If the country is broke, the Labour party is more broke. It has little left to spend on an election, and no plausible way of getting more. That's the important message, rather than the tittle-tattle, from the memoirs of Peter Watt, Labour's former general secretary. So it will just have to be back to old-fashioned campaigning, to the extent that's possible for a party with so few members. But there's a harder question still: what will it be campaigning for?
Oddly, perhaps, the botched, half-cocked coup-that-wasn't has had one useful side effect. It has, for the moment, ended the old war between "true Labour" Brownites and Blairites. The woeful story of the past two years has knocked the ideological stuffing out of the Brownites, while the Blairites, sadder and wiser, are chastened. Labour has a half-chance of a serious and sensible manifesto emerging from the rubble.
What had seemed a hopeless tangle of personalities at the top, with the likelihood of a disastrous election campaign, is also resolving itself. As Watt's book makes embarrassingly obvious, Brown and his people have been as disdainful of Harriet Harman as the Blairites were; yet this gutsy and increasingly self-confident campaigner emerges as the key link to the party and a daily face for Labour press conferences. With such a male-dominated Tory and Lib Dem lineup that is not bad news.
Brown has reassured people, in the wake of the Patricia Hewitt-Geoff Hoon protest, that he will not try to run the campaign from the centre, as he has done in the past three elections. He understands this time that he is the public face of the campaign, not its strategic director, and will spend much of his time on the road, and preparing for, and engaging in, the televised leader debates. That leaves a big strategic hole that will be filled by Peter Mandelson, with Douglas Alexander doing the tactical work. Ed Miliband, still being discussed as a possible future leader, gets the crucial job of writing the manifesto.
Mandelson's influence was clear at the weekend, when Brown made his policy speech to the Fabian conference emphasising the importance of middle class prosperity. No core vote strategy, expand the middle class and, in Mandy's own words, bring the top rate of income tax down "when financial circumstances permit". This is a huge change in emphasis. Combined with Alistair Darling's tough words on bringing down the deficit through serious cuts, it makes clear that Brown is no longer in charge as he was a month or two ago.
There are plenty of people in the party who regret this move away from the core vote. Some doubt the wisdom of the "we are middle class now" idea "“ as Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University has pointed out, it is tantamount to announcing the abolition of Labour's traditional working class base. Yet the "class war/core strategy" seemed a counsel of despair rather than hope, simply shoring up those limited seats where Labour is unbeatable.
Edging away from the core vote, however, won't save Labour from electoral slaughter. What the party has desperately needed is what one of the election inner circle calls "a forward offer": a series of good reasons to vote Labour once more. It is astonishing that this is being assembled so late in the day.
There are bleak echoes of the time described by Peter Watt during the Blair-to-Brown handover. Watt was horrified when he discovered that Brown had no great plan for his premiership "“ indeed nothing new at all "“ in the locker. Perhaps only now are we seeing the full cost of the Blair-Brown war, sapping energy, ingenuity, concentration and imagination that was badly needed for running the country. Too much on the civil war, too little on the real world.
This, I think, will be a big part of the historians' verdict on the New Labour years, a long essay in how personal pettiness can destroy ideals. What makes it so sad is that, right at the end of the story, we are beginning to get glimpses of what a serious centre-left agenda for the decade ahead might look like.
It would be about radically widening the base of the economy, nurturing small businesses again, building on the success of hi-tech green engineering, pharmaceuticals and design, and trying to escape the stranglehold of City banking on the country's politics, and even its imagination. It would be about emphasising the third sector, and responsible local management of schools and hospitals, so we can move on from the purely target-driven centralism of recent years. And yes, it would focus on social mobility, which has been perhaps the biggest domestic disappointment of New Labour.
The pity is that some of this rhetoric has already been picked up by the Tories, whose instincts remain with the City and with the best-off. If Labour, broke and demoralised, can pluck anything from the wreckage, it has to be on the basis of a new offer, and a complete end to the tribal wars of old. There's been far too much loathing in the Labour party, and today's disastrous political landscape is the result.
The inner group of the government and party now seems to consist of Alistair Darling, Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman and Brown himself. Perhaps, against the odds, with Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander, they can put together a plausible, last-minute, semi-manifesto that addresses real problems and isn't simply party political positioning. It is the kind of thing that should have been waiting on the cabinet table on Brown's first day as prime minister, but perhaps better late than never.
There is no shortage of advice for Labour's election team: Tony Blair's former adviser Peter Hyman, also speaking at the Fabians' conference, suggested a strategy of reaching out to young people, ethnic minorities and those who don't usually vote, just as Obama did; together with setting a defining question for the election. Certainly, the party needs a message that can be boiled down to a few key policies.
Is it all hopeless? Probably, although ministers are pinning their hopes on economic figures later this month that may finally show the recession is ending. But one leading minister, asked for an assessment following the attempted coup, says simply: "We are fucked. We are so fucked, completely and utterly fucked." Just now, that is a pretty sober assessment. But if there is the slightest chance of saving something then it rests on everyone, whatever their past tribal history, dropping the vendettas and the childishness and working together. Stranger things have happened; and there's more to politics than money.
Your IP address will be logged
Related
After the coup, only Alistair Darling is in credit
A picture of unity? Key players in the Labour leadership battle
Polls show Tory lead growing as Gordon Brown responds to failed coup
The Lib Dems won the first half of the week, Labour lost the second
Your IP address will be logged
Showing first 50 comments | Go to all comments | Go to latest comment
Close
Please choose a problem:
Comment: (optional)
You have 5000 characters left
Read Full Article »