Timid opposition is not a good basis for radical government

By Toby Flux

A couple of years ago LabourList invited me to complete a short survey about the prospects for Labour. There was the ubiquitous probing of who would be a better Leader than Gordon Brown (which said all you needed to know about how Gordon’s government was perceived), but it was the question about whether Labour would win the next election which made it memorable for me. I ticked the ‘no’ box and explained that I thought Labour had already lost because it had singularly failed to explain the new economic realities the banking crisis had ushered in. I still hold that view, but take no pleasure in witnessing the second worst defeat in Labour’s history.

We are now living with the consequences of Labour’s failure to articulate a coherent narrative and forward message. An illegitimate coalition government, built on lies eagerly swallowed wholesale by a media desperate to close the door on the Labour years, is planning a deeply damaging transformation of the role of the state in all our public services.

There is clearly some recognition that Labour needs to try to remedy this situation, because in the same week that the first large demonstration against coalition plans to treble student tuition fees, axe the EMA, cut teaching grants, and solidify a market in higher education, Labour’s shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, delivered a speech to the RSA pushing back on the economic myths which have sadly become mainstream thinking:

“For Ed Miliband and for me, Labour’s economic credibility matters. It will be at the heart of everything we do.

It doesn’t mean ignoring what we got wrong – but it does mean standing up for what we got right.

So I want to use this speech to:

a) Establish the facts of what went before; what we got wrong as well as what went right

b) Explore where those facts leave the real political debate in this country; the choices we face

c) Encourage the government to engage in a proper debate about those choices

So let’s deal with the claims they make compared to the facts…”

It was a good speech, but was anybody listening? More to the point, did anybody really expect the assembled media hacks to rush back to their offices to pen the story which starts with “everything we’ve been telling you for the last few years is wrong”? With Murdoch’s empire little more than a cheerleader for the Tories, is the battle really for the hearts and minds of The Telegraph and Daily Mail (heaven help us!) or, more realistically just the Mirror, Independent and Guardian? If so, is that a winning strategy?

While Alan Johnson was fighting a rearguard action in the hope that he can regain some economic credibility for Labour, students were on the streets in London and across the country protesting about the future. The media were of course delighted to be able to paint young adults from Esher as dangerous anarchists bent on destruction of all we hold dear, rather than the fact that a sleeping giant had finally awoken. The police and Labour-led NUS both seem surprised that twice as many students had travelled to London than expected, and both were consequently shocked that a few would use the opportunity to trash Tory HQ.

While we all condemn the violence and damage, let’s not forget that while the kids were marching about the future, Labour has little better to offer them, or so it seems. Policy confusion, with an added hint of capitulation that there really is no alternative (TINA) to the state retreating from higher education funding is not good opposition.

And in case you’re now thinking I’ve gone off on some ultra-lefty rant, ask yourself this question: what exactly is Labour’s policy towards the axing of the Educational Maintenance Allowance? I think we’re opposed to it, but I’ve very little to base that assumption on and there’s certainly no effective Labour-led campaign to save it, despite all the good it has done in the past. What about a policy of finding the ill fit for work when decent clinical assessments would obviously not result in the savings in benefit bills which currently drive the process? How about making the bankers pay for the mess they left us, where exactly do we stand on that?

Let’s be clear what I’m saying (because misrepresentation of what I do actually say can so easily be twisted, even by people who should be friends): Labour needs to get its act together. It desperately needs to articulate an alternative to TINA, but first it needs to believe that there is an alternative to TINA.

Next it needs to accept that asking the Daily Mail, or even The Guardian, to explain what we stand for is killing our opportunity to stand for anything meaningful to many, many people who are preparing to pay the price for Labour’s inability to convince them about the facts of the past, let alone a better future.

By all means make your speeches in Parliament and the RSA, but take the time to address the demonstrators’ concerns too. If we’re too embarrassed by what we’ve got to offer the demonstrators to ask them to join Labour and build momentum for a Labour government in 2015, something is very wrong and needs to be changed. Because, make no mistake about it, we can be a responsible opposition and actively oppose the Coalition in the Town Halls, on the streets, and on the doorstep without the initial support of the newspapers, provided that we have the structures and ability to take our (hopefully coherent and forward-looking) message directly to the voters.

The Poll Tax wasn’t defeated by riots in London, but demonstrations in Tunbridge Wells, but look what we got as a result – the squalid compromise of the Council Tax. That’s what happens when ordinary people force change on a Tory government while the Official Opposition seems unable or unwilling to propose a real alternative. Look at the pace of change the coalition is embarking on – without a mandate in many cases – and look back on New Labour’s achievements. Yes they were many, but in policy area after policy area we were too timid. Timid opposition is not a good basis for radical government. There has to be a better way, and yes it starts with honesty about the past, but it requires us to rediscover our radical roots too. It requires us to be part of a movement for change, not just a party with a few good ideas while we triangulate for votes in Surrey.

Ed Miliband told those willing to listen during the Leadership debate that he was the candidate who would be able to shift the centre ground to meet a Labour party a bit to the left of New Labour. When he gets back from his paternity leave I hope the welcome new addition to his family makes him focus on the future – theirs and ours – like a laser. Labour needs to lead the opposition to TINA, not be dragged there by those under attack or, worse still, be left behind by people who think us irrelevant, career politicians who are only in it for what we can get out of it.

So far, the polls are telling us we’re failing to convince once again. Something’s got to change, and fast, if a Labour shadow chancellor isn’t to be destined to be making speeches to the RSA in five years time again arguing that our defeat was the result of misrepresentation of what we stand for.