Same old ‘new’ politics

by Rob Chesworth / @RobChesworth

Over the course of the last 6 weeks there has been much talk from both sides of the aisle about ‘new politics,’ ‘old politics’ and everything in between. The Tories have regaled us with tales of the gigantic mess left by Labour which they’ve dutifully vowed to clear up, whilst the Labour Party have wasted no time chiming on about the same old Tories, Etonian privilege and Lib Dem sell-outs.

The conversation about ‘new politics’ continues largely unabated as we see the Labour leadership contenders begin to throw around dreary phrases like “the era of New Labour is over, what we need is ‘next Labour'”; and you can always bank on a Tory to fall back on ‘new government’, ‘new politics’ or ‘need for change’ when thumbing around for whatever it is they’re actually trying to say. What they’re trying to say usually turns out to be something about the ‘Big Society’ – I’m still not sure what that actually means.

What I ultimately take from this debate is that I’ve not seen an enormous amount of actual change, quite the contrary in fact, and certainly no new politics. I read a couple of articles by Labour activists this week that really struck a chord; both wasted no time forecasting outright armageddon owing to the budget cuts announced earlier in the day by the Chancellor and the Secretary to the Treasury – immediate doom and gloom. Even in the State Opening, an event suffocated by pomp and circumstance, we saw that Cameron just could not resist taking the opportunity to contravene age old tradition by breaking ranks and having a little jibe at Labour – not surprising that every paper except the Daily Mail, our equivalent of Fox News, pulled him up on it at some point subsequently.

Scaremongering, it seems, is as commonplace as ever, and it is little wonder that the public grow frustrated and disillusioned with the political process. I wrote in my blog earlier this week that The Labour Party’s leadership contest provides an ideal opportunity to reboot and refresh, for me the direction that our new leader takes our party will be as critical as anything else we do. I hold firm to this, and the manner in which our candidates conduct themselves over the course of the coming months will go a long way to informing my decision as to which one I choose to get behind.

On the day of the Queen’s speech, Harriet Harman sent out an email entitled “We will not pull our punches” to the Labour Party membership, after her first clashes over the despatch box. I thought her email was superb, and epitomised exactly my expectations of our future leader. In opening she said:

“I said today in the House of Commons that we will not oppose for the sake of it – that’s not what the public wants. But we will not pull our punches either…”

She goes on to add:

“The new government has proposed political reform. Where that strengthens democracy – we will support them. Where they give more power to the House of Commons to hold government to account – we will support them. But it is not progressive to politicise the police or scrap the Human Rights Act, and we will oppose those measures.”

This week the coalition government announced their first round of budget cuts, £6.25 billion’s worth. We all knew it was coming, and we all knew it was necessary. The FT published an article the day after the Treasury announcement indicating that a number of the UK’s leading economists in principle support the coalition’s measures and believe they pose no substantial risk to our economic future. Where the government has taken decisive, tough action we should support them, and we should support each other through what may be testing times. Unlike what fellow bloggers have had to say this week, I believe it is clear that the Treasury’s cuts do not condemn a generation, nor do they represent economic armageddon, but like many Labour members I do oppose the decision to reduce university funding by 3%; I cannot fathom the reasoning for scrapping the Future Jobs Fund and I am also very disappointed that they chose to cut the Low Carbon Buildings Programme. Like Harriet Harman said so well this week, we should save our punches for the fights that we need to have – that’s a step in the right direction toward ‘new politics’.