For many in Westminster, the "quiet landslide" of
2001 cemented a growing consensus.
As the Tories bickered amongst one another,
Tony Blair delivered another thumping victory at the polls.
Third Way centrism
seemed to possess an inexorable electoral appeal and Labour seemed to have
tapped into an unstoppable election-winning formula comprised of social
liberalism and fiscal discipline.
But
beyond the Westminster bubble, however, local politics and communities have
long been telling a different story.
Developments in East Lancashire typified the changing mood of
the country.
In May 2003, the BNP became the official opposition in Burnley,
winning the popular vote in the borough council election.
In what is now my constituency,
Hyndburn, Lancashire, voters also began to turn away in their droves and, as
early as 1999, Labour lost overall control of the council; just two years after
Blair’s 1997 landslide.
This almost-instantaneous disaffection mirrored the
national picture, with Labour losing 1,150 councillors across the UK.
Such a
decline seemed incongruous with the success of New Labour’s centrist policies -
a dramatic cut in NHS waiting times, an eight-fold capital investment increase
in education, and growth in GDP per head by 20 per cent.
How could these
impressive achievements occur alongside such incontrovertible disaffection?
To
answer this, any explanation for New Labour’s decline must move beyond its
individual policies to confront Blairism as an ideological framework in and of
itself.
Firstly, Blairism too often served as an ideological
straightjacket on policy-making.
Simplistically viewing politics as a linear left-right
continuum, it decreed that every policy had to be "within a millimetre of
the centre".
In this way, New Labour’s centrism emerged not as the organic
product of well thought-through policies but as the overriding determinant of
every individual policy.
Accordingly, it could never hope to reflect the
diverse needs of different communities across Britain, many of which were
estranged by globalisation.
The limitations of such blind ideological
subscription are captured by the state of social housing, which has been
plundered by the private rented sector in part due to the government’s self-imposed
antipathy towards interventionism.
This method of policy-making blinded New Labour to the extent
to which working people had been marginalised and excluded from economic
prosperity.
While Blair placed his faith in the free market and services to
advance economic growth, manufacturing opportunities and wages declined in
shire communities.
While his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, assured financial
capital that deregulation would be safe under Labour, industrial communities
outside of London were left to fend for themselves.
And while Peter Mandelson
cosied up to Europe, capital used freedom of movement to undermine collective
bargaining and employment rights.
In the
absence of a comprehensive industrial strategy, "One Wage Towns"
emerged - secure jobs were replaced with insecure work such as shelf-stacking,
and large, responsible employers made way for call centres and Amazon
warehouses.
Communities could not square Blair’s language of aspiration, social
mobility and equality of opportunity with their own experiences.
For them, the
New Labour era was one of communal practices making way for individualist
consumerism, power being sucked into an increasingly technocratic state, and
regional imbalances persisting, as young people left for the country’s capital.
Yet, at the same time, where Blairism did assert a distinct
ideological brand, it was often incomprehensible or alienating.
The Blairism of 1997 spoke the language of the time.
It resonated with
communities which had been left behind during Margaret Thatcher’s pursuit of
monetarism and privatisation, and it embraced a message of hope, epitomised in
the mantra of "Things Can Only Get Better".
Its purchase, then,
declined so dramatically precisely because it failed to evolve from this
cry for change to a real engagement with voters’ everyday concerns.
This quickly became apparent to those of us who lived in
these left-behind communities.
Our constituents knew the hurt caused by years
of being left at the back of the queue and, in 1997, had put their faith in
Blairism.
Indeed, as early as 2001, one of my neighbours, a Labour
councillor in Hyndburn, resigned precisely because the party refused to address
the issues that concerned local voters.
For her, as for many others, the party
seemed to be drifting into a position that was at odds with the very values
that its working-class base had historically sought to advance.
In stark contrast with Blairism’s commitment to a
rights-based individualism, working-class communities spoke of the erosion of
the communal practices which mattered to them.
These were shared social codes
which had evolved through mutuality and cooperation.
While New Labour was
promoting an abstract liberal doctrine which refused to recognise the value of
relations and geographical affinity, many of these people lamented the decline
of the tangible institutions which embodied their community’s identity – pubs,
neighbours, community centres.
For them, New Labour abandoned its commitment to cornerstones
of social and economic insurance – such as collective self-help, reciprocity
and fraternity – which had furthered working-class interests for centuries.
Rather than serving as a vehicle for collective empowerment, the party strayed
towards managerialism, centralisation and statism.
For some of a younger
generation, Blairism changed the path of their lives, giving them university
dreams and the belief they could live lives more prosperous than their parents.
But, for too many, it left a sense of detachment and disappointment, with
leaders and ideas that could never relate to the realities of life.
On the doorstep, voters spoke of "immigration",
"benefit scroungers" and their inability to decide for themselves how
their lives and communities were governed.
Such phrases were – and remain – a
cry for political acknowledgement and a demand for action.
Predictably, their
questions went unanswered.
Westminster stuck to its belief that GDP statistics
proved Third Way economics truly was working.
It has taken our withdrawal from
the EU to ensure those questions are, at the very least, on the political
agenda.
This point was certainly not missed by the Leave campaign, with
its message of "Take Back Control".
If the left is to learn any lesson from Brexit, it must be
that we cannot speak a political language different to those we seek to
represent. Blairism may have resonated with swathes of voters in 1997.
But
after a referendum result decided by emotional sentiment rather than economic
"expertise", his brand of triangulated economic centrism seems ill-suited
to re-engage with these left-behind communities.
In Hyndburn, 66.2 per cent
voted to leave.
We, in the Labour party, must offer these voters more than
Blair could ever do if we are regain the trust of communities which so
desperately need us.
