It’s not about left and right – it’s about the sum of what we can do together

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Recently, I posted an article addressed directly to disillusioned former Labour supporters, in which I said that “while a Labour government will always need to compromise, we can’t compromise on the need for a Labour government”.

It wasn’t intended as a direct call to arms to activists. Rather, it was a rough analysis of why a vote for anyone other than Labour at the next election was effectively a vote for a Tory government.

A few days later, Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy rebutted my argument, saying there is a “strategic reason for not supporting this New Labour administration”. Sunny wrote that Labour in the current era has become “so vacuous and pragmatic…as to keep churning out lame policies and half-assed racist dog whistles” and that it is more sensible for the liberal- and left-minded to “let it die and then figure out how to influence the next one”.

Let me be honest: I used to feel exactly the same way. Last summer, when I still lived in New York and was wondering what to do next, I remember telling two friends on the subway that I felt the Labour government was dead and that there was nothing anyone could do to help it survive. I said then that there would inevitably be a Tory government after the next election, and that the Labour party required a period in opposition to find itself again.

My mates were angry with me, and told me quite bluntly that that was not a compelling argument. Of course, as usual they were right and I was wrong. In spite of the anger and the differences of left and right that Sunny wrote about, here’s why I changed my mind:

It is not – and it cannot – be in our fabric to let the movement that has been the most radical vehicle for progressive change this country has ever known to wither on the vine of opposition. To do so is to foster new ambivalence, introspective self-pity and ultimate indifference.

Labour has always been about confronting its inner daemons – from the internal struggle with Militant to the crucial debate over Clause IV and modernisation in the 1990s. Yes, those battles were in opposition, but with the recession taking effect and working people hurting more than ever before in recent memory, this time we have to make sure it’s different.

The reason I feel this way is that there are millions of people in this country who continue to rely on a Labour government. We may not remember the ghost towns that resulted from the last Conservative government’s response to recession, but we can surely agree that there are people in the modern economy who cannot afford to be left alone by the next one’s exclusive, isolationist position on Europe and fiscal investment; on inheritance tax cuts for the unsuffering; on the levied promotion of marriage over agile respect for the reality of the modern family; or on the need to expand provisions such as Sure Start that are equipping children with modern minds for a modern era.

Giving up on Labour now is an invitation to those agents of exclusion and isolation.

Sometimes it’s also easy to forget quite the difference this Labour government has made to our lives through a proactive state.

My personal experiences are fairly simply told: I waited 7 hours with a broken arm and jaw in hospital queues in the 1980s, and returned recently to a new ward, instant treatment and fantastic care; I left a neglected school in 1998 and now go back to an energetic and inspiring place; my friends in Northern Ireland aren’t afraid of bombs like they were in the 80s and 90s; I earned £1.50 an hour for my first job and now that’s illegal; my favourite cities in the UK – Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham – don’t feel so riddled with want as they once were; the xenophobia and homophobia I grew up around are becoming the exception rather than the rule; and in my day-to-day life, the buses, tubes and trains I clamber onto offer a vastly improved service.

This is my story, singular and personal, but it is the direct result of an organisation working for the common good with policy that has direct results and I am not willing to turn my back on it for exactly those reasons. Unlike for Sunny, to me it is not about right- and left-wing factions or Brownite and Blairite personalities jostling for favour, or even the overly, if real, ideological battle between left and right. It’s about the sum of what we can all do when we work for and with people – when we put our minds together. And the reality is that we need to be in office to do that. Driving a wedge is just not helpful at a time when we need to be building a bridge.

That conversation I had with my mates reminded me that we can’t just give up on the progress that’s been made over the last 12 years. And that’s why – lonely as it gets sometimes – I spend most of my waking hours and many of my slumbered ones trying to build a more coherent, open and honest platform for those same tales to be retold.