{"id":3087,"date":"2020-01-09T17:18:13","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T17:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3087"},"modified":"2020-01-10T09:22:10","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T09:22:10","slug":"have-labour-moderates-taken-the-right-lessons-from-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3087","title":{"rendered":"Have Labour \u2018moderates\u2019 taken the right lessons from the past?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tony Blair consistently draws a distinction between the \u2018politics of protest\u2019 and the \u2018politics of governance\u2019. His politics mean he\u2019s the \u2018guy on the placard\u2019 rather than the person holding it. Yet how Blair and New Labour ended is not how it began, and therefore isn\u2019t the whole story \u2013 nor the only identity Labour \u2018moderates\u2019 today can show an affinity for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, Blair in the\npast was quite different. A sense of detachment from the Labour party, which\nhas followed Labour\u2019s moderates around for some time, is neither inevitable nor\npreferable. And it certainly hasn\u2019t always been this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The powerful appeal of the Labour left<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In 1982, following his defeat as a Labour by-election candidate, Tony Blair visited Australia and delivered a lecture on Labour politics. He began by attacking the Social Democratic party \u2013 then perceived as posing an existential threat to Labour following the breakaway of some of its MPs. Blair showed no sympathy with those who had left. The SDP was draining voters away from Labour but it appealed to those who \u201ccluster around anything new\u201d and \u201cprofess to be non-political\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blair went on to critique\nthe right of the party who had remained within Labour. Under their stewardship,\nthe party had become too timid and predictable. Any Labour government would\ncome into \u201csharp conflict with the power of capital, particularly multinational\ncapital\u201d. A failure to listen had seen Labour\u2019s establishment become \u201cmanagers\nof a conservative country\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For its part, the\nleft of the Labour party was culpable because of its dogmatic commitment to\noutdated ideologies (read Marxism) and its naive view that it could win the\nnext election on the back of the votes of the working-class and liberal\nmetropolitans alone. At the same time, Blair recognised that the 1979 defeat\nand the influx of new activists had changed the party \u2018irreversibly\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was, Blair\nargued, no bad thing in so far as it had invigorated campaigns and stimulated\nnew thinking. He said the \u2018powerful appeal of the left to the fundamental socialist\ninstincts of the Party,\u2019 along with an election defeat, had \u2018overwhelmed the\ntired excuses of pragmatism from the Labour right\u2019. Moreover, these left-wing\nactivists, dismissed out-of-hand by the right of the party as sectarian and\ndivisive, had brought to the party a genuine interest in issues like the\nenvironment and social equality which were both important and potentially\nappealing to non-core voters. What was needed, Blair concluded, was a Labour party\nwhich drew on elements of, but nevertheless transcended, left and right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lessons for today\u2019s Labour party<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Labour party has\nnot won an election for nearly fifteen years. Have the party\u2019s \u2018moderates\u2019\ntaken the right lessons from Labour\u2019s past? We see five lessons, which\nobservers of the current contest may recognize in the campaigns of some<\/em> of the candidates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Opposition is\nvery different to governing <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Opposition is very\ndifferent to governing. Fights need to be picked and risks taken. This seems\nobvious, but such was the mentality that a generation of Labour politicians\nleft office with in 2010, we think it is an essential point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Bring people\ntogether<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

While all Labour\npeople rewrite the past, doing so in a way which transcends divisions can bring\nthe party together. Blair criticised Labour\u2019s left and right, and lauded\nLabour\u2019s left and right. Recognising the strengths and weaknesses of the\ndifferent factions within the Labour party is, to put it mildly, no longer a\nregular occurrence. Yet those who can recognise the weakness of their \u2018wing\u2019\ncan more credibly lay claim to the strengths of the whole movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Emphasise ethos<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Labour politicians and strategists of today must recognise and remember the importance of the party\u2019s ethos as well as its policies. In a classic account of the Labour party, Henry Drucker defined ethos as the traditions, beliefs, procedures and feelings which \u201canimate\u201d Labour.<\/a> These demonstrate a blend of motivations, aspirations and objectives, all present \u2013 quite legitimately \u2013 in the competing traditions of Labour\u2019s ethos through the party\u2019s history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Attract the\ncentre<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

You don\u2019t have to\nhave purely \u2018centre ground policies\u2019 to be perceived as attractive to voters\nlocated at the political centre. The Blair who worked for years to convince his\nparty of a different kind of socialism, or social democracy, was very different\nto the Blair who left office focused on \u2018policies that work\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often \u2013 and the \u2018Independent Group\u2019 of MPs were an example of this \u2013 ideology is confused with dogmatism. \u2018Values\u2019 are considered to be acceptable, but there is little in the way of a coherent political philosophy to steer and guide one\u2019s politics. Instead, a \u2018centre\u2019, informed by public attitudes and responses to different policies or objectives, is identified. Such an approach to politics is inherently technocratic, because it is not based on ideas. It forgets, or wilfully ignores for the sake of expedience, that the electorate believing a particular policy to be \u2018centre ground\u2019 will itself be a constructed belief. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Move with the\ntimes<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Our fifth and final point goes to the generational and cultural aspect of politics. Opposition politicians must not be caught out of time, fighting a battle that a younger generation has moved on from. This includes recognising that new generations of political actors and activists bring new ways of conducting politics, and new priorities to the table. For Labour to not disintegrate over the next decade, its past and present leaders must be more honest and less divisive.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tony Blair consistently draws a distinction between the \u2018politics of protest\u2019 and the \u2018politics of governance\u2019. His politics mean he\u2019s the \u2018guy on the placard\u2019 rather than the person holding it. Yet how Blair and New Labour ended is not how it began, and therefore isn\u2019t the whole story \u2013 nor the only identity Labour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":3090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1399,1396],"tags":[1534,2316],"coauthors":[2317,2318],"class_list":["post-3087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-elections","category-uk","tag-labour","tag-tony-blair"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Have-Labour-\u2018moderates-taken-the-right-lessons-from-the-past-4694337005_1c8fe833c5_k.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}