Tony Blair and the old Chartists of the 1880s.
Tony Blair has been making another of speeches. They are in essence all on the same theme. Namely that he doesn’t like the left or Jeremy Corbyn (the feeling is replicated) and left of centre politics would go well if only New Labour made a come-back.
Except of course it wont. Since then there has been the 2008 crash and austerity. The world has moved on and Blair hasn’t.
That doesn’t btw mean that the content of the speech should be dismissed. True Blair often wanders off into hyperbole. For example he claims that Corbyn led a protest movement. It was one however that got 10 million votes which makes it a very popular protest. The problem is that no actual protest was involved. Whatever you may think of them, compare the yellow vest protests in France.
Blair also rightly notes that what is needed is a progressive anti-Tory politics that can win. Of course under Blair progressive politics seemed to involve war and privatisation but the broad point is still right and that surely was what the measures in Labour’s Manifesto were all about. Publicly owned railways, green new deal and so on are mainstream progressive popular politics.
Blair doesn’t in fact play his strongest card. Labour is a party of Parliamentary Socialism (including Jeremy Corbyn who has held his seat since 1983 and will end up as Father of the House if he doesn’t watch out) and Blair won three General Elections, prudently outsourcing the one he might well have lost in 2010 to Gordon Brown.
As Dylan noted, there is no success like failure, but failure is no success at all.
The phenomenon of the perpetually reappearing ex-leader is not unique to Labour. John Major was to be found last week calling for a vote to stop Johnson.
However there is also a place in labour history for historical hangovers.
Some of the Chartists of the 1840s were still to be found active in a revived socialist politics in the 1880s. They were primarily followers of the Chartist Bronterre O’Brien who believed that currency reform was central to a fairer society.
W S Sanders in his book Early Socialist Days, recalled branch life in the Battersea branch of Britain’s first Marxist organisation the Social Democratic Federation in the 1880s. The demands of the People’s Charter of 1838, suitably tweaked, were very much part of the SDF’s politics. The O’Brienite currency theory much less so.
Sanders notes that the old Chartists were seen as survivors from another age, listened to with interest by some, with frustration by others, but ultimately an anachronism.
Blair in 2019 is heading to the same place. Hopefully the track record of winning elections is not.
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