SDP, the second time as farce
Posted on Tuesday 5 May, 2009
Filed Under New Labour
JUST a few weeks after the Social Democratic Party was launched in 1981, it was claiming 50,000 members. To resurrect a period expression more usually spoken in relation to the Top 30 chart, the SDP even went number one with a bullet; before its official formation, the pollsters rated it the most popular political force in Britain. Yet younger readers of this blog can readily be forgiven for never even having heard of them.
Such was the fate of the last attempt by a hardcore faction of Labour rightwingers to have a go at what the buzzword of the time described as ‘breaking the mould’. If the Blairite groupuscule currently said to be considering a repeat performance think that anybody is going to be heartbroken if they jump over to the Liberal Democrats, that only underlines how far out of touch they are with either the voting public or the wider labour movement. Let’s put it this way. They will not be taking any electoral clout with them.
Any notion that their defection will constitute ‘a realignment of British politics’ on the lines of 28 years ago testifies most loudly to their immense arrogance. Years after the limos stopped turning up at their doorsteps, these guys actually believe that somehow they still matter.
Check out some of the kite flying exercises. Apparently the Blairites are fearful that Labour is ‘lurching to the left’, with the purely symbolic 50p tax rate about the only hard evidence they can evince. Laughably, the architects of Labour’s impending general election devastation insist that this move alone – which has proved if anything rather popular – will result in meltdown at the polling booth next year.
Hence this little-noticed prediction from columnist Anatole Kaletsky in the Times last week:
The remnants of new Labour [will] probably split off and join the Liberal Democrats who would become the dominant left-of-centre party, while Brownites and old Labour activists would form an explicitly socialist party.
Kaletsky’s prognosis is plainly flawed on two key points. First, there is no meaningful sense in which the Lib Dems – with or without a handful of Blairite has-beens by way of a new ingredient in the soap powder – can be described as ‘left of centre’.
Second, the Brownites have been an integral part of New Labourism since the birth of what we used to call ‘the project’. Differences with Blairism have been differences of personality rather than substance. Accordingly, they do not have the capacity to form part of an ‘explicitly socialist party’.
Nevertheless, the speculation was concretised over the weekend by Lord Ashdown’s interview with the Daily Telegraph, in which he claimed that ‘Labour MPs disillusioned with Gordon Brown’s leadership have held private talks with the Liberal Democrats about defecting’.
There are signs that certain constituency parties are growing really Left-wing. Senior Labour figures have said to me, ‘If that happens, I’m off’.
Such a contention – which of course fits squarely with the Daily Telegraph view of the world – was allowed to pass unchallenged. If any constituency parties were ‘growing really leftwing’, I’d be the first to cheer. Sadly, I can see little basis in reality for the idea.
Let’s just say that nobody on the Labour left is urging the Blairites to stay. But if split happens, it will be based not on any updated Limehouse Declaration, but what could more appropriately be called a Winehouse Declaration, based on the simple desire to move from one party to another once the highs run out. Anyone thinking of making the switch should bear in mind that the Lib Dems are reportedly no longer doing any Charlie these days.
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13 Responses to “SDP, the second time as farce”
I wouldn’t concern myself about anything Kaletsky says, he’s an idiot.
Do you accord him some respect because of his vaguely communist-bloc-sounding name, or something?
)
Another good post.
I was planning to write a post much like this myself although you beat me to the punch (and with more style than I could muster). Monbiot expressed similar sentiment to yours today http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/05/hazel-blears-george-monbiot
“The glorified gossip columnists who make their living by speculating about politics have spent 15 years confusing personality with policy. In terms of political positioning, Brown’s government is indistinguishable from Blair’s: Blair was simply better at selling it”
I really like your blog.
I think it’s more likely that some Blairites may cross the floor and join the Tories!
Given that these people are panicking at the thought of being away from the corridors of power, the chance of them then going over to the Lib Dems is pretty remote. Much more likely they’ll go straight to the Tories.
No, this is just Ashdown acting the Blairites’ useful idiot as part of their playground spat with the Brownites.
It’s not too fanciful. Imagine this. Labour pulls some back in the polls (not impossible in a year, and when an election focuses minds). The Tories have an electoral mountain to climb because of voting distribution, a huge swing to them onkly results in a small majority, *or* a hung Parliament. Now, when the Fib-Dems get to play king maker, wouldn’t it make sense to defect to them, and negotiate from a position of strength?
what distinguishes the three main political parties in Britain today is not their agenda but mainly their historical tradition and it looks like, that their similarities will still grow in the next time
No, I can’t see the Blairites joining the Lib-Dems; they, the Lib-Dems, are too left-wing for them.
I could foresee the Blairites, and some Broonites too (Mrs Smith, for instance), ganging up with sundry Tories to form a new form of right-wing authoritarian party, one which will be into full-scale surveillance, heavy policing (particularly of the working class and general protests), but will eschew the racism, thuggishness and general desires to re-run the Third Reich of the traditional hard-right.
In short, it will be a party that will promote the agenda of the Daily Mail: very anti-working-class (especially when we get stroppy and go on strike), very much against the ‘undeserving’ poor, and altogether a very nasty bunch but with a refined sort of image that the traditional far-right can never have.
In short, a new type of right-wing authoritarianism, quite unlike what we’ve seen before, except in a nascent form in New Labour.
Since when does the agenda of the Daily Mail eschew racism, thuggishness and general desires to re-run the Third Reich?
I imagine a lot of Lib Dems would be appalled if this lot joined them. First it would weigh their party over to the Right, away from liberal values, and second, lose them the support they have enjoyed from voters who think “at least they are different from the lot that’s in”.
“Apparently the Blairites are fearful that Labour is ‘lurching to the left’, with the purely symbolic 50p tax rate about the only hard evidence they can evince.”
Oh come on Dave, have you not been watching politics recently? The massive drive towards centralisation and control particularly in our public services post-Blair (many of his reforms have already been crushed), the authoritarian Left’s frequent attacks on civil liberties, the equality and diversity nonsense being spouted at every opportunity, class warfare courtesy of Harriet Harman and the Crewe by-election….
(I could go on, hopefully I don’t need to)
The key point (despite La Toynbee’s claim of the SDP as the father to the New Labour son) is surely the Right’s organisational continuity (CFALV,Manifesto group,Solidarity, on up to Labour First), and wider personal/union links of the Labour right who STAYED…A continuity the “left” never matched…
“In a lecture in 1982 he roundly abused the SDP as failures, as middle-aged, middle- class erstwhile Labour members who had grown too fat and affluent with Labour and whose lingering social consciences prevent them from voting Tory….His early forays into seat hunting would have taught him how important factional networks in making contacts and mobilising support in communities where he would otherwise arrive as a stranger… these were heady days which joining the SDP would have ruined”. ~ “Thatcher and Sons”. Simon Jenkins. The “HE” is Tony Blair.
BTW: Good to see that they are still playing Happy Families at the Guardian (Mombiot)…”glorified gossip columnists who make their living by speculating about politics” …Oh NO, not our Jackie and Polly!
Richard my favourite quote about the SDP was that Roy Jenkins was “an old man in a hurry.”
Would that Labour were left-wing at all. What we need is some real centralisation, run through Brussels, to bring welfare payments up to Royal Bank of Scotland Boss pension levels, take over everything under nationalised public power (down to chippies), workers’ control of supermarkets, throw the Prince of Wales into the Atlantic, get the Cabinet on a YMCA Training scheme, and the outlaw bent cucumbers.
“I could foresee the Blairites, and some Broonites too (Mrs Smith, for instance), ganging up with sundry Tories to form a new form of right-wing authoritarian party, one which will be into full-scale surveillance, heavy policing (particularly of the working class and general protests), but will eschew the racism, thuggishness and general desires to re-run the Third Reich of the traditional hard-right.”
Indeed, bear in mind that the Tories have now left the European People’s Party, which means that the French UMP and the German CDU now have no counterpart in Britain. I spy a vacancy for the Third Wayers here, some kind of centre-right Murdoch-friendly People’s Party sans Tory baggage. The Tory right are a voter turn-off but Blairite lower taxes and crime are perennially popular, as well as populist. Other than Blair though, there’s no one particularly telegenic enough among the Blairites to pull it off. Probably need to wait for the next generation for the British Sarkozy/Aznar/Berlusconi, should you want it.