LONDON, 17 May 2006 — An e-mail arrives from the general secretary of the Labour party, desperately seeking likely prospects. So will I join, it asks? “It is undoubtedly a challenging time for the party ... Have you thought of joining? We are sure you feel the same way we do about the kind of society you want to live in.” What exactly is that? “One where the economy is sound; one where there is a first-class health service free at the point of use; where education is a priority and where you and your family can feel safe and secure.”
And that’s it. Nothing more, nothing at all.
This visionless little shopping list is what every party promises. So why on earth would anyone bother joining? Has everything Labour ever meant finally been boiled down to that pathetic little puddle of inoffensive nothingness? Forget agonizing over why voters are dangerously disengaged, look no further than this empty reductionism in the wasteland of some imaginary center ground.
In his Let’s Talk meeting Monday, Tony Blair plunged back into the womb from which New Labour was born, proclaiming himself, unsurprisingly, on the side of the victim not the criminal. In the early days, “tough on crime” were the magic words signifying Labour’s return to the land of the living. What does it mean now? As a rallying cry to call back lost members and voters to the Labour flag, nothing at all. After nine years in power and 43 Labour criminal justice acts, it falls on stony ground.
Worse, as the prime minister threatened radical reform of the entire criminal justice system, a great shudder ran through all the public services that have felt the lashes of Blair reform already. The UK’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS) is going through a turmoil that may yet finish off Labour at the next election. Labour MPs may rebel again next week over similarly abrupt education reforms. Half the police forces are already at war over amalgamations their areas don’t want. Local government awaits with trepidation a white paper promising “double devolution” with yet another reorganization.
Now the criminal justice system is about to taste Blair reform, too. It always starts with a frenzy in the press, as now over criminals. Blair dashes for an eye-catching response. He elevates that political impulse to a higher plane of ideological mission. He sets an eye-watering target: he has long been too impatient to wait for evidence-based policy, with pilots to prove what works. He raises public expectation even higher than his targets and nails his own credibility to these unrealistic goals.
It works for a bit, the sheer size of his promise silencing the front pages for a while. His reform succeeds in making measurable improvements too. But it fails to fulfill the unreasonable expectations his rhetoric has aroused. Disappointment means voters mistrust the good figures that do show improvement. It’s Labour’s tragedy that crime, schools, the NHS, poverty, cities and open spaces are all very much better — but few believe it. Nor do they believe the man who too often promises too much. Iraq may be an extreme analogy, but invasion and destabilization is easy while creative reconstruction is slow and hard.
So who would join Labour now because it is “tough on crime”? Law and order credibility is necessary, but it won’t stir an ounce of support to save the party from its worst poll ratings since 1992. Why might anyone join? Because social justice is what fires most Labour people. Labour’s only reason for existing is to stand for fairness, protect the underdog and know that money doesn’t buy as much happiness as common social goods. Taxes are good value: health, education, the arts, parks or sports are more precious and pleasurable than anything bought in a shop.
But Labour’s message says none of that.
We wait to see if Blair’s heir apparent the UK’s Finance Minister Gordon Brown can breathe life into what is fast becoming a party of incompetent managerialism. Will it be too late? While Blair fiddles with antisocial behavior, the planet is in meltdown and everyone knows it.
Voters will be increasingly contemptuous of politicians like the new leader of the UK Conservatives David Cameron who pretend the solutions can all be easy. There may be an appetite for a leader honest enough to tell hard truths about taxes and climate change, the things Blair and Cameron so assiduously duck: There are no free lunches and no quick fixes. Blair is hymned as Labour’s mesmerizer of middle England, a talent Brown lacks, the Blairites warn.
But, just possibly, it’s something of a myth. Professor John Curtice, reviewing the voting evidence, casts doubts over the Blair magic. He inherited a double-digit lead from his late predecessor John Smith, Curtice points out: “Blair’s luck has been a decade of Tory collapse and that luck has just run out.” The Tories are back in contention for their lost middle-class and southern (England) vote: If Blair had southern magic, it has gone.
With his ratings at an all-time low, this month Labour scored its worst local election results. At the last general election, Blair polled only 1 percent more than the losing Labour side in the 1992 UK general election. The BBC’s Newsnight current affairs program has engaged a distinguished US pollster, whose survey found that perceptions of Blair has collapsed into “They don’t believe a word he says”.
But what of Brown’s chances of winning back the southern vote? Curtice says we just can’t know. His ratings as finance minister are high, but the “How would you vote if Brown were PM?” is a “rubbish” question: no one can know until it happens.
Knowing the truth about how Labour won three elections matters crucially for the Brown years. If Blair really did inveigle middle England by encouraging individualism and consumer choice, never criticizing greed and preferring to damn delinquent youngsters than talk of the poor, there may be no room for Brown to strike out progressively.
But times change: Nine years is a long time in office. A large BBC commercial survey, based on nine focus groups and an opinion poll, hints that politicians are falling way behind the curve, missing a new altruism out there. “Goodbye Middle England — Hello Big Britain” shows not apathy and alienation, but frustrated environmental and social concern. Professor Roger Silverstone, of the London School of Economics, calls the research hopeful, “revealing the emergence of a dynamic, socially engaged and environmentally conscious” voter — not a few, but 20 million.
Cameron has caught the zeitgeist, but will fail to convince if his policies are no more than taxphobic windmills in his mind. This social democratic impulse belongs to Labour. It is there for Brown to seize, if he dares. Safety-first is no longer an option. Can Labour recall what it’s for, and why anyone should join?
