Milibanites must stand up and be counted

Last night on Newsnight there was the beginning of an attempt to define Milibandism. An interesting and thoughtful film by Rafeal Behr was followed by a less than edifying debate between Behr and former Blair speechwriter Phil Collins. The debate – such as you could call it that – was almost completely derailed by Collin’s incredibly sneering and dismissal of “the left” as naive, and the financial crisis as merely a bump in the road of business as usual.

It takes quite an incredibly degree of wilful blindness not to see the crash of 2008 as a turning point for our understanding of economics. It hasn’t resulted in an immediate understanding of what changes are required. It hasn’t resulted in a reversion to leftist statism. But it has changed the public perception of our current capitalist system and has made questioning that system politically possible for the first time since the Thatcher revolution.

Blairism was about harnessing the proceeds of rampant capitalism to do social good. This model deliberately allowed the market a free reign, intervening after the inevitable damage had been done to make a difference where it was needed. Tax credits, investment in welfare, record investment in schools and hospitals were possible during the Blair years, because the economy was booming. But Blairism turned out to be as unsustainable as the economy that funded it. The Right have successfully if completely wrongly and cynically managed to convince the public that government spending was run rampant. This – more than anything else – is what has killed Blairism.

There can be no return to that model even as the economy improves.

Collins repeated the mantra last night that Ed Miliband’s Labour party and “the left” (which he conflates as a whole which might surprise a few of our left wing and decidedly un-Milibandite readership) haven’t grasped that the future – at least the immediate future – is about how to govern when there is no money. This is where I think Collins could not be more wrong about Miliband – though he is right about elements of the left. It is the response of a Blairite who has lost the supply-side part of the Blair equation. It is the response of someone who sees the only other option put forward by the left as the strong and over-arching state. This is not the offer Miliband is making.

The heart of the Miliband project, is about changing the points at which Government can and should intervene. This is hard to articulate and we are struggling to raise it beyond emblematic policies like the energy freeze. At the moment it remains stuck in the language of the seminar room. Predistribution and responsible capitalism are hard concepts to sell on the doorstep, but that does not make them the wrong choices for Labour.

A Miliband-led government would be one where the state was made smaller through deliberate early activity. It would have no compunction in intervening in markets that were failing to produce the right outcomes for citizens. Miliband’s Labour would use the state to intervene early before inequalities are compounded, to create the right conditions for people to thrive.

Where Milibandism is likely to diverge from the traditional left, is that having created those conditions, a Miliband-led government would expect citizens to take responsibility for grasping their opportunities. If we can truly reshape the economy to work for the majority then that can and must change our understanding of governmental support.

Which is why every idea emanating on welfare for those who can work is tied up in conditionality. Those who can work, should work – from each according to their ability to each according to their need is not just about the need. But work should be properly rewarding in a way so much of it fails to be under the free market free-for-all, fair-for-few system we have now. Equally in healthcare. If we were able to move to a model where we are able to intervene earlier, it would again reduce costs and therefore budgets. For example, hospitals would close, because we would stop forcing all the capacity into the most acute end of care, and we could vastly reduce the demand for these services.

Are the left ready to accept this? It might be argued the response to this week’s interesting and largely sensible IPPR report on ending NEET culture shows that they are not. I also doubt many of us are ready to celebrate hospital closures (and of course, the system is not geared yet to early intervention, so we still need this acute care, so for the moment there is nothing to celebrate)? This is not statism as it has come to be defined.

The end result of Milibandism is not a large, benevolent, paternalistic state, but one that is small, agile and empowering. If Milibandism works, spending on welfare, health and social care – for example – should go down, must go down. This will be a sign of it’s success, but it is hard to see it being celebrated by Old Labour.

I firmly believe Miliband is on the right path. But it will be beset with obstacles thrown at him by those who resist losing their old models – be they New or Old Labour. So those of us who want to see these fundamental changes need to stand up. We need to shout up. We need to be counted.