ID cards, 42 day detention and campaign tactics in Crewe & Nantwich…

…Your party is bankrupt, in both senses of the word.

Well it no longer gets a standing order from me thanks to the above, but I would still prefer it to win the next election to seeing the Tories back in and my article is more aimed at those who remain members of it.

But the rebellion by a group of Labour MPs, who do not really have any political differences with Brown

Yes, what really gets me is that many of them are actually proud of the fact that they have never voted against the party, as if it were some badge of honour, whereas actually, it suggests that they have no spine.

Well, I’m not a member of the Tory party and I don’t expect I will become one any time soon.

But right now I just want to see Labour given the beating they deserve, and as the polls show much of the rest of the UK population is thinking exactly the same way.

These are not the days of ‘better the devil you know’!

It’s awkward. There seems to be a bit of the ‘wanting what you don’t want’ paradox at work, in me at least. I agree that Tory government is a nasty prospect and I well remember the last lot. But when a two-party state becomes a de-facto one-party state through consecutive election victories by a single party that spells trouble for everyone as a glance at Scottish politics will tell you.

“Yes, what really gets me is that many of them are actually proud of the fact that they have never voted against the party, as if it were some badge of honour2

This has always been a Labour vice, the idea that loyalty trumps everything, with jobs awarded to those most docile (most ‘fraternal’) rather than most able.

What is missing from Conor’s analysis here is not what has happened and is happening but what we can likely expect to happen to the Labour Party when it ges into opposition. If recent times are any guide, it will swing to the left and indulge in a decade of gesture politics, estranging its popular support, before it sorts itself out again. I think it is in that that Jackie Ashley and suchlike see the threat of political annhilation.

And do you remember who those leftists of the early 80s were? Patricia Hewit, Harriet Harman, Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett, etc. Meanwhile, of course, Polly Toynbee was setting up the SDP which split the opposition vote in the 1983 election and helped Thatcher get back in despite a real liife economic depression. At least John Spellar was always just an old Labour right winger.

I completely disagree about your assessment of the merits of this rebellion. I think that it is ultimately a fruitless exercise as there is nothing on the table that can be brought in to replace brown, and that is poor, but a change is needed.

My personal opinion has always been that he should have stepped down at the beginning of the summer recess, allowed a leadership competition to form and to have a new Prime Minister by conference who would set out a timetable to the next election.

But would anyone decent step in? Decent being defined by someone that can actually change the mood of the country towards the party through their actions, pretty much the opposite of Brown who managed to bring down people’s opinion of the whole party through his own actions.

The real issues here is that Brown and co. will fight this, they’ll talk about rallying around the PM or whatever…but this is just dragging on. How can they “solve the real problems” by supporting an exhausted administration when the real problem IS the administration in the eyes of the people? How can a party sit around honestly believing that people will swallow the line “We are listening to the people” when what the people are saying in abundance is “We don’t want you, fuck off”? All this is doing is dragging out the dirty laundry to view, it’s not unifying anyone, and it’s certainly not increasing the standing of the party in the eyes of the people.

Is this the rebels fault? If Brown etc. believed honestly that he was the best man for the job and that MPs would support that then they’d hold a leadership election anyway and have Brown restand…jus to dismiss the coronation issues if anything else, even if this would lead the the public turning their back on Labour even more. But then that’s the issue isn’t it? Given anyone that is even slightly credible Brown knows that MPs will, perhaps reluctantly, abandon their leader in favour of a potential popularity boost and true (if not temporary) unity.

John,

“as a glance at Scottish politics will tell you”

Might I, as a Scot, living in Scotland, who’s rather enjoying Scottish politics at the moment, ask you to explain what you mean by that remark?

So Labour are in big huffs, not engaging, and simply coming out with a “but it’s oor ba’, an if we cannae play…” mentality. So what? It’s their own fault, and we’ll have to wait and see whether their new ‘heid bummer’ can find a meaningful path for them to follow.

The Conservatives under Annabel Goldie have got on with the job of forcing a minority government to make concessions to their agenda…effective opposition, in other words. I don’t support them, but credit to them for getting the job done.

The Lib Dems might become useful once they properly disengage themselves from Labour’s coat-tails in the parliament, but Willie Rennie’s victory where I live a coupl eof years ago gave Labour a well-deserved shock to the system it’s not yet recovered from. And he’s been a great constituency mp.

And as for the administration, well, they’re a left-of-centre-ish party who’re steering a relatively careful course, probably won’t get the independence they seek, but also are trying to protect us from the worst excesses of Labour’s PFI fraud. Oh, and their leader isn’t a numpty, which makes a nice change up here.

So, John, what’s the problem with Scottish politics?

Margaret Thatcher a bad public speaker! Some of those speeches still send shivers down the spine or give you goose bumps depending on how you swing.

The problem is a lack of strong leadership – the doomsayers are coming out in force because the leader is weak, and has played weak hands from the start. Calls from left rebels to push the socialist cause and the blairites to a return to popularism make it even shaker ground for a bumbling, unremitting man who clearly has had his greatest claim in high office, that of the UK strongest economy, collapse around him.,

Yes, what really gets me is that many of them are actually proud of the fact that they have never voted against the party, as if it were some badge of honour, whereas actually, it suggests that they have no spine.

Well, there’s also something to be said for wanting a party to win, full stop. Politics is about principle, but also about winning folks! So I’m not surprised that they want to get rid of Brown because he’s not really helping the situation.

Fair enough Sunny: if it was up to me I would keep him until the spring and then ditch him.

But my point above is that Labour was unpopular before Brown and the original “bounce” he got was by being a contrast to Blair. In fact, politically there was never much between them and if Labour ditch Brown for, say, Miliband then it will also be a basic political contintuity as well. I disagree with Martin Kettle that Labour could again change the prime minister without going to the country (or they could but it would make them even more unpopular) and I think most Labour MPs know that as well.

Given that Labour are stuck where they are I don’t see what the latest rebels are trying to achieve – I can see John McDonnell’s point because he wants Labour to go in an entirely different direction – but what are Fiona MacTaggart et al actually expecting to happen if Brown does jump – or get pushed?

Similarly, I don’t think the Guardianistas can really believe all these apocalyptic pieces that they are writing. Polly Toynbee relied on a blatant sleight of hand by proposing that Labour carry out a Keynesian economic reflation (”if there is a depression”) when she knows full well that inflation is also a current economic problem.

My guess is that a lot of them have just fallen out with Brown on a personal level – and others smell blood. In the Blairite heyday everyone was too scared to go “off message”, but people get braver (sorry, more principled) when the leader starts looking weak.

Fair enough Sunny: if it was up to me I would keep him until the spring and then ditch him.

Why would you keep him until the Spring?

I’m writing a piece on this now – I think he should be ditched immediately and a new narrative found…

Labour can change a PM without going to the country, despite what the Tories say, and it won’t necessarily make them more unpopular, providing the new PM has something new and interesting to say.

As for your point about Polly:
when she knows full well that inflation is also a current economic problem.

inflation will fall soon anyway, as demand tanks. In fact we’ll need interest rates to fall soon and money to be pumped in otherwise we will end up with a bigger recession. Oil prices have fallen below $100 already.

Sunny,

Your comment does not make sense. You think that the party should ditch the Prime Minister immediately and then “a new narrative” should be found but that even when the new narrative is found, there is no obligation to go to the country.

I agree that this would technically be legal but it is a) undemocratic and b) stupid. Those fit to lead a party – any party – need to say what it is they stand for before they become leader. It is therefore necessary for the new direction to emerge before they decapitate the incumbant. None of those whose names are put forward as potential leaders have even had the guts to take the necessary preparatory action required for them to formulate a new narrative (such action must necessarily include resigning from the Cabinet at the very least even if it does not include an open declaration of hostilities).

I am assuming for now that you don’t mean that Gordon should be got rid of and then there should be a six week leadership contest during which the government is essentially leaderless while the party of Government decides what it actually thinks.

Finally, even assuming all of this happens as you suggest and a genuinely new direction springs fuly formed from the head of – say – Andy Burnham. This would, by definition, represent a repudiation of manifesto commitments and the adoption of new directions which would not have been set out to the public for the public’s approval through the mechanism of a general election. Such a government would have less democratic legitimacy than that of Vladimir Putin – I am sorry, I meant Dmitri Medvedev.

Of course, it is possible that by new direction, what you actually mean is a new way of presenting the party’s current policies. This too is wrong. The fact that the OECD has pronounced Britain the most vulnerable of its members to a serious recession is a direct result of the Government’s (and specifically Gordon’s) decision to turbo charge the housing market, to increase the economy’s reliance on financial services, to allow personal debt to balloon and to rack up future spending commitments through both PFI and public borrowing so that we are left, at the end of a huge boom, with a deficit instead of a surplus. If you think that these policies were essentially the right ones in the light of all that has happened then I can think of no politer way of expressing myself than to say that you are wrong.

Finally, if recession falls away “as demand tanks” that means that we are already suffering from the recession – by living less wealthy lives – not that some magical aspect of the financial system has magically corrected itself just in the nick of time to save the Labour party’s reputation. Reducing inflation by reducing consumption is like reducing inflation by increasing unemployment – the “cure” is a symptom of the disease.

Sunny@14

Labour can do whatever the hell it wants, what the consequences of their actions will be is not within their gift to decide.

Having decoupled their strategy from the beliefs of their core supporter base I think they are badly placed to be able to make a good judgement call as to what is in the best interests of the Labour party – can you calculate the worth of exchanging electoral success for political principle, and if so how?

I also question your assertion that inflation will fall soon.

Oil prices may have fallen back, but this is only temporary, as producers must calculate the relative benefit from scaling back supply against falling demand. In the medium-term demand is still rising and the rise of the emerging economies is still having a deflationary influence on the developed nations which has only been counteracted (and hidden) by the currency markets. But this is unsustainable once currencies stabilise and the inflationary effects of pumping liquidity into the markets eventually start to be felt.

It would not surprise for oil to rise above $250 within 18 months as we go through the next phase of the economic cycle.

Sunny:

Unfortunately the economy will get worse before it gets better. Britain is not in a recession yet and inflation is predicted to keep rising for another couple of months (which is why the BoE has not reduced interest rates). Economists have been predicting that inflation will peak at around 5% and that rates will start come down after that. They have been forecasting that this will happen in October or November and yesterday’s news – plus the drop in the price of oil – makes an October cut more likely. Interest rates will then probably keep dropping through 2009 to 4% or below.

According to Keynesian economic theory the government should only start reflating the economy when it goes into recession so if Brown actually implemented Polly’s call for a major public works programme immediately then this would make it more difficult for the BoE to reduce rates. Keynes did not foresee stagflation and it is the tricky thing to deal with – which is why Polly said “what should a Labour government do in a depression?” while also claiming that “this” (ie now) is its “defining moment.” She knows he can’t do what she is advocating, but she is backing Miliband for leader and is simply sticking in the knife.

Inflation is now outstripping wage rises which means that people are seeing their standards of living cut. Another reason why the BoE has not cut rates for the last few months is that they do not want to set off a price-wage spiral. But the public sector unions could start striking over the winter (because why should unions ask their members to take the hit for a government that has been so openly contemptuous of them for so long), which will damage Labour politically. The hope – although no one is going to say it publicly – is that the unions will be too cowed by the threat of rising unemployment to hold another winter of discontent.

All of these are basically arguments for hanging on to Brown so that he takes the blame for everything and hoping that things are looking up in the spring when a shiny new leader can say lots of shiny new things (sorry, I mean find a new narrative!). Governments never like to hold elections in the winter because voters tend to blame them for the bad weather. A spring leader and a spring election mght work, but it would be preferable for that to be in 2010 rather than next year (particularly if England qualify for the world cup).

economics aside, for the moment, George, you say:
I agree that this would technically be legal but it is a) undemocratic and b) stupid.

But the rise in polls following Brown taking over suggests people just want a competent and good Labour leader. After all, they voted for the party rather than a specific leader.

Its not the fact that someone new is taking over that matters – but whether that person has a sufficiently engaging narrative to take the party forward.

I don’t mean drafting a new manifesto, but finding a way to renew Labour and government while laying out pledges for the next election to fulfil that.

Sunny@14 (and 18)
“I think he should be ditched immediately and a new narrative found…”

Whatever view anybody wants to take of Brown and the leadership, I would like to propose a ban on calls for a bold/engaging/exciting new narrative UNLESS said person also sets out their argument about what the new narrative should be (and perhaps also how to exemplify and communicate it in a key policy area, and what the strategy is whereby it would appeal across a sufficiently broad electoral coalition, ie including why it would be salient to working-class and cosmpolitan left-liberal constituencies).

Steve Richards wrote a well judged column yesterday: how about providing some of the argument about what would/should change, and then making the argument for ditching a party leader on the basis of that, rather than “something might turn up”
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steve-richards/steve-richards-rebels-without-a-real-cause-except-a-change-of-leader-932007.html

For example, the call for a bold, new narrative from no less than 12 (count them) Labour MPs is quite possibly the weakest (and least coherent/narrativised) piece of political analysis I have read this year. (It even contained the sentence “Criticism of New Labour’s perceived authoritarianism has restricted the political space for pragmatic policies such as identity cards”). I had a rant about this here.
http://nextleft2.blogspot.com/2008/09/dont-call-for-new-narrative-provide-one.html

(I think there is the possibility of such a narrative, and set out an argument for that last Autumn and several times since. But that is different to saying ‘here is a recipe to turn the polls around in current political and economic conditions’)
http://fabians.org.uk/publications/freethinking-papers/the-vision-thing

But Conor’s arguments are strong ones. An economic downturn makes social democracy more relevant: all of the calls are for governments to act. But the public politics of this are that in the short-term pressure (and reductions) on real incomes/living standards seem unavoidable to some extent. There is no recipe for instant political popularity (if we were less insular, we would see that is the case across Europe). But there are some important government and political choices. Not just about (relatively technical) questions of how to provide sufficient liquidity for (sensible) lending, but about how far there is a public approach to share burdens relatively fairly.

When the Mail and the Express are vociferously condemning the immorality of short-selling, and the Republican administration has undertaken massive nationalisation, it is an interesting moment. But the argument has to be for social democracy – a project which has always, through regulation and political constraints, saved capitalism from its worst excesses so that it has a public licence to operate, rather than for rhetorical and relatively meaningless slogans about the need for a fundamental break with capitalism.

Sunny,

Putting the economics to one side is a pretty big ask under the circumstances. In my view they go right to the heart of Labour’s current problems.

That aside, what you are saying is that the current policies are perfectly sound and the Government simply needs a more polished spokesman to sell them to the public. First of all, I think that is deeply patronising, implying as it does that the public simply doesn’t understand the government’s policies and that it would support them if it knew what they were.

Second, we have to ask whether the policies themselves are any good. We have already established that Labour’s macro-economic reputation is currently hanging in the balance. Contributors to this site will no doubt agree that its record on civil liberties, the environment and getting into badly thought through foreign engagements is also crap. So we are left with the stub of Labour’s lasting achievement in power – that public spending has been immensely increased. And there’s the rub – ministers resort to talking about increases in public spending because increases in public delivery are so thin on the ground. Worse, since the ability to maintain public spending rests on the ability of macro-economic policy to deliver the money to do it with, even that “achievement” looks shaky.

If the policies were good, if the Country was genuinely well placed to ride out the turbulence in the financial system, if British schools and universities were genuinely turning out the best qualified young people in the world and so on then it wouldn’t matter that Gordon prefers to squash people with barrages of irrelevant statistics rather than answering questions and that he has a rather weird smile. These are not fatal flaws in a Prime Minister – what has done for him is the fact that he is sitting in number 10 when the chickens come home to roost.

The panoply of non-entities whose names are being put forward by proxies did not oppose the government’s weak policies at the time and they do not articulate any alternative now. They will suffer the same fate as Gordon if they take over – a short-lived burst of euphoria followed by lasting disappointment – as will anyone who comes in on an a-change-that-is-not-a-change ticket.

“Renewing” Labour is a weasel phrase invented by Brown to describe his own change-that-is-not-a-change assumption of power. Why you would advocate the party making the same mistake again is beyond me. And a new “narrative” that does not involve changes in policy is simply spin. The blunt dilemma for any new leader is that he or she would need either to continue with a set of policies that even the cabinet struggles to defend or to make sufficient changes to policy that an election is required. Moreover, the decision to call an election or not would be a litmus test. By not calling an election you bind yourself to existing policy, in order to advocate change, you need to call an election or be furiously denounced for your contempt for democracy. There is no compromise choice here.

Finally, since you seem to think that all the Government needs is a more reassuring figure at its head, I’d love to know who it is you think that the public will warm to so dramatically as to give the party a fighting chance in the next election?

Milliband? Harman? Johnson? Darling? Straw? Burnham? Kelly? Cooper? Balls?

The public is not exactly in love with these people

Sunny,

Not to bang on about this too much but, six weeks ago, Chris Dillow wrote a piece called “Imagine if Labour were in opposition” in which he contemplated a complete u-turn on some major planks of Labour policy. At that time you seemed to think that these changes of policy were a good idea and encouraged people to suggest other new policies that the Government should take up.

It would therefore appear that you accept that current Labour policies are fundamentally the wrong policies. So it comes back to a question of whether you think it is right to cling to power with the wrong policies or to go to the country with the right ones.

What Labour can’t do is admit that they got it wrong and then maintain that they still have any kind of mandate for their change of heart.

That being the case, the party needs to decide whether it sticks with Gordon or has an election. That so many members of the Government fail to grasp this adds further weight to the charge that Labour is all dither and no decision.

Conor @ 13: My guess is that a lot of them have just fallen out with Brown on a personal level – and others smell blood. In the Blairite heyday everyone was too scared to go “off message”, but people get braver (sorry, more principled) when the leader starts looking weak.

The tone of ‘We woz let dahn’ permeates both Ashley and Toynbee’s pieces: the latter especially as she seriously believed Brown would unleash his (non-existent?) inner social democrat once he became PM – but then Toynbee had spent the previous 10 years making excuses for the fact that Blair hadn’t unleashed his inner social democrat, and failing to read what New Labour was really all about. Ashley managed to write one article about wanting more mavericks and characters in politics without mentioning Blair. If they’re gravitating towards Miliband they’ll just make the same mistakes all over again. I’ve also read pieces in the Grauniad by Byers and Mactaggart, and Purnell and they’ve been truly awful to read.

PS (off topic): Conor, I’d like to see an end to the lazy trope of ’sadomasochism’ in political debate: first, Denis Healey did it first and best with ’sado-monetarism’, second, I really , really, want to get the image of Sarah Palin drilling the Republicans out of my head (it’s okay people, it’s a work-safe article about Palin).

Sunder – ok, you want a narrative, I shall oblige.

George:
Putting the economics to one side is a pretty big ask under the circumstances. In my view they go right to the heart of Labour’s current problems.

Not sure if I agree with this. Their problems started before the economic downturn began. and even then, the Tories aren’t seen as much more competent on economic policy. So why would people want the tories instead of Labour based on supposed economic competence?

That aside, what you are saying is that the current policies are perfectly sound and the Government simply needs a more polished spokesman to sell them to the public.

No, of course I’m not saying that. I fundamentally disagree with a lot of Labour policies. I’m merely being hypothetical for people who want Labour to win.

As for the rest – sorry for being so cryptic. I’m writing an article laying out my position.

Sunny,

But, if you fundamentally disagree with Labour policy then why do you want them to remain in power? Because you reckon that the Tories are worse? Sorry, not a good enough reason.

The ballot box – not the party conference, the blogoshere, the political pages of the Guardian or anywhere else – is where we punish crappy policy. The party writes the manifesto, we vote, if the policies in the manifesto turn out to be crap then you have to come up with some new ones but, before you implement them, you have to put them to the electorate.

When that happens, all the parties can set out their stalls and we can find out what it is that the modern Tory party stands for and where Nick Clegg has repositioned the LibDems as well as what New Labour’s new narrative is. If the Tory party is genuinely less palatable than Labour than they won’t take power.

You will no doubt resent this somewhat patronising restatement of the principles of democracy but suggesting that the Labour party can come up with a new direction without an election or that it should elect a new leader before that leader has even said what he thinks the new direction should be suggests to me that you have forgotten (or are prepared to ignore) some pretty basic tennets in order to keep the Tories out. That kind of behaviour is nothing short of disgraceful.

Furthermore, I would remind you that precisely that attitude – the determination to vote Labour, right or wrong – is what lead Labour to neglect its base in places like Glasgow East and sell out its base.

Labour has failed, ministers recognise this. But if they want to win again, they are going to have to call an election and win the argument, not reposition their way out.

Sunder, you place too much faith in ’social democracy’ as the saviour to all our ills and I don’t think your analysis is accurate:

“But the argument has to be for social democracy – a project which has always, through regulation and political constraints, saved capitalism from its worst excesses so that it has a public licence to operate, rather than for rhetorical and relatively meaningless slogans about the need for a fundamental break with capitalism.”

Firstly, when has social democracy ever saved capitalism from anything? Secondly, is more regulation the solution to tons of failed legislation and the continued failiure of a flawed regulatory system?

You sound more and more like a crypto-LibDem by the day. Will you be praising Vince Cable next?

Seems like Britain is aching for an alternative to the Tories and to NewLabour.

Well, you know, you DO have a Liberal Democratic Party. Maybe you could give them a shot — they haven’t been in power for many decades, and their policies are diametrically opposed to those unpopular economic, military, and anti-civil-liberties policies currently shared by Labour and the Tories….. And then there’s the SNP, if you live in Scotland anyway…. and if you had proportional representation, the Greens might be able to get somewhere….

Nah, never happen. The two-party system is just too strong. Duverger’s Law. Sad, really. Long term, you should clearly vote for whoever commits to proportional representation, just so you have a *chance* of changing things later.