Labour needs to learn the art of opposition

The Labour movement column

By Anthony Painter

It took the Tories eight years to begin to grapple with the art of successful opposition. They got there in the end. Just as the Conservatives re-learned the art, Labour spectacularly and simultaneously lost its ability to be heard. The Conservatives did not simply shout louder than they had been or shroud themselves in ideological purity. They moved on. On health, the environment and the virtue of society they extinguished the difference with the Labour government. In this latter area they actually managed to steal a march.

When it came to opposing – and here they homed in on the deficit – they did not pull their punches. In short, opposition is a blend of reasonable and considered consensus, forward vision and remorseless attack when there is real difference. It’s a sophisticated blend: you have to discredit, establish credibility, and look forward all at the same time. Labour has a long way to go to find the right blend of these qualities. At the moment, everything is a do or die protection of exactly where the Labour Government was when it handed over the keys to 10 Downing Street. Whatever the short-term benefits, oppositionalism will wear pretty thin very quickly.

Some of this is understandable given that there is a leadership election. With the laudable exception of Ed Miliband who supported Kenneth Clarkes’ ideas on penal reform, there is not a leadership candidate who has shown any form of constructive engagement with what is turning out to be a reformist government. And while the leadership election is in train we are left with a shadow cabinet of former secretaries of state shadowing the departments they have just left behind. Of course they will be defensive and negative – how could they be otherwise?

So should we simply accept that this short-termist and retrospective form of opposition is temporary? The problem is that there is an addictive quality to this approach. You get the high of being on a full frontal attack. Your troops line up behind you – loyally. You get to look the enemy in the eye and finally unleash all the emotional energy that has been building up over the years.

It’s a real trip this opposition. The problem is that it’s corrosive. You don’t see the long term impact. Your friends move on. They whisper behind your back in sympathy and despair. They look for others to hang around with. After a while even your family gives up on you. You might be life and soul of the party now. Down the line, you just look a bit lost, sad and irrelevant.

By this, I don’t mean for a moment that Labour should not oppose where there is absolutely justification for doing so. The Budget was an unnecessary economic risk as well as being socially unjust. The abolition of Building Schools for the Future was not just ineptly handled; it is economically and educationally damaging. The NAO report into BSF is not nearly as brutal about the programme as Michael Gove pretended that it was. There was dishonest politics and bad policy combined. Silly decisions such as the withdrawal of the Forgemasters’ loan were unnecessary.

But there is much in liberal conservative reformism that needs to be seriously engaged with. On penal reform and civil liberties, the coalition is making a serious case that Labour in government was overbearing, wasteful, and failed to understand the social and community damage that can be done by pursuing a tough instead of a sound policy. As Ken Clarke said in his penal reform speech:

“In my opinion the failure of the past has been to use tough rhetoric and to avoid taking tough decisions that might prove unpopular in the short term.”

Labour is stuck in this way of thinking instead of engaging with great ideas such as justice reinvestment (http://www.labourlist.org/stephen-gummer-justice-reinvestment-a-new-form-of-penal-system). In the meantime the coalition has its focus on community safety, rehabilitation and what works. It is taking banking reform, regulation, and taxation far more seriously than anyone thought likely. Plans for a Green Investment Bank to capitalise the UK’s green infrastructure and economy could be profoundly important.

What is really holding back Labour from supporting these policies and actually taking them further? And the coalition is proposing major reform in schools and health. Free schools are actually a Labour idea as Conor Ryan has pointed out. There will be good free schools – those that value creativity and aren’t just exam factories. There will be bad free schools – where, for example, parents fail to understand the difference between governance and teaching. They become bad when you cut Building Schools for the Future in order to fund them, or you allow them to be selective, or you allow other local schools to become zombie schools. But let’s not pretend that as a party Labour is against diversity in provision or educational reform. That will simply rebound on the party as it looks like the past rather than the future.

The same is true in health. It is not good enough to claim diversity of provision is simply a postcode lottery. Or to claim it is ‘unfair’ on that basis. The reforms may be chaotic and will have a short-term impact on health improvements – all structural change does. Labour should argue that case.

But the internal market was not only accepted by Labour but extended and the Lansley reforms are a logical extension of that process – it was Labour that enshrined patient choice, personal budgets in social care and practice based commissioning. All this may end up being ‘unfair’ but it is not clear why that should necessarily be the case other than if we accept that all difference is unfair per se. Actually, some GP practices – in partnership with local authorities – could become community well-being centres with a whole variety of additional services on offer. Who knows – these could spring up in the least affluent as well the most affluent areas? Who can guess where social, health and community entrepreneurs are located?

The priority is better healthcare not uniformity; better education not standardisation; safer communities not we’re tougher than you; and community involvement not bureaucratic diktat.

There is much that is potentially positive in the coalition’s reformism. There is much that is wrong-headed. There is much that is downright unjust and wrong. A clever and credible opposition will distinguish between the three. It will develop its own argument for the future and forward-looking leadership. Unfortunately, that’s not where Labour currently is. Let’s hope it doesn’t take eight years and three election defeats to learn the art of opposition. Those who rely on good Labour Government cannot wait that long. And it wouldn’t harm to hear a leadership contender say that.

Anthony Painter blogs at http://www.anthonypainter.co.uk