RespectAbility

Kate Hudson has withdrawn as the Respect candidate at Manchester Central. That constituency is less than one fifth ethnic minority, and those minorities are very diverse by any standards outside London. Respect had been on course to do well, giving the lie to the usual claims about it even more than did George Galloway’s win at Bradford West. In what had been a Conservative target seat in 2010, he topped the poll in every ward, including the 90 per cent white ones. But he has repeated his trick when he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother and cost his party half a dozen seats in the present hung Parliament.

There really is no Respect without Galloway. But the Labour Leadership is now in the hands of the candidate whom that non-Campaign Group and non-Tribune Group Eurosceptic, Scottish Unionist and pro-life Catholic would have nominated if he had still been a Labour MP. Galloway himself is now irreparably damaged goods. And Respect is riven between supporters and opponents of the Islamist insurrection in and invasion of Syria, with that division forming the background to the split between Galloway and Salma Yaqoob. It is time to call it a day.

Lucy Powell failed to win back Manchester Withington for Labour last time, and she has some unfortunate Blairite history, although perhaps she was just trying to get on. In any case, she is now employed by Ed Miliband. For that last reason, and now in the absence of anyone else, her resounding victory would endorse the only party that now advocates the Union as a first principle, and any concept of English identity. A universal postal service bound up with the monarchy, the Queen’s Highways rather than toll roads owned by faraway and unstable petrostates, Her Majesty’s Constabulary rather than the British KGB that is the impending “National Crime Agency”, and its own 1997 manifesto commitment to renationalise the railways. The National Health Service rather than piecemeal privatised provision by the American healthcare companies that pay Andrew Lansley. Keeping Sunday at least as special as the last Conservative Government left it.

The restoration both of energy independence and of the economic basis of paternal authority, through the reopening of the mines promised by Ed Miliband to one hundred thousand people and the television cameras at the Durham Miners’ Gala. The historic regimental system, and aircraft carriers with aircraft on them. No Falkland Islands oil to Argentina. The State action necessary in order to maintain the work of charities and of churches. The State action necessary in order to maintain a large and thriving middle class. A referendum on continued membership of the EU, explicitly and repeatedly ruled out by David Cameron and William Hague, but never by Ed Miliband. A free vote on the redefinition of marriage, very recently and half-heartedly conceded to Conservative MPs, but always guaranteed to Labour ones.

Labour is reverting to its historical norm as the voice and vehicle of a many-rooted social democratic patriotism in all directions, inclusive of social and cultural conservatives as well as social and cultural liberals, inclusive of rural as well as urban and suburban voices, inclusive of provincial as well as metropolitan contributions, and inclusive of religious as well as secular insights. The 2010 intake is very largely “classic Labour”, the boys in their dads’ suits having decided to sit out the hard work of Opposition. As a result, Labour has long enjoyed a commanding lead both in the opinion polls and at the actual polls.

But Labour came third or below in 211 constituencies in 2010, mostly places where it always does, and in most of those pretty distantly. However, the Coalition has changed the weather. The SNP will also be finished for at least a generation after the loss of the independence referendum in 2014. Imagine a formation which, while welcoming Labour’s present return to the historical norm set out above, was for that very reason fully aware that someone needed to keep Labour on that track or else stand ready to replace it.

Properly organised and sufficiently funded, such a formation could expect to win in 2015 about one third of those seats, i.e., around 70. That would be enough to make a very significant difference indeed, even to hold the balance of power in a hung Parliament. But it could only happen if the unions, most obviously, stumped up the cash. And it could only happen if Labour, with no realistic hope of winning those seats, stood aside in that formation’s favour.

Kate Hudson has written in the past bemoaning the absence in Britain of something taken for granted elsewhere in Western Europe, a party anchoring the Left while engaging fully in the battle of ideas at every level of cultural life and of the education system, while refusing to consign or to confine demotic culture to “the enormous condescension of posterity”, and while co-ordinating broad-based and inclusive campaigns for human rights and civil liberties, for peace (including nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological disarmament, and including against the arms trade), for environmental responsibility, and for the defence and extension of jobs, services and amenities.

Respect was never going to be that party. But this could be. This must be. This will be. If we make it happen. Let’s get on with it.