their everyday life, like never before, and therefore a change in emphasis in policy may be needed; relying on aspiration alone is poverty of aspiration in itself, if it does not acknowledge citizens’ concerns such as employment rights, housing, or immigration. By not appearing to adjust to the changing political landscape, Labour dangerously either gives the impression of being stuck in a time-warp, or perseverating on ‘transmit mode’. However, all is not lost. There are some people who use the social media brilliantly in Labour. They are individuals, including councillors, MPs, supporters and members, who ask questions, listen to answers, engage in the debate, or produce solutions, even if they are operating within the narrow bandwidth of one-hundred-and-forty-characters of Twitter.
Before I go onto explain what I would like the discussion to embrace as well as aspiration, I should like to submit humbly that being stuck on transmit mode is dangerous. It means that you can send out a message, and concentrate so much on whether it is being communicated well, that you do not listen to the answers. “The Big Society”, from Lord Wei, Steve Hilton and David Cameron is a good example of that. The idea itself was not clearly explained, including to the Third Sector, of why it was not yet another reincarnation of volunteering. Whilst massive efforts were made into interacting with potential stakeholders, explaining “The BIg Society” reached an impasse on numerous occasions. Many of us used to poke fun at the ‘focus groups’ idea of Lord Mandelson and Philip Gould, or the idea that the Conservatives use polling data to form policy (it is alleged), it is definitely worth ‘listening to the voter’, in the same way that Laennec advised ‘listening to the patient’. True innovators are not only keen to observe which ideas are successfully adopted, where, why and how, but they are exquisitively sensitive to the environment around them. Aspiration is a good example of where Labour policy makers have gone wrong.
Ed Miliband is said to like the aspirational approach of Baroness Thatcher, and indeed this infectious ‘setting free’ of the hopes of citizens in the UK was massively successful. This possibly may even be akin to David Cameron wishing to protect the ‘strivers’. But hold on guys. Aspiration was the “low-hanging fruit” for when the economy was doing well, and indeed growing. Too easily this debate can become framed as Blairites versus the rest of the world, but that is a cop-out. Ed Miliband, who is not a card-carrying Blairite, has embraced ‘aspiration’, but without thinking through the consequences. There is of course nothing wrong with unemployed citizens, or citizens in work with low income, being aspirational; indeed this is to be encouraged. In marketing, it is impossible to treat the market as a single mass, that’s why professional marketing professionals talk about ‘market segmentation’. If you take a similar approach to doing market research in a political capacity, you soon arrive at the (obvious) conclusion that aspiration for a CEO earning £100,000s in a multi-national company in the City is different from aspiration from a public-sector lowly-paid nurse in Wigan. Whilst it may be appropriate to target aspiration at the former, through not imposing a 50p tax rate or cutting the rate of corporation tax, different mechanisms are needed for the latter; and, in fairness, through a Liberal Democratic success in lobbying, the threshold for paying income tax has been increased yet again.
Aspiration, whilst clearly very important, remains as a key issue for a country, but there are now other factors at play (and they may have always been there to some extent during the “boom” years): for example, it is thought to be about to enter a ‘triple-dip recession’ or lose its coveted credit-rating. Whilst many voters apparently seek to establish that the economic performance of the Conservative Party has been poor, the same individuals apparently feel that Labour were reckless with the economy. It has proved impossible to explain how ‘saving the banks’ had involved spending money, worsening the deficit, and the Conservatives are willing to advance the notion of how Labour ‘won’t say sorry’. Security, in my opinion, is the critical issue. This encapsulates a plethora of different issues. One has to be about the NHS, seeing some NHS Foundation Trusts going into administration, or become privatised. In a privatised NHS, it is unclear how a comprehensive health service can be provided, when the legal imperative is to maximise shareholder dividend, and it is further unclear who is accountable or to blame when anything goes wrong. For those who are lucky enough to be in employment, this Coalition has started an ideological onslaught on providing basic employment rights, even having the audacity to launch a ‘shares for rights’ scheme which has been universally panned by virtually all major business and financial stakeholders in the UK. Furthermore, it is very hard for the Conservatives to be on the side of the ‘aspirational’, when their cabinet is comprised nearly exclusively of millionaires. It is therefore advisable in my view for Labour to change ‘mode’ from a narrative about aspiration to a dialogue about security. It will be perceived as ‘out of touch’ if it bangs on about aspiration when people are increasingly feel that they can take nothing for granted. The reason that there are increasing numbers in employment is because there are more people in flexible, part-time jobs with absolutely no job security – this is certainly not anything for the UK government to boast about.
Why is security or insecurity relevant? Thousands of disabled citizens are finding themselves removed from disability living allowance due to a re-calibration of the welfare benefits system, so their concern will be less about aspiration and more about security. This disability living allowance is not an employment allowance, it is a living and mobility allowance, so removing it from disabled citizens who remain disabled is an ugly disgrace. If you’re a pensioner, you will have been totally cobbled by the low interest rates, so to talk about aspiration to them is utterly inappropriate. David Cameron’s government is not one of ‘aspiration’, it is one of ‘expectation management’. The Conservatives are already talking about how they might be losing their triple A rating, when having talked about they had managed to retain the AAA rating as a result of their ‘successful’ policies. Their ‘successful’ policies included murdering all infrastructure investment (including ‘Building Schools for the Future’), and killing off consumer demand (through increasing the rate of VAT). It is indecent for Cameron to talk about aspiration, and equally indecent for Ed Miliband to wish to emulate it, when their basic incompetence in running the economy has seen the aspirations of many individuals in the UK utterly annihilated.
If Labour takes itself off ‘transmit mode’, there is a chance it might be able to listen to workers who feel insecure in their jobs, or disabled citizens who are worried about their life in general. Whilst Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were possibly appropriate leaders for their time, Ed Miliband needs to take a lead, but acknowledging that he is in a materially different world to the one they were in. The alternative is that ordinary voters will continue to be disinterested and disenfranchised in UK politics, and this would be the ultimate tragedy. Labour has risen confidently to challenges in the past, and I am confident it will do so again.
It's all very well for Ed Miliband to talk of aspiration, but Labour has little itself
The discussion about aspiration is of course a familiar one. Ed Miliband is quoted as saying, “My dad was sceptical of all the Thatcher aspirational stuff. But I felt you sort of had to recognise that what she was talking about struck a chord”. This comment of course has massive irony in the week the dramatic revelations about Hillsborough became public. Margaret Thatcher was urged to abandon Liverpool to “managed decline” by her chancellor, released National Archives files have revealed, and nobody could view Thatcher’s view towards Liverpool as “aspirational”. The Thatcher government in 1983 enjoyed a landslide election victory in 1983 and an approval rating that seldom dipped below 40 per cent over the course of two years, at which time Thatcher is considered to have tapped into a vein of national aspiration, swollen after years of economic hardship.
The discourse oscillating between aspiration and insecurity is well described by Patrick Diamond in the “Southern Discomfort” pamphlet of the Fabian Society, discussing how Labour might respond to its heavy general election defeat of 2010. In the 1992 election, many voters apparently saw Labour as a class-orientated party rooted in the past, with little to offer ‘aspirational’ families. They wanted change after thirteen years of Conservative rule, but feared that a Labour government would mismanage the economy, raise their taxes, and put the country in the grip of unaccountable trade unions. As a result, despite the unprecedented unpopularity of the Major administration, Labour suffered its fourth consecutive defeat. ??Diamond continues that, in recent years, ‘insecurity’ has replaced ‘aspiration’ as the dominant concern of wavering Labour voters. This means that the party will not recover electorally by reviving the core New Labour assumptions of the 1990s, retreating to the comfort zone of Blair and Brown’s modernisation strategy.
Ed Miliband in reviving talk of aspiration has gone straight back into the comfort zone of New Labour. Miliband is not facing up to the challenge of its relationship with the Trade Unions. Interestingly, Peter Watt describes that there are trade unions who are trying to establish a different profile for themselves, and are seeing their memberships increase through the recruiting of new members and often in the private sector. According to Watt, employers are keen to work with them as they can see the benefits of partnership and employees are keen to join as they can clearly see the service that they will get as a member. The passion behind the Trade Union movement is described well by blogger Darrell Goodliffe. In his article, he recently described how TUC had taken a giant step forward towards calling Britain’s first General Strike since 1926. He pointedly warns that nobody within the Labour Party, and indeed, the wider labour movement should underestimate the significance of this position. The argument is that the trade unions, who depend largely on the public sector for a solid membership base, are “being backed into a corner by this governments decimation of that sector”.
Thatcher indeed had an aspiration about the Trade Unions, and that was to kill them. Secret plans to run down the domestic coal industry and defeat any future strike action by unions were being drawn up by Thatcher even before the year-long miners’ strike had ended, according to cabinet papers. The plans were approved by a group of inner-circle ministers in September 1985 ? five months after the strike ended. It is reported that they sealed the fate of the British coal industry and were rigorously followed by successive Conservative governments. Under these plans, ministers agreed to keep a permanent stockpile of at least six months’ supply of coal, increase coal imports, build more oil-burn, nuclear and gas-fired power stations and encourage development of more opencast mines. The UK’s primary industry sector was once dominated by the coal industry, but the number of pits and miners have been slashed, and output fell by more than 75% between 1981 and 2003. The remaining pits produced 17.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2003, making the UK the 15th largest coal producing nation, compared with 4th in 1981, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2004.
In the narrative about ‘rebalancing the economy’, nobody ever mentions the demolition job of the Unions in the same breath as the over-reliance on the City, the same City which many blame as having contributed to the global financial crash of 2009. This is of course deceitful. Such a discussion does need to be have by Labour, if its political discussion of ‘triangulation’ is not to result instead in a strangulation of important issues. It is woeful that Cable is leading the charge against the ‘no fault dismissal’ proposals of Adam Beecroft. Cable has famously said that, “I don’t see the role for that. Britain has already got a very flexible, cooperative labour force. We don’t need to scare the wits out of workers with threats to dismiss them. It’s completely the wrong approach.” This is of course an argument which would sit nicely with a socialist narrative of Labour, but Ed Miliband does not wish to be seen as socialist.
Ed Miliband’s political identity is far from clear. It could be that Ed Miliband is a classic ‘social democrat’, as viewed by George Eaton, Editor of “the Staggers” blog of the New Statesman. However, an increasing number within Labour are finding themselves without aspiration themselves. Whilst they might appear to broadly agree that Ed Miliband is doing at least ‘a good job’ as leader, and that the economic policy of Labour is correct, many answers do not exist on key arms of policy. Labour has previously agreed to repeal the privatisation of the NHS, but it is unclear whether Labour will carry through this promise, leaving many in the NHS and beyond genuinely confused. Labour has not put its ‘heart on its sleeve’, in standing up against the implementation of the welfare benefits reforms, despite having been asked to by Sonia Poulton and very many others. Elsewhere, law centres are being shut nationally, and Labour does not have a clear policy on the destruction of legal aid. If Ed Miliband were able to talk about aspiration from a position himself of commanding confidence, that would be a different matter. Unfortunately, it’s all very well for Ed Miliband to talk of aspiration, but Labour official policy has little aspiration itself yet despite the passionate beliefs and values of its ‘broad church’ of members. It is not too late to remedy this, of course.
Insecurity and fairness
The Fabians discussed this morning insecurity and inequality.
Whilst these are huge topics, I was impressed with the amount of breadth and depth of the discussion.
Whatever the economic solution to the global financial crisis is, and whether it will work in this country, we still have an on-going problem that has existed for the whole of this century in England.
The Fabian meeting was a starting-point for discussing some of these issues, this morning at breakfast.
Politically, the issue has been thrust to the front of the Labour agenda through the Fabian Society. Many blame Labour for not doing anything over the banking crisis, as regards the huge salaries of certain CEOs of banks. Economists on the whole appear to believe that the extra revenue that would have be gained from a high rate of taxing the bankers would not make a massive amount to the revenue of the Governnment. At the other end of the scale, despite the welfare state, there are still people living in relative poverty.
I suppose part of the problem for me is that the welfare state is not meant to be simply a desperate measure for those who’ve fallen off the edge of the cliff. It should support the successful, as indeed the NHS does support the acute medical care of all the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet. Labour’s inequality divide, we all know, got massively worse under Blair and Brown, and this is not a record that socialists should be proud of. The recent experience of the Swedes, possibly, is that socialism is not seen as a relevant solution in this global modern economy. Taking this in its wider context, socialism should be for the good times as well as the bad, but the Conservatives attempt to shatter this notion through their repetitive chant that ‘we always fix the broken economy by Labour’.
Fairness is incredibly difficult to define. I have only seen attempts by the Law Lords in cases concerning grounds of judicial review, such as legitimate expectation or procedural impropriety. I actually have never seen it discussed at length in relation to a more obvious candidate, the Human Rights Act. Of course, we are yet to see how the case law of the Equality Act will develop. Insecurity, I sensed, was likely to be exacerbated when voters felt that circumstances were out of their control, akin to learned helplessness in depression. There are two scenarios I can immediately think of where this lack of predictability in events might lead to insecurity; the increasing globalisation of the jobs market (and immigration), and (b) the global financial crisis. Gillian Duffy, and many like her, may feel insecure about her family’s jobs, but in fairness to her (pardon the pun), in law there might be a proportional check on the freedom of movement – and that is a right to work in your domestic country – however contentious that would be.
