Moral Purpose

Neal Lawson writes:

Dear Tony,

You seem to be suffering an unusual bout of the dithers as 2014 ends and the year of the general election begins.

First you argue that Labour will lose if Ed Miliband rejects the third way.

You fear a situation “in which a traditional leftwing party competes with a traditional rightwing party, with the traditional result”.

But then you say you have been misinterpreted. The words, though, seem pretty clear and you were always so good with words. And, apparently, at winning elections.

But we both know it’s not quite that clear or that simple. The truth is that any Labour leader could have won in 1997 – by then the nation was heartily sick of the Tories. It was time for change.

Your great fortune was that the leadership came up just when most of the Labour party was desperate enough to accept victory at any price.

If he had lived, John Smith would have won in 1997 – not by as much as you, granted – but then your majority was too big, wasn’t it?

I well remember crunching my way up gravel drives past BMWs in Enfield the day Stephen Twigg ousted Michael Portillo – oh, how we cheered later that morning. But in hindsight the wrong people were voting Labour.

The tent was too big and you spent the next 10 years trying to keep the wrong people in it: the very rich, for example. What meaningful project includes everyone?

It took me a while, but I eventually realised that you were scared of the electorate and the British establishment.

Your New Labour clique always acted like gate-crashers at a party – waiting to be turfed out of office. Despite all the bravura performances, you were uncomfortable with power.

It was as though if one seat or one newspaper editor were lost, the whole game would be up.

There were two problems with your New Labour project – it wasn’t new enough and it wasn’t Labour enough.

All you did was mash up the bureaucratic state (at least 100 years old by then) and the free market (even older).

You were barely committed, if at all, to the politics of equality and solidarity – or, come to think of it, liberty – given the attempts to lock innocent people up for 90 days without trial.

You were about one thing really, Tony – winning. Winning at any cost.

And being a winner meant being on the side of other winners. Bush, the bankers, Murdoch. These were the people on top – so all you had to do was be on their side.

And therein lay your biggest problem: the limited scope of your ambitions.

Not for you the challenge of reshaping the world in line with a new vision for society. Not for you the job of shifting the centre of gravity by detecting and riding new waves of political and cultural energy.

Instead, all you did was to focus-group middle England and give a few swing voters more of what they already had.

You remark, almost with pride, that the population hasn’t shifted to the left – well, what exactly was your job as a political leader supposed to be about then?

Had you not been so disdainful about anything remotely old Labour there would probably be much less support for Ukip now.

True, you sneaked in some transfers to the poor in the shape of tax credits, and you introduced the minimum wage.

But never with a political flourish, never with a sense of moral purpose. It was all stealth and no one knew why they were better off.

As a result, the Tories could turn the clock back once they were in control again.

Of course, this isn’t all your fault – it’s the fault of people like me and many others who let you get away it.

British politics is now crying out for a real choice. A society that is more equal, sustainable and democratic.

Miliband’s problem isn’t that he is too leftwing or not leftwing enough. His problem is that he is not yet as modern or as hopeful as he needs to be.

However his leadership might need to change, it’s madness to think that a return to 1997 is the answer.

Happy new year

Neal