If UKIP is the Question, New Labour isn’t the answer

There will be renewed calls today from the usual suspects for a serious look at the leadership of Ed Miliband. Labour managed second in Eastleigh with a quarter of the vote in the 1994 by-election (although it is important to note that this took place before Blair became leader), whereas we’ve now been reduced to the status of a fringe party. If only Miliband had not abandoned the true path of Blairism…

There are extenuating circumstances of course – the party threw a lot of money at Eastleigh in 1994 and the boundaries have changed. There is also a dire need for the Labour party to build its organisational strength across much of the South. Simply put, councillors are the captains of electoral campaigning, and without them it is hard to get anywhere.

But a ‘return to Blair’ ignores the nature of the challenge – UKIP. Although it is a party of protest, it is worth noting that protest has chosen Farage’s outfit as its vehicle, as opposed to the Greens or Respect. And that tells you what kind of protest it is.

ConHome’s Paul Goodman described it recently as ‘Poujadist’, a sort of small town, lower-middle class conservative populist rebellion against metropolitan elites.

In my own Hertfordshire CLP of Hertsmere, immigration is one of the walls Labour activists keep on hitting and sounds like something similar was going on in Eastleigh. This populism is anti-multiculturalism, anti-EU and anti-modern life in general.

And this is where the problem for Blairism comes in. Because Blair’s triangulation was partly about a centrist optimism deployed in contrast to the pessimism of the Left, who thought the UK was wrecked after Thatcher, and the Right, who (to some extent) always believed the country was going to the dogs. Blair asserted that ‘Britain is a young country’ against John Major’s ‘Back to Basics’ backward-looking worldview.

If Eastleigh represents the rebellion of the grumpy old buggers, Cool Britannia isn’t going to cut it – and that’s before we get on to the policy prescriptions. Declare a moratorium on immigration? Part of New Labour’s business credentials rested with no messing around with such nonsense. Withdraw from the EU? Some of the loudest voices on the Labour side against a referendum are coming from those who believe they carry the Blairite torch.

That leaves advocating deeper cuts. But when you’re trying to win a political argument through anecdote against the right-wing tabloids, you’ll always lose.

Deepening cuts inevitably takes you into older, whiter, more prosperous territory, and you have the problem of hitting the heart of UKIP while the trickle of anecdotes continues. The question will be asked “Why does Labour want to take away my divinely-endowed bus pass while some immigrant family is getting a Westminster mansion?”.

That probably just leaves public service reform in the Blairite locker. There is a public policy argument to be had here, as Martin Kettle pointed out in the Guardian. But anyone who thinks that the Dog and Duck on a Friday night in bubbling with chatter over the merits of an Owenite internal market system for health, as opposed to a social insurance scheme, needs to recalibrate their political antennae.

If Eastleigh tells us anything, is that with the electorate in a strop, Britainnia aint cool. That isn’t exactly fertile ground for Blairism.

If only there was someone in Labour wrestling with questions of unease in modern life, a sense of connection to the country and our local communities. Oh, I’m sorry there is – Ed Miliband.