The Way Forward for Labour
We have the benefit – courtesy of today’s Guardian – of the advice offered by one of the Labour Party’s grandees as to the response that should be made to the calamity that has apparently now befallen the Party.
That calamity is of course the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Lord Mandelson, we are told, has advised that the new leader, elected just three weeks ago, should not be immediately “forced out” but that the deposition should be delayed just a little while more people realise what a disastrous mistake has been made.
We are fortunate to have this advice, since it tells us so much about what has gone wrong with the Party. Here is the authentic voice of those who have been in charge of its fortunes for so long.
The decision as to whether, and – even more importantly, when – the new leader should be deposed apparently rests in the hands of those who have just been roundly rejected by the Party. Lord Mandelson seems confident that the natural order will soon be restored, not least one assumes, because the energies of the defeated Blairites will now turn to undermining the new leader.
Indeed, it could be argued that, in Lord Mandelson’s unusual view of the world, his willingness to wait a full three weeks before mapping the course that will, he believes, negate the Party’s democratic decision means that his is really the voice of moderation.
That confidence appears to rest on the sustained and focused assault delivered on the new leader by the Tory press – an assault echoed not so sotto voce by Lord Mandelson and his colleagues. We expect nothing different from the Daily Mail – and, sadly, not much better from Labour’s erstwhile leaders either.
The most damaging aspect of Lord Mandelson’s initiative, however, is not what is said, but what is not said. Where is there, in his message to Party members, any recognition of the support commanded by Jeremy Corbyn for what he did and said during his leadership campaign? Where is the understanding of why so many responded so positively to the prospect of renouncing the craven “me-tooism” that has dominated Labour for so long?
Most of all, where is the acknowledgment of the task that now lies before the Party? So quick are Corbyn’s defeated opponents to rubbish him that they simply do not recognise the opportunity that is now presented by Corbyn’s victory. That opportunity can be turned to advantage only if the Party unites to advance an analysis and a political platform that reflects those aspects of Corbyn’s campaign that resonated with so many.
That does not mean that the Party must endorse everything that Corbyn has done and said over his long career on the backbenches. Like most 32 year-long veterans, there will be aspects of his past – comments and links, attitudes and causes – that were defensible at the time, but that may not seem so appropriate for a potential Prime Minister in 2015.
That will be particularly true of those personal preferences and beliefs – his republicanism and his support for a united Ireland, for example – that were no doubt his own business as a backbencher, but that may place him at odds with a large number of actual and potential Labour voters.
These will be matters that he has not had to consider before. He will have to reach his own way of resolving them, now that it is the Party’s interest and not merely his own that must be considered. But what matters is that neither he nor the party should lose sight of those issues where he expressed, and committed to, ideas that were fresh and uplifting, that gave new hope to millions of people. These were not matters of personal interest or preference, but statements of universal significance and appeal – the re-assertion of enduring values, the need for fairnesss and sharing, the rejection of inequality and the denunciation of growing poverty.
More importantly, they were not merely repetitions of familiar mantras, but were backed up by hard, specific and credible policy ideas – anathema no doubt to so many who bought the lie that there is no alternative to austerity and the supposedly infallible market – but backed up by growing numbers, including many informed experts and specialists who understand that the time has come for a new start.
Jeremy Corbyn himself, in other words, has a major task ahead of him. He has to work out which of his wide range of commitments, accumulated over 32 years, he is now ready to forego, for the sake of focusing on the vitally important and central ideas that will enthuse millions of potential voters and offer a better future to all. He needs all the help he can get to help him make those judgments.
That is where Lord Mandelson should be looking for challenge and inspiration. The Party’s prime responsibility surely now is to unite in engaging those millions who want change and hope, not trying to focus on throttling that prospect at birth.
Bryan Gould
25 September 2015
The New Mainstream
One of the main obstacles to making sense of today’s politics is the insistence of commentators that any shift in political position can only be described as either rightwards or leftwards. This over-simplified and one-dimensional view of the political landscape means that many of the possible directions of political travel – directions that cannot or should not be characterised in such limited terms – are simply not recognised or are overlooked.
When a party elects a new leader, as the British Labour Party has just done, this lazy shorthand automatically describes the change as a shift to the right or – more usually and, as in this case – a “lurch” to the left. But such language significantly misrepresents what has happened.
The use of this language is not entirely accidental. For one thing, it has the advantage for those using it of immediately locating the current orthodoxy in a centrist position, with any departure from it being easily represented as quite literally eccentric. Many Labour politicians, even candidates in the leadership campaign, seem to accept this concept; when they agreeded that Labour needed to change, the only change they could imagine was a move towards “the centre” or, in other words, towards right-wing orthodoxy.
And it provides defenders of that orthodoxy with a handy label to apply to anyone, irrespective of the direction they wish to travel, who challenges the existing norm. “Leftwards” is often used to mean not only “extreme” and “unrealistic” but “backward-looking” as well.
Much of the commentary on the new Corbyn leadership, even from apparently neutral sources, has used the language in this way. In both the abbreviated form of the news bulletins, and in the longer “think pieces”, the Labour Party is seen as having taken a significant step to the left.
To be fair, Jeremy Corbyn – for at least much of his political career – might well have claimed and relished such a label. It is certainly the case that much of what he has said and done in the past, and during the leadership campaign itself, might properly be described as left-wing. But to treat his accession to the leadership as signifying simply a “lurch” leftwards is to give seriously inadequate attention to many of the ideas and policies he has now introduced to the public discourse.
Much of what he has said in the leadership campaign – and much of what has clearly resonated with large numbers of voters – may be at odds with current orthodoxy but is not intrinsically left-wing. It is increasingly seen as a proper response to the obvious failures of that orthodoxy.
His campaign has appealed to those who are disturbed by increased poverty and widening inequality, who understand that we are a weaker and less successful society when we treat so many of our fellow-citizens as worthless, who agree with the OECD that inequality is not the price we must pay for economic success but is a major obstacle to it – and they will see these insights as both rational and ethical starting-points for an overdue attempt to resolve our manifest problems.
They will be surprised to be told that what is to them a common sense response to what they see around them is a “lurch” anywhere, let alone leftwards. Are they moving “left” when they conclude, with the IMF, that austerity is a destructive and ineffective response to recession, that if qualitative easing is needed to rebuild the banks’ balance sheets it might also be helpful if used to promote productive investment and employment, that economic policy should be made by elected and accountable governments and not by banks pursuing their own commercial interests?
The common factor underlying all of these attitudes and sentiments is not their “leftwards” direction, with all its connotations. Some are “left” in some sense, others merely common sense. They are linked principally by a common belief that – if the market is allowed always to prevail – there is no role for democracy, since the whole point of electing a government is to ensure that the harsh doctrines of the “free” market are moderated in the wider interest. The message is that, while the market serves the powerful, government serves everyone.
Corbyn’s appeal to the voters is the best evidence so far that the “free-market” hegemony that has held us all – and not least Labour politicians – in thrall for so long is now on the wane. Corbyn’s task now is to show that he will not head back into an old left laager and will not require the wagons to be drawn up in a circle. Instead, he must combine old and enduring values with a new conviction – supported by credible and workable policy – that the power of government can and must be used in the common interest.
He has already made a good start. He has taken good advice and earned support from leading economists who are part of the new mainstream. Those Labour politicians who have been so outraged by his success that they have refused to serve on his front bench would do well to help him in that task, rather than endorse a language and an analysis – a triumph of label over substance – that so clearly serves the interests of the privileged.
Bryan Gould
16 September 201
What Labour Can Learn from the Corbyn Leadership Campaign
No one, surely, could begrudge Jeremy Corbyn the odd chuckle or two when he contemplates, in his private moments, the consternation he has caused by his unlikely candidature for the Labour party leadership. It is not just the discomfort of his opponents, though that is sufficient cause no doubt for a little schadenfreude, but the fact that so many expectations have been confounded by someone who has been for so long dismissed as a nonentity, a fringe figure and a relic of the past.
It may be that the sweetness of his achievements so far will be as good as it gets and that the “sanity” narrowly defined by his opponents will in due course be restored. It may even be that, in his heart of hearts, he would be secretly relieved if that turns out to be the case. It would be true to his self-image and temperament that he should see himself as the catalyst for change, rather than as bearing the responsibility for putting it into practice.
But, as the possibility of a Corbyn leadership looms ever larger, it is the reaction of his opponents that is truly instructive. That reaction has developed from incredulity, then on to alarm and indignation, and finally to resentment and anger. How could someone as ill-fitted for the task, as unworthy of consideration, as out of touch with political reality, possibly be on the threshold of walking off with the party’s leadership and challenging for the role of Prime Minister?
These reactions are typical of those who feel that an impostor and an interloper has cheated them of an inheritance that is rightfully theirs. Those in the party who have steadfastly trodden the middle way, who have shown their superiority, by recognising “political realities”, over those who do not have to bear parliamentary responsibilities, have long grown accustomed to deciding the party’s fortunes.
For them, Ed Miliband was bad enough, but could, in the end, be restrained. With his defeat, they now want what they have lost returned to them. When the attempt is made to deny them that birthright, they want to vent their anger at the perpetrator by unmasking him and showing just how misled his supporters have been.
So, the “mainstream” stance on Corbyn is to focus on his lack of experience, on the skeletons in his cupboard, on his supposed inability to win a general election. And when those who have the votes and the power to decide seem unmoved by these considerations, there is nothing left but to impugn the bona fides of the voters themselves.
The Corbyn phenomenon is to be explained, it seems, because those tens of thousands of newly enthused actual and potential Labour voters who have joined the party – an unfamiliar sight, after all – are, in reality, “entryists” whose real purpose is to destroy the party and make further Tory victories inevitable.
There must surely be a more rational and constructive approach than this negativity, whatever the outcome of the leadership election. With or without a Corbyn leadership, is it not worthwhile to ask why so many people were ready to support him – not, in other words, what is it that disqualifies him as a leader but rather, what did he do and say that attracted so many to his cause?
We don’t need to look far for the answer. Jeremy Corbyn dared to suggest, along with the IMF, that austerity is an inappropriate and destructive response to recession, that government has the responsibility to use its power and resources to strengthen the economy and share its fruits more equitably, that the OECD is right to say that inequality is not the price we must pay for economic success but a major obstacle to it, that – as the Global Financial Crisis demonstrated – the market is not infallible and self-correcting, that the drive for private profit is not a guarantor of efficiency, that we must cherish our most important resources by raising the health and education levels of ordinary people, that we are all better off if burdens and opportunities are fairly shared and if every shoulder is put to the wheel.
These may be unwelcome or unacceptable ideas in some quarters, but surely not in the Labour party? As far as we can tell, they are ideas that, however frightening they may seem to Labour’s power-brokers, have appealed to a significant part of the electorate who have not hitherto found much about Labour to enthuse them.
They are ideas that deny the mantra that “there is no alternative”, that challenge the voters to think about better ways of doing things, that look forward to new hope that a healthier, more inclusive, society and economy are within our reach.
If we were not so keen to condemn him, if we would look at what his candidature has achieved, could the Labour party as a whole – with or without a Corbyn leadership – not learn and benefit?
Bryan Gould
6 September 2015
The Meaning of Leadership
As the Prime Minister signals that he might re-consider his unwillingness to help with the refugee crisis, students of New Zealand politics will have recognised a familiar syndrome. First, a proposal is roundly rejected; then the language softens; the merits of the proposal are partially acknowledged and, finally, it is accepted.
Most politicians with aspirations to remain at or near the top will have learnt that it is not a good idea to stray too far from where public opinion is thought to rest. Some political leaders have perfected the technique of deciding policy on the basis of what the voters think; Bill Clinton, with his “triangulation”, even went so far as to give that process a name.
All political parties use polling to help them decide what to do and say; and the polling they find most valuable is not the measurement of voting intentions – so-called quantitative polling – but the tracking of opinion on a range of issues through the use of “focus groups”, or what is termed qualitative polling.
I know from my own experience in politics that politicians pay an inordinate amount of attention to the results of such polling. And John Key, more than most, seems to have made an art form of tracking public opinion and deciding policy accordingly.
We can accordingly hazard an informed guess as to what has happened on the refugee issue. John Key’s first assumption was that Kiwis would react adversely to the prospect of increasing the number of refugees we are willing to accept. But, as the television pictures have become increasingly harrowing, the focus groups have registered a decisive shift in opinion.
Kiwis, to their credit, seem to have reacted to the crisis with common humanity. They did not like to see themselves portrayed as selfish and stony-hearted.
John Key recognises that he got it wrong, and that he is taking some flak as a result. But he also knows that he can limit the damage if he can re-position himself quickly, without being accused of flip-flopping too obviously. A carefully choreographed and well-practised process of cautious change is therefore under way.
At one level, this sensitivity to public opinion is to be welcomed. A Prime Minister who is willing to admit on occasion that he is wrong and to adjust his position accordingly can be seen as an example of democracy in action. And who can complain if a politician changes his pitch when the polls tell him he should? It seems likely, for example, that the focus groups have delivered the message that people are a little tired of seeing so much of the Prime Minister as a “cheeky chappie” or “man of the people”, which is why we seem to have seen less of that persona on our screens since the election.
The practise of deciding policy in the light of public opinion does, however, have its downsides. It may be used, for example, to conceal from a possibly sceptical or hostile public just how far and fast a given policy is intended to go.
John Key has occasionally revealed, perhaps unwittingly, how that can be done. In November 2014, for example, he was reported as advising Campbell Newman, the then Prime Minister of Queensland, that an asset sales programme could be made acceptable to public opinion if it was undertaken in stages, so that people were not unduly alarmed and could not see the end goal.
Using the results of qualitative polling can help a government, in other words, to identify techniques for manipulating public opinion so that it becomes more receptive to proposals that are initially opposed. Those techniques include proceeding by carefully calibrated stages, and interposing intermediate processes, such as the setting up of inquiries guaranteed to reach conclusions congenial to the government.
The readiness to track and follow public opinion may also, if it becomes too obvious, redound in the long run against the reputation of those practising it. Voters like to believe that their leaders are people of strength and principle and do not swing around like a weather vane.
A politician who says too often “you don’t like that policy? Well, here’s another one” can seem shifty and untrustworthy. And, once the impression is gained that a leader’s statement cannot be relied on, and is always likely to change, an important element of leadership is seen to have been undermined and lost.
That sentiment is all the more likely to be felt when it is the country’s concept of itself that is at issue. There will be many who believe that it is not the role of focus groups but that of the Prime Minister to identify and articulate the values we hold and to define who we are as a people.
Bryan Gould
4 September 2015
Who Is Jeremy Corbyn?
For New Zealand students of current affairs, the contest for the leadership of the UK Labour Party involves four names that will mean little – and, in that, they will not be too different from observers of the contest in the UK itself. Yet the emergence of one of the four candidates – Jeremy Corbyn – as the unexpected front-runner is worth a second look, not least for the lessons it might offer to left-of-centre parties around the globe.
Corbyn is a parliamentary veteran who has spent 32 relatively low-profile years on the backbenches – eleven of them, as it happens, while I was also in parliament. His reputation is that of an old-fashioned leftie – and he may have skeletons in his cupboard, especially involving his links with suspect overseas organisations.
Yet the polls show him leading his middle-of-the-road, “safety first” rivals by a substantial margin. His candidature seems to have enthused Labour voters, both actual and potential, to the extent that over 100,000 new members have joined the party, and his public meetings have attracted huge audiences.
His surprise success has produced an outraged reaction and dire warnings from the Labour party’s usual power-brokers. Tony Blair has predicted the end of the Labour party if Corbyn is elected. Other leading figures have tried to sabotage the election itself or have refused – without actually having been made any offers – to serve in a Corbyn cabinet.
These reactions reflect what are no doubt genuine fears about his likely appeal to the wider electorate – though, unexpectedly, the polls show he is now the most popular of the candidates, not just with Labour voters, but with voters generally.
What is surprising, however, is that the critics focus on the supposedly extreme nature of Corbyn’s policy prescriptions, especially in the realm of economic policy. Yet, as 40 reputable economists have declared this week in an open letter, Corbyn’s economic policy may be at odds with current orthodoxy but is really no more than common sense.
It seems, for example, that – shock, horror – Corbyn and his advisers do not believe that austerity is the proper or effective response to recession. This is more or less the position reached by the IMF and endorsed now by a growing number of (in some cases, Nobel Prize-winning) economists. It is in essence no more than mainstream Keynesian economics. We can see the consequences of its rejection in the problems faced by an austerity-ridden euro zone.
Corbyn also takes issue with the peculiarly British version of austerity – the insistence that the wealthy should be spared, with the help of tax cuts and quantitative easing, from taking any responsibility for recovery, while the burdens are heaped instead on the most vulnerable, whose job prospects and living standards have taken massive hits. Corbyn seems to assert, reasonably enough, that a serious effort to bring about a sustainable recovery requires that every shoulder should be put to the wheel.
A Corbyn government would also recognise, it seems, that there might actually be a case for government playing its proper role in achieving a fair, balanced and productive economy. It’s enough to make the blood run cold! Yet surely, it makes sense for a government to use – alongside the private sector – its powers and resources to do the things that the private sector cannot, or at least will not, do.
And, Corbyn asks, why is quantitative easing fine when used to bale out the banks yet not for investment in new productive capacity and jobs? The fact that questions and policies such as these create so much alarm and despondency among Labour’s erstwhile and would-be leaders tells us more about them and the current state of the Party than it does about the merits of the policies themselves.
Oddly enough, the one point about a Corbyn economic policy that should raise an eyebrow is his acceptance that priority must be given to eliminating the “deficit” – though, like so many others, he seems to confuse the government’s deficit with the country’s. We must assume that this commitment is there as a concession to the ignorance of an electorate that has never been told that to treat the government’s deficit in isolation is an economic nonsense. And getting the economy moving properly is, in any case, the most effective way of getting that government deficit down.
The Corbyn economic policy platform, in other words, is comfortably in line with what is fast becoming the new consensus – less doctrinaire and more common sense than the old orthodoxy. The other three candidates who have said nothing of consequence about the real issues of economic policy and have accordingly left a vacuum for Jeremy Corbyn to fill have no one but themselves to blame if they have been left floundering in his wake.
Whether these factors will actually produce a Corbyn leadership remains to be seen, but he has certainly re-vitalised the Party and enthused potential Labour voters. By opening up a long overdue debate, he has re-defined the political landscape and offered new hope to those who have been conditioned to believe that “there is no alternative”. Labour leaders elsewhere, not least in New Zealand, will – or should – be watching closely.
Bryan Gould
22 August 2015.