Say hello to Purple Labour

By Alex White / @iamalexwhite

Memoir after memoir, interview after interview, like a track stuck on repeat, we learn of the rift in the last Labour government. It was perhaps the worst kept secret in Westminster; that Gordon Brown would do anything to force his way to the leadership he felt he was destined for. We know the aftermath of that struggle – a dismal encore in 2010 to the successes of the three elections which went before.

The current rift – and it seems with the Labour Party there must always be a rift – doesn’t scale such leadership-denying, government-crumbling heights, it certainly isn’t enough to bring down the current leadership. After all, Ed Miliband himself wants ‘a thousand flowers to bloom’. Be that as it may, there is still a potential for a seismic disruption to the Labour Party.

Blue Labour was touted earlier this year as the future for the party, with Ed Miliband said to show a keen interest in Maurice Glasman’s plans for electoral success. Those plans – which were bold until he actually opened his mouth on immigration – have slipped somewhat into the shadows for a while, but with conference season upon us, the debate will rage once more.

Blue Labour isn’t electable, and is perhaps just as much of a knee-jerk as a dramatic move to socialism. It moves to take back Tory voters over issues such as immigration and community. Such topics – particularly community – are likely to be raised again following last month’s disorder in some of England’s cities. But that should not be a reason to move to a Blue manifesto, for the next election won’t be fought on the basis of something so relatively small which happened this year. Punishment has been handed out to most of the looters arrested; the public, whilst wary of it happening again, are over it.

It accepts the base Conservative view that we are living in a Broken Britain. That is not viable to the electorate as a reason to elect Labour, particularly when the failures of the last Labour governments contributed to that perception. It lacks credibility as a manifesto pledge.

And here’s the biggest obstacle: it targets working class voters in a way in which we shouldn’t be targeting working class voters. It assumes a basic mindset is true across the public, that immigration is a worry, that family is everything, and that a single nationist approach to foreign policy is what the people believe in. None of these assumptions are true enough to base an entire manifesto on. What the leadership and strategists must realise is that offering affluence and aspiration are the way in which to win working class voters; not patronising them.

So what of the alternative; a ‘Red’ Labour? A move firmly in the direction of socialism would be, as history has proven, electorally suicidal. I claimed before that ‘no horrific past should obstruct our future’. What I meant by that applies to Red Labour. The horrific wilderness of the 1980s and over half of the 1990s should be a reason for us to move on from the very ideology which left us there – hard-left socialism. It is almost inconceivable that the electorate would vote for a Labour Party fighting on a purely socialist manifesto.

This leaves me with short space to remark on what the alternative is – Purple Labour. It is a combination of both blue and red ideologies – that is where our future as a democratic-socialist party lies. At the next election we will hopefully be campaigning in an economic climate of growth. That means backing progressive initiatives to ensure the future of Britain. They might include high-speed rail networks, academies and redistributing that new wealth.

It serves the party as well as the public. It brings together the most electable aspects of both sides of the ideological debate and sits in the centre-ground. What that means for the public is obvious – it offers the ‘squeezed middle’ a voice. What it means for the party is less often spoken about. Accepting that the Labour Party is a broad group of progressives, it positions itself to open the party up to proper policy debate.

It is an ‘Adaptable’ Labour – one which changes with the party and the public. Along with vote-winning, sometimes we need to save the party from the party.