Blair on Labour electoral strategy 2021: still not the history man
One of the cornerstones of New Labour was that it was about looking forward not back to the traditions of the past. Tony Blair never made it to the Durham miners gala despite being a local MP and his grasp of history was never great.
In one of his rare but frequent interventions Blair has written the introduction to a new study by the pollster Peter Kellner of the northern ‘Red Wall’ and how Labour might win votes. The whole thing is on-line (link below) and worth a look.
Blair’s introduction covers some interesting ground. He repeats the claim that in recent decades the working class has declined and so Labour must move on from traditional socialist values. The same thing was said after the 1959 Election defeat (Must Labour Lose) and by Marxism Today after the 1979 and 1983 defeats. Saying it again does not make it right though. The working class has changed- there are no miners left of note- but it’s still very much with us. That’s why the fight for a decent living wage is so important.
Blair’s obsession with what he terms the ‘far left’ (i.e people who hold mainstream European social democratic views in reality)seems to be getting worse. He never bothered much during the New Labour years (but then he was in Office) and one might get the impression that he is now more interested in attacking the ‘far left’ than in getting Labour elected. He of course thinks the two are linked.
On Tory Culture Wars he makes a more interesting though arguable point (misrepresented by click bate media) that while Labour should be ‘liberal and tolerant’ it should avoid ‘woke-ism’. He doesn’t define what that is because after all, might it not just be refusing to put up with racist ideas and practices? That said its quite difficult to see Starmer as either ‘liberal’ or ‘tolerant’ and this is where we get to the (possibly unintentionally)interesting part of Blair’s argument.
Blair discusses the New Labour Governments he headed from 1997. Firstly he seems to make one of the clearest admissions yet that the Iraq War was a disaster (a deadly one). It was a complete distraction from what the Government was meant to be doing. He lists some of the things that were done (there was others that were less great like PFI) and these were achievements that made a real difference to the lives of many. The charge was and remains that given he was elected with massive majorities twice he really could have done a lot more.
The bottom line though is awkward for Starmer who spends much of his time agreeing with the Tories. There is little in what he has said that suggests that he is interested in achieving the modest but real progress that Blair did, perhaps because in different economic times the challenge is harder.
It’s a challenge nevertheless. Why vote for a party that says it will make the impact of neo-liberal capitalism on working people a bit less onerous if actually, it seems to be suggesting it will do nothing of the sort?
The last Labour government had many faults, as all governments do. Even the best end eventually. And the anger at some of the decisions, particularly Iraq, was understandable.
But there were radical improvements in public services; large reductions in poverty; some things like the Northern Ireland peace process which took years of patient effort, and some like trebling the development budget or the minimum wage which took political will. And much that we did – on a daily basis – spoke not just to different policies but to different values.
https://institute.global/policy/red-walls-red-bridges-rebuilding-labours-voter-coalition
Leave a Reply