Labour’s Stark Choices Are Exposed at the Fabian Conference

The ghosts of Leaders past stalked the halls of the Fabian Conference this morning,

Amid much discussion of why Labour lost, why we failed to convince and why we found ourselves not just not winning but falling disastrously backwards we could no longer ignore the Ed problem. Ed was always a favourite of the Fabian audiences. But that was part of the problem. Ed was a leader for a Labour Party that talks to the people who come to Fabian conferences. We did not speak to a wider audience.

But more even than Ed, this conference is haunted by the ghost of Tony Blair. The last electorally successful Labour leader hovers over this conference like the spectre at the feast. If you listen closely, you can hear him say “I told you so” in that  forlorn, sincere voice he was so good at adopting.

The problem shared both Fabians and Blairites alike is that both analysis’s  are right.eter Kellner spelled it out the the assembled masses brilliantly as the Blair Mark One (the Blair both of accepting Tory spending plans and embracing business and Murdoch who was also the Blair of Sure Start, The Minimum Wag and huge cuts in child poverty) and Blair Mark Two (the Blair of Iraq whose post commons career can be cartoonishly described as consisting of advising regimes that are despotic and murderous).

The Fabians (by whom I mean not the organisation itself, but the members who choose to spend their Saturday at a political conference) hate Blair Mark Two almost more than they hate the Tories. And in this loathing they have forgotten all that was good about Blair Mark One.

Leadership matters more than soft left social democrats (like myself) would like it to. It is the leader who gives shape to the narrative of the Party and gives that party permission to be hear. If we are unsure at the top we are unsure throughout the Party. Successful leaders may not always be right, but they are always sure and equally able to articulate that certainty clearly to the outside world. To the people who think we’re mad to spend this beautiful June day in a basement talking politics.

The electoral mountain Labour has to climb is becoming ever more obvious. The Fabian Society themselves lay this out in their latest report with devastating clarity. There is not a clear idea as to how Labour can do this. Members will – this afternoon – be treated to speeches from most of the Leadership candidates with their thoughts.

The candidates are currently pitching to the Labour membership. That’s how they win this particular election. The Fabians in the hall this morning seemed unwilling to leave some of the Labour Party’s comfort zones. Questions centred on the right wing press, tuition fees, and turning left to win back votes from the SNP and the Greens (both of whose “left” credentials could well be questioned). Will the candidates tack left to win the hall or will they challenge them?

After the 2010 election I also went to a Fabian Conference, and at it i worried that the Labour Party had not worked out that it had lost the last election. We do know that at least now. But that does not mean we are anything like in the right place to challenge ourselves as to why.

Are we ready to listen to the country? I don’t know yet.

Those who attend Fabian conferences (in which group I – of course – include myself) are as unrepresentative of the Labour membership as they are of the country. One should not take a sense of unreality here as a concern more widely for where the Party is. And may here arasking the right questions. Some are even trying to provide answers, though many of those feel too “off the shelf”. The old solutions  – whether from the right or left of the Party – are not going to cut it. New solutions must be found that speak to both and to the country.

So good luck this afternoon to our leadership candidates as they lay out their stalls. You have a massive, complicated, demanding job to do.