We need to outflank the Tories

The Paul Richards column

King Canute was famous, not for believing that he could hold back the waves, but for knowing that he couldn’t. His watery stunt in the shallows of the English Channel was designed either as a rebuke to sycophantic courtiers, or an act of piety in the face of God. Either way, even a King knew his limitations.

Labour is limited to impotent rage at one end of the spectrum, or quiet irrelevance at the other. Talking is what we do now. Doing is for the Government. Knowing we can’t stop the Tory-led government doing what it wants is the first step to enlightenment. Understanding the changes that will have taken place by 2015 is necessary to shaping our alternative. An offer to play the last five years in reverse will not be welcomed by the electorate.

Take yesterday’s announcement that the elections for police commissioners will take place in May the year after next in the 43 police areas outside of London. The natural reaction for Labour will be to jeer and point out the faults in such a scheme. As a former SPAD, I could write the briefing note now: it will be expensive (£136m over ten years) at a time forces are cutting their budgets by 14% – 20%. They are opposed by the police, who fear the ‘politicisation’ of the police force. The plans do away with local police authorities – the chair of the association of police authorities (APA) is a Tory councillor, and he considers his government’s plan ‘the wrong policy at the wrong time.’ The new commissioners will earn £122,000 per annum (plus expenses), creating a new tier of fat-cat politicians. They’ll be able to appoint their own political advisers, creating a new cadre of spin-doctors and fixers, funded by the taxpayer. Extremists from the BNP and EDL will stand candidates and may win office. It’s expensive, unnecessary, and risky, and Labour’s home affairs team will fight it all the way.

And like King Canute, they’ll fail to hold back the tide, because the Government has a parliamentary majority, and we don’t. The bill will become law, and the elections will go ahead in May 2012.

What then? Labour has two choices. We can boycott the elections, because we didn’t support the scheme in the first place, or we can stand Labour candidates to be the over-paid, bloated fat-cats that we’ve been warning everyone about. Nothing will hobble the chances of the 43 Labour candidates we field in May 2012 more than quotations by Ed Balls echoing in their ears about the uselessness of the office they’re seeking.

It’s an instructive case about the whole conduct of government. The danger for Labour is that we become boxed in on issue after issue, as the party resisting reform, on the side of the status quo, and defending a reality which is disappearing all around us. Or we can attempt an audacious outflanking of the Tory policy. If the shadow home affairs team not only accepted the premise of elected police chiefs, but also put down amendments for partially-elected local police boards as well, we could out manoeuvre Teresa May. We simply call their bluff. The current policy is to have councillors and co-opted members of local police boards. Labour should demand a local panel of equal thirds – one third councillors, one third appointments, and one third directly elected by the public. This model was actively discussed behind the scenes during the drafting of the police white paper in 2009. David Blunkett was asked by the home secretary Jacqui Smith to draw up a report into ways to make the police more accountable. As you might expect from the former leader of Sheffield Council, he ruled out direct elections to police boards in favour of a continuing role for councillors. But that was then. In Opposition, Labour has a duty to be bold.

More democracy, greater accountability, more responsive services – that should be Labour’s call, not a dogged attachment to a status quo which few voters understand or care about.