A False Dichotomy
Nothing better illustrates Labour’s current malaise than the reported difficulty the leadership group is having in agreeing on a strategy for an election that is now only a few months away.
Some, we are told, including most of the “New” Labour veterans, favour a direct pitch for middle-class support, with plentiful assurances that the Party’s leaders come themselves from “comfortable” backgrounds. Others recommend a focus on Labour’s “core vote” in a belated attempt to re-assert the Party’s traditional values and priorities.
Neither group seems to doubt that this is an unavoidable dichotomy. Just as the Blair/Brown schism is seen as essentially unbridgeable, so this dispute seems to reveal a deep fault-line in the Party’s thinking. After thirteen years in government, and nearer sixteen years with the current leadership group, it is surprising that this is the best that can be done.
It is hard, after all, to see that either strategy offers much prospect of electoral success. First, the notion that “we are all middle-class now” is hardly new. It has been the leit-motiv of New Labour since its inception. If the aim is to re-enthuse the voters, the strategy seems to lack a certain sense of excitement or breath of fresh air. “Vote for us and we’ll go on doing what is perceived to have failed” is not much of a rallying cry.
It also commits the cardinal sin in political strategising of allowing one’s opponents to frame the debate. The American specialist in cognitive science and linguistics, George Lakoff, is clear that to adopt the opponent’s language is to concede the debate. In a contest as to which party is more likely to put middle-class lifestyles, privileges, and values ahead of anything else, especially off the back of recession, there will only be one winner.
There is not much better to be said for the rival strategy. Labour’s “core vote” is now a sadly wasted asset – one of the consequences of ignoring it for the past sixteen years. It is unlikely to be revived by a quick and short-lived about-face by Labour’s spin doctors. And it is in any case a defensive strategy designed only to limit losses – a strategy that, by abandoning a large part of the battlefield to the enemy, necessarily concedes defeat in advance.
If Labour cannot do better than this, they deserve to lose. The inevitable burden of cumulative disappointments after thirteen year of government, to say nothing of egregious errors like the Iraq War and a recession engendered by a sustained obeisance to the City, will not be overcome if Labour’s much-touted strategists do not come up with something more intelligent and imaginative – and more optimistic.
The perceived dichotomy in electoral strategy must be rejected as a chimera. There is no success for Labour in either restricting itself to the “core vote” or in ignoring it by manifestly adopting other priorities. Labour strategy has always required a successful effort to persuade a sizeable slice of the more affluent that they will be better off, both materially and in other ways, under a government that accepts as one of its priorities that it should look after the less advantaged.
The argument should be that both the economy and society will function better if everyone has a chance to make a positive contribution. Excellent public services will produce a better educated, better housed and healthier workforce, better able to take the jobs that full employment will make available. Running the economy in the interests of the whole workforce, and not just City fat cats, will boost output and productivity and increase the resources that can be invested in our economic future. Investing in new skills and technology, and in the development of new products and markets, will in turn lay the foundations for an inclusive prosperity in which all can share.
An economy run like this would produce a stronger and better integrated society, no longer riven by division, no longer weakened by a disadvantaged underclass that increasingly sees the only way out being achieved through crime, drugs, gambling and prostitution. Even the most purblind defender of middle-class privilege might be persuaded to recognise the benefits of living in a healthier and more inclusive society.
A message like this might sound impossibly idealistic, but would this necessarily be a bad thing? To set a course that at least aims at something better is more constructive, more likely to enthuse, than constantly triangulating for supposed electoral advantage. Labour should not, in other words, allow itself to be forced to choose between its “core vote” and middle-class support. The two are perfectly compatible, and to act with that conviction offers Labour’s best hope for the forthcoming election.
Bryan Gould
19 January 2010
This article was published in the online Guardian on 20 January.
Tony Blair’s War
The Chilcot inquiry into the invasion of Iraq – surely one of the defining events of the last decade – may well, if we are lucky, answer some of the pressing questions about that disastrous episode. We may, as a result, be able to confirm with greater certainty that the invasion was illegal, and that it was based on a lie.
What seems unlikely, however, is that we will be any the wiser as to why – from a British standpoint – the invasion was undertaken at all. The question, when applied to the Americans, admits of a relatively straightforward answer. There may have been for George W. an element of filial piety, and a sense of a task uncompleted, and controlling the oil may always have been a factor, but the main impetus was surely the conviction of that powerful group of conservatives who controlled the Bush administration – advisers like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle – that “if you have the power, use it”. The use of what was imagined to be overwhelming American power to change the Middle East map was too tempting to resist.
For these ideologues, alarmingly ignorant as they seem to have been of the world beyond American shores, everyone in the world – whatever their ethnicity, culture or religion – would be Californians if they could; all that was needed was to remove obstacles like Saddam Hussein, and the dominoes would, for once, fall in the right direction. The invaders, it was confidently predicted, would be welcomed by the liberated with flowers.
But when we ask the question of the British, the answer is less clear, and the Chilcot process seems unlikely to produce any real insights from the only person who could respond with any accuracy and authority. We may be forced to seek the answer for ourselves.
There are of course the explanations derived from realpolitik; there was,first, the supposed need to control future oil supplies and then the constant imperative to stay close to the Americans.
The oil question was regularly advanced as a plausible explanation for the Iraq adventure at the time. But, in retrospect, it carries little conviction. There is no evidence that Saddam was any more likely than anyone else to cut off oil supplies to the West; the main obstacle to the continued flow of Iraqi oil was, after all, the sanctions applied by the American-led alliance.
But, it could be argued, if the Americans – even if erroneously – believed that Saddam had to be removed if the oil supply was to be guaranteed, that was surely reason enough to support the invasion, if only to assure the US that it could rely on Britain. And it is certainly true that, following Suez, the imperative to never stray too far from what the Americans wanted was deeply ingrained in British foreign policy, as I discovered at first hand when I joined the Foreign Office in the late 1960s.
Even so, the case for the invasion on the basis that it was essential to do whatever the Americans wanted does not bear scrutiny. If that had been the British attitude, and given the weight of the legal, ethical, military and foreign policy arguments against such a dangerous venture, the sensible course would have been a measured degree of diplomatic support, or at least a defensive refraining from overt opposition. The large-scale and enthusiastic commitment of direct British military support was a step of a wholly different order, and can be explained only by identifying a quite extraordinary additional motivating factor.
That factor was the personality of the then Prime Minister. It can safely be asserted that, although many could be found at the time to support the invasion, there was no one else in British public life who, given the opportunity, would have had the confidence and moral certainty to take this country to war as Tony Blair did, particularly on the basis of a story that he knew to be false. Where did this amazing chutzpah come from?
Prime Ministers who serve a reasonable length of time are always in danger of succumbing to what I call “Prime Ministerial syndrome” – the belief that, after years of acolytes hanging on their every word, they are infallible. Tony Blair was temperamentally peculiarly susceptible to this condition, exacerbated in his case by his extraordinary ability at that time to persuade the British people of anything he chose. It is easy to see how he came to believe that whether or not the stated reasons for the Iraq invasion were true simply did not matter; the fact that he himself supported the venture was enough.
Why did he support it? He had by this time convinced himself that he was a world statesman, equipped to partner George Bush in a duumvirate which would re-shape the world. Underpinned by a hitherto undeclared religious conviction, he increasingly saw the world in terms of absolutes – good and evil, right and wrong. Like the American conservatives, but for moral and religious reasons rather misplaced ideological opportunism, he could not resist the chance to strike a blow not only for enlightenment but for his own destiny.
This messianic posture was brilliantly exploited by the Bush administration. After six years of the increasingly tedious and vexatious business of governing Britain, what a wonderful confirmation of his destiny it must have been to receive the unalloyed plaudits of a fawning American establishment and media. The carping of domestic critics could safely be ignored when the world’s greatest power recognised him as a saviour.
We invaded a foreign country to assure Tony Blair of his place in history. The irony is that it will not be the one he had imagined.
Bryan Gould
7 January 2010.
This article was publioshed in the online Guardian on 25 January
Labour’s Coup
The most disturbing aspect of Labour’s latest attempted and abortive coup is neither that it took place nor that it failed. It is the level of incompetence, self-interest and self-delusion in Labour’s ranks that it reveals.
The latest damp squib reflects little credit on any of those involved. The self-designated coup leaders in 2010 showed as little aptitude for conspiracy as their predecessors did in 2009. They appear to have had no alternative policy programme, no leader-in-waiting ready to take over. They had not, in other words, made the slightest attempt to ensure the success of their venture. They seem to have launched their bid to unseat Gordon Brown on the basis of no more than disappointed personal ambition.
Those, including Cabinet members, who apparently promised support and then chickened out when the chips were down deserve even less credit. Each of these ersatz soldiers presumably made their own calculations as to where personal advantage might lie. If the coup were to succeed, they would each wish to be on the winning side; but no one of them was prepared to take the risk of putting their heads above their parapet until hostilities had been successfully concluded.
The next group deserve little better. These are the senior parliamentarians who decided, after careful calculation, that the attempted coup was led by amateurs, and that it suited their interests to show their belated and conditional loyalty to a leader who looked likely to survive only as long as he was hooked up to a life support machine. Each of them, after careful consideration lasting many hours, succeeded in the difficult task of drafting statements that expressed the minimum degree of support needed to keep the life support machine ticking over for a few more weeks or months. They remain ready and eager to switch off the machine as soon as it suits them.
The usual suspects – the serial plotters – played their usual ineffectual role. They remained available as foot soldiers to any general, or at least subaltern, who cared to raise the standard of revolt. But they lacked any firepower of their own and seemed to have little idea of where or how to get any. Constant exercises on the parade ground proved of little value when and if real hostilities threatened to begin.
But perhaps the most culpable group are those who soldier on, prepared to change nothing, unwilling to risk anything, ready to accept inevitable defeat, as long as they can prolong their own tenure and cling on to their seats for as long as possible. These are the MPs who have lost faith in the Labour government and who will either not stand again or will throw themselves on the mercy of the voters and hope that they have a better view of that government than they have themselves.
What attitude should be taken by Labour MPs? The first step is to wake up – to realise that the voters’ judgment in the next few months will be made of Labour’s total record in government under both Blair and Brown, and their sense of where a re-elected Labour government might take them. That judgment would be only marginally affected by a last-minute change of leader, even if it could be arranged, especially when no credible candidate currently presents himself or herself. And what serious leadership candidate would willingly step forward at this point to carry the can for election defeat when a new start would be available after Gordon Brown has lost the election?
The next step is to rally behind the leader so as to present a united front and minimise the damage inflicted by election defeat. The success of the election campaign should be judged according to how well – and how much of – Labour survives. The priority is to live to fight another day. There are never any final battles in politics. And – taking the most optimistic view – if a miracle is available, it may be best achieved when it is least expected.
After the election, there must be a genuine contest for the leadership – no more coronations – and an acknowledgment and re-appraisal of the mistakes made in government. The goal should be a renewal of Labour, with a new programme that is true to Labour’s values but is also attuned to the aspirations of Labour supporters, both actual and potential. The “newness” in each of these senses should abjure the capital “N” that has now run its course.
It may be too much to expect Labour MPs to take the long view when election defeat stares them in the face. But a frenetic obsession with the short-term will only make matters worse. Gordon Brown’s duty now is not to promise an improbable election victory, but to ensure that his troops face the coming battle as a disciplined and united force, so that they leave the battlefield – victorious or otherwise – in good order.
Bryan Gould
7 January 2010
This article was published in the online Guardian on 7 January.
What’s Left for Labour?
Barring a miracle, and miracles seem likely to be in short supply, Labour will lose the next election. The question is not the survival of the Labour government, but the survival of Labour as a force in British politics.
Ensuring a positive answer to that question should be the sole preoccupation of Labour loyalists and activists between now and the election. A change of leadership is unlikely to make a real difference and should be considered only if it would.
The lost election, and the failures that preceded and caused it, are not solely the responsibility of Gordon Brown. Yes, he has failed to provide the requisite miracle, but the need for a miracle is the result of cumulative failures over nearly a decade and a half of lost opportunities and abandonment of principle.
It is ironic that we are told that the greatest threat of a leadership challenge now seems to come from the remaining standard-bearers of New Labour. The existential crisis for Labour is, after all, the end-state of the whole New Labour project. It is the end of New Labour, not a renewed New Labour, that is now needed; we can all have too much of a New thing.
But all is not lost. Political parties can and do recover from electoral wipe-outs. My own native New Zealand provides a good and encouraging example.
The New Zealand Labour government of 1984 confounded opponents and supporters alike by embarking on a ferocious revolution that saw New Zealand become the test-bed for a daring experiment in far-right, free-market economics. The electorate suspended judgment in 1987 and gave the Labour government a further chance; but by 1990, it was thumbs down, ushering in nine years of conservative government.
Many people felt that electoral defeat was not the most serious issue for Labour as it faced its future. The real problem was finding a way back to a role in New Zealand politics which would allow Labour to re-connect with supporters who had been confounded and felt betrayed by their party in government.
The abandonment by New Labour in Britain of what might have been expected of a Labour government was not nearly as dramatic or initially shocking as the policy reversal delivered by New Zealand Labour. But it was equally far-reaching and ultimately distressing to Labour’s natural supporters.
From the Iraq invasion to complicity in torture, from the obeisance to the rich to the faith in the infallibility of the unfettered market, from the infringement of civil liberties to the belief that spin mattered more than action, from the subordination of economic policy to the interests of bankers to the devaluing of the public sector, New Labour has dashed the hopes of Labour voters and distorted the political landscape. As in New Zealand in the 1980s, voters no longer know what to expect, or where to look if they are to secure the policy framework they want.
The good news is that, in New Zealand, the sense of betrayal and disorientation engendered by Labour’s performance in government was followed by a period in the wilderness but was not terminal. After nine years of opposition, Labour returned to office in 1999 and – even with the added challenge of a new proportional representation electoral system – then delivered a competent and well-regarded government which not only won two further elections but also restored sense and order to New Zealand’s political scene.
Even after an election loss last year, Labour remains the government in waiting. Voters know that, if they want a left of centre government, Labour will deliver. Even in opposition, Labour remains identified with left positions and attitudes and is widely seen as where voters will go when they tire of the new conservative government.
The leader of that nine-year Labour government was Helen Clark, recently identified by an opinion poll as the greatest living New Zealander. How did she manage to restore Labour’s fortunes and its rightful position as a contender for and deliverer of government?
The answer should surely be of some interest to those who might aspire to the leadership of Labour in Britain. What she did was to re-state Labour’s traditional values – compassion, social justice, an economy that serves the interests of everyone and not just a privileged minority, an inclusive approach to what it means to be a New Zealander in the twenty-first century.
Her government wasn’t perfect – what government is? But she not only restored a sense of what Labour stood for; she moved the agenda forward so that Labour values were seen as newly relevant to New Zealand’s current needs. Most of all, she carried the debate to her opponents and made the case for a left programme.
What British Labour now needs is a new generation of leaders who have a sense of the political legacy to which they are heirs and who have the courage and conviction to move that legacy forward. The British electorate will want to punish Labour for the failures delivered in the name of that short three-letter word with the capital N; but they will respond to a party that gives them a real choice and that knows what it stands for.
Bryan Gould
27 September 2009
This article was published in the online Guardian on 3 October.
Who Controls The Banks?
The recession may not yet have reached its mid-way point, but already the lessons that seemed so stark in the immediate aftermath of the financial meltdown are receding fast. The way out of recession is apparently being directed by traffic lights and signposts controlled by worryingly familiar faces.
Foremost amongst these phoenix-like revivals are the banks. Just months after they were rightly seen as basket cases – their irresponsibility and greed the primary causes of the recession and their very survival requiring billions of pounds of handouts from the hard-pressed taxpayer – they are back in the box seat, not only apparently immune from reform or regulation, but again paying out huge bonuses, and their unchanged role accepted as essential to economic recovery.
According to their own pronouncements, the least surprised at any of this are the banks themselves. Are their affairs not directed by the most brilliant operators who can only be attracted by huge salaries, bonuses, fees and commissions? Is our economic future not totally dependent on their freedom to make as much money as they can for themselves and their shareholders? Is the recession not itself proof that the banking function is not only too important to be allowed to fail but is in the end best left to those who know what they are doing?
Some of these claims can be summarily dismissed as laughable examples of special pleading. A plumber or bus driver who proved himself so incompetent at what he was employed to do that he flooded the house or crashed the bus could not claim that he was uniquely qualified for a supremely demanding occupation, but would be out of a job. Bankers who destroy the financial system should be similarly judged.
And our supposed dependence on the City’s earnings is – far from being a reason for re-instating the status quo ante – a striking warning against allowing this dangerous situation to arise again. Among the many lessons we should not forget is that City earnings not only go to a tiny fraction of society but require support from an economic policy which – by giving priority to those who manipulate existing wealth over those who invest in and create new wealth – is guaranteed to destroy other kinds of economic activity, particularly in the real, as opposed to financial, economy. Those who have lost jobs in manufacturing, for example, have literally paid for the bonuses “earned” by City fat cats.
Perhaps the most surprising of the claims made is that the banking function is of central importance to the whole economy but should at the same time remain in the hands of a private oligopoly – and an oligopoly that is entitled to put its own interests ahead of the general interest. Even more surprisingly, after all that we have recently experienced, this argument seems to have been accepted without demur by the government that spent our billions on rescuing the banks.
It has always been a mystery that the banking function – which in macro-economic terms means essentially the creation of credit and therefore of money – should have been allowed to develop in private hands. The banks have avoided scrutiny on this issue, first by (improbably) denying that they create money, secondly by arguing that the function is in any case so important to the economy that it would be too dangerous to disturb it and finally by maintaining that only they have the expertise to discharge the function anyway – and all this at a time when the prevailing orthodoxy is that the most important factor in economic management is the rate of growth in the money supply, so that the banks’ central role in the creation of credit – the most important single factor in the excessive growth in the money supply – has an additional and unmistakeable macro-economic impact.
What the recession has demonstrated is that none of these defences can stand. The first stage of the financial crisis was largely one of liquidity and arose because the banks’ (supposedly non-existent) ability to create credit was brought to a halt. This required government intervention on a massive scale – so much for the argument that the bankers’ role should not be disturbed – and this in turn showed that it was not the bankers’ expertise (which was manifestly in very short supply) but government resources that underpinned the banking function.
So, if the public has an intense interest in the proper discharge of the banking function, and the last-resort guarantor is the public purse from which billions of our money have been spent, why are we content to allow the private oligopoly to proceed on its merry way and to decide in their own interests issues that matter to all of us and that should be placed under democratic control? Why would we not consider some form of public ownership (we have, after all, paid many times over for banks that were virtually worthless) or, at the very least, a degree of effective regulation to ensure that the public interest was protected and that the banking function served that interest rather than private greed?
The prize is, after all, a banking system that serves the wider economy and not just itself. Our failure (or refusal) to see this shows just how deeply ingrained is our frame of reference, and how much at risk we remain from a repetition of past errors.
Bryan Gould
10 August 2009