Labour’s agonising strategic choice
Posted on Wednesday 16 December, 2009
Filed Under New Labour
THE OLD socialist slogan that the worst imaginable Labour government is still preferable to the best imaginable Conservative government has been sorely tested over the last 12 years.
Not only did we not get the New Jerusalem, what we have lived through barely qualifies as a Barratt estate hastily flung up on the outskirts of the greater Tel Aviv conurbation.
But anybody who was politically aware in the 1980s knows full well what a Tory administration means for the poor, the sick, children in the state education system, patients in NHS hospitals, organised workers and benefit claimants. Surely any other government – any other government whatsoever – has to be better than that?
With the polls now pointing to a distinct possibility of a hung parliament, this question will be widely debated in the months ahead. If a Lib-Lab pact is the sole alternative to Cameron, there will be tremendous pressure on the left to grasp at such a straw, and gratefully at that.
John Harris looks at the issue in Guardian this morning. He starts from the implicit assumption that Labour and Lib Dems are both parties of the centre-left, and that alliance between them is thus somehow more natural than alliance between the Lib Dems and the Tories. To my mind, this line of reasoning is inoperative in a situation where the centre of gravity in all three major parties lies on the pro-market centre-right.
In any case, the ‘two halves of the centre left’ postulate – that somehow two essentially compatible traditions were artificially divided as a result of a series of historical mistakes – is one that socialists should reject.
The historic significance of Labourism rests in its partial expression of a clear desire for an independent working class voice in electoral politics in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
Further illustrating the tenuous nature of Lib Dem claim to any kind of centre-left standing is Clegg’s admission that he is minded to form a coalition with whichever party emerges the strongest after the 2010 poll. In context, those remarks could only have meant he would rather strike a deal with Cameron than a deal with whoever is Labour’s caretaker leader at this point.
On the other hand, the identikit far left insistence that there are no circumstances whatsoever in which Labour could even possibly contemplate working with a ‘bourgeois party’ has also been rendered nonsensical by Labour’s evolution since 1994. To put it mildly, Labour has left social democratic territory so far behind that there is no evidence a deal with the Lib Dems would represent a brake on incipient Labour radicalism.
So what if we do reach a scenario where the choices boil down to either Cameron or A.N. Other plus Clegg? Anti-Toryism is a particularly compelling shotgun to have held to one’s head.
In my heart, the revolutionary defeatist option has a certain appeal. A decade in opposition would allow Labour to reinvent itself, especially after the likely departure of the Blairites. Even then, the obvious question would be just how much or how little of its structures would survive the process.
And in my head? Well, never say never. Almost any sacrifice might just be worth it, if it keeps the Old Etonians out. I suppose left has nothing to lose by asking to see the terms of any proposed deal prior to making a decision. But many of us will need a lot of convincing.
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23 Responses to “Labour’s agonising strategic choice”
Well, are you “seriously relaxed about people getting obscenely rich” or not?
Tory or Labour?
It’s like being shipwrecked and faced with a choice between drinking seawater or one’s own urine.
Think hard, comrades; choose between Lord Mandelswine the Corfu Yachtsman with his 22-thousand-quid Patek Philippe Watch – waved aloft at a Labour Conference for all to admire – and Postman Pat, the sworn enemy of liberty, plus Bob the Ainsworth and Jack Straw of Blackburnistan and Harriet the Harperson in one corner and Smoothie David and his chums of the Bollinger Club and Lord Whatsizname of Belize who funds Tory candidates in marginal seats.
Where are the cyanide pills?
Wow, is that really a socialist slogan?
Not surprising really. The sanctimoniousness of some of the left about evil wicked Tories knows no bounds.
And what’s wrong with the Old Etonians? As opposed to the estate agent spivs and little curtain-twitching bourgeois “libertarians” who can’t think of anything but keeping the council tax down.
“Almost any sacrifice might just be worth it, if it keeps the Old Etonians out.”
Yep, far better that we have Loretto and Fettes old boys in charge.
Christ, half the Labour cabinet went to fee-paying schools, and yet the tired old class warrior Osler is still bashing Tories on this pathetic drivel (rather than anything useful).
So, despite the wars of dubious legality and the sucking up to big business and all the other nasty things they’ve done, I’m guessing you’re still going to hold your nose and vote Labour, eh, Dave?
I love the smell of tribal hypocrisy in the morning.
Obnoxio. What Dave mentions in para 2 above is what Labour should be about and they are. We live in a capitalist society so ’sucking up’ has to be the reality. I have not seen any great movement from the British people to move over to so called socialism. We have to live with where we are in history. All the leftie arguing amongst each bullshit over decades has come to nothing. Labour are the party that will defend those at the bottom of the pile. The Tories just have to give tax handouts to their pals and make cuts that will affect the poorer. They cannot help it. It is their nature.
Remember a year or so ago when the end of the Tory party was being contemplated – one more defeat and the ancient enemy could be laid to rest foreve?. What happened to that? Broon, obviously. But it could still happen. THAT is about the only thing to be said for voting Labour, and I HATE Labour even more than youse guys. But yes, the Tories would be worse, if not quite as slimy.
You’re right about the historic significance of the break with the Liberals. Note, however, that Mr Tony explicitly said this was a historic mistake that needed to be overcome.
As for the Tories, beyond the ten or so people in Cameron’s inner circle, there’s little indication that centrist New Toryism has much traction.
This is no more than an acedotal account of a minor incident, and at best a ‘Straw in tyhe wind’…but…
I was at a party last weekend. Those present were, overwhelmingly, liberal-leftist middle class professionals and academics of the type who usually rant on about how much (since Iraq, etc) they hate the Labour Party and will never vote Labour again. I tentatively put the case for voting Labour next time, expecting the usual denunciation…and found that they all (with varying degrees of reluctance)agreed.
This is no more than an acedotal account of a minor incident, and at best a ‘Straw in tyhe wind’…but…
I was at a party last weekend. Those present were, overwhelmingly, liberal-leftist middle class professionals and academics of the type who usually rant on about how much (since Iraq, etc) they hate the Labour Party and will never vote Labour again. I tentatively put the case for voting Labour next time, expecting the usual denunciation…and found that they all (with varying degrees of reluctance)agreed.
Jim Denholm. Just shows Jim that the petty bourgeois have gained a social responsibility towards the poorer in our society. Not a bad thing. Well done Labour. Anything that shakes people and makes them forget about their own personnal greed (for a moment) is a good thing.
Jim Denham. Sorry for spelling your name wrongly. I must have been thinking of an old Glesga bread making company!
Dave – has it come to this? Supporting Labour to keep the Old Etonians out? Is that what the strategic vision of the remnants of the Labour left amounts to? Genuinely pathetic.
The ‘lesser evil’ argument has been plaguing the American left for decades. To what effect? One American socialist put it well a few months ago:
“The point is that lesser-evilism as a progressive strategy has succeeded: succeeded in making American politics progressively more and more right-wing, more and more “evil,” if you will. It has succeeded in lowering people’s expectations. And it has helped put Nixon to the left of Clinton on domestic policy.”
Michael Fisher. What are your suggestions for looking after the poorer, weak, elderly and infirm in our society? What is your grand plan? What would you suggest? Condemnation of others is easy for those that have an opinion but no input.
Michael Fisher: Could you tell us the name of the American socialist you quote in your comment? Thanks.
As for “lesser-evilism”, I’d recommend reading Spinoza (Marx’s favourite philosopher, apart from Aristotle) on how it’s inherent in the human condition and cannot, ever, be avoided, even by those who denounce it and think they’re free from it – but YMMV, as they say.
Jimmy Glesga:
There is no alternative, in my view, to the long, hard difficult work of building a popular political force to the left of Labour. Unfortunately the impatient, opportunistic and sectarian adventurism of the SWP and company over the past 10 years has made that even more difficult than it has always been.
The ‘lesser evil’ strategy will only serve to further weaken and marginalise the left: as the American left has found to its cost over the past 40 years.
The dynamics of ‘lesser evilism’ are instructive and all too predictable.
It starts with a left that is in the process of losing its popular political base. In the search for legitimacy and access to power (in the name of ‘helping the poor’) the left urges ‘realism’ and accommodation to their former political enemies. Because the left enters this accommodation from a position of weakness, and because short-term electoral success becomes the sole measurement of ‘political realism’, the left is drawn into the logic of ‘defensive unity’. It does not like the compromises it makes, but in pursuit of electoral success and political power (which requires unity and conformity on terms it can no longer determine) it begins to fall silent on key issues and to soften its criticisms.
A weary cynicism and air of despair take root. The baseline for political strategy becomes: how do we stop things from getting even worse?
This approach helps to further demobilise and demoralise its remaining extra-parliamentary base.
The left inside the party (Labour/Democrats – take your pick) increasingly define ‘realistic politics’ and ‘helping the poor’ in terms of narrow electoral gaming. From a position of weakness this means attaching increasing importance to internal party manoeuvrings. Securing marginal changes to party policy positions are presented as ‘significant progress’ which demonstrate that ‘the party really can be changed’. When those changes have no concrete political significance when the party takes power the left cries foul – but not too loudly or for too long in case disunity helps the really evil party to gain advantage.
Increasing importance is attached to leadership figures. Individuals with little or no attachment to the left are idealised as potential saviours: ‘but only if we unite behind them and get them into power: then we can exert real influence!’ so the argument goes. When that real influence fails to materialise, the left cries foul – but not too loudly or for too long etc…..
The imperative to unite from a position of weakness as part of the electoral game means the left can less and less initiate, engage with or support extra-parliamentary struggles. To the new generation of activists the ‘party left’ appears increasingly irrelevant to its concerns. ‘Realistic’ party politics appears to offer nothing other than the promise of boundless compromise and cooption.
So the results of ‘lesser evilism’ are doubly bad. Not only does the left contribute to demobilising and demoralising its own political base, it acts to discredit the very idea of organised party politics. This serves to further insulate key realms of capitalist power (such as the state and the content of national political discourse) from effective challenge.
Lib/Lab is simply unworkable. Guaranteed to go bust. Even if they gain power, they will not satisfy voters. Labour has the potential atleast in the future.
Consciousness follows events. Labour will likely get stronger, when UK shows signs of getting out of the recession.
In the US, the great depression was 1929. The big strikes occured around 1934.
Labour cares so much for the poor that it
* forces single mothers out to work,
* taxes people on min wages for only 16 hours per week
* cancels the 10 % starting rate, affecting what was it – 5 million ?
* pays people to do society-harming things like get fecklessly pregnant, while
* penalising those who would stive to get on by themselves with endless taxation and regulation.
Yes, much better that they stay in power …. for the sake of the poor, who will multiply in every sense of the phrase.
Alan Douglas
“THE OLD socialist slogan that the worst imaginable Labour government is still preferable to the best imaginable Conservative government has been sorely tested over the last 12 years.”
It has not been sorely tested – it has been disproved.
Many years ago I asked a Labour voter who appeared genetically incapable of doing anything other than voting Labour a simple question:
In what way would Anne Widdicombe be a worse Home Secretary than David Blunkett?
Needless to say I am still waiting for an answer.
If there was actually ANYTHING for socialists to gain by voting Labour it could perhaps be an arguable case (which I would still oppose, but I could at least see why people would argue it)
A significant plank of Blairism was actually predicated on the belief that the proles and old Labour were daft enough to vote Labour no matter how they were treated, and what really mattered was ensuring that the middle classes and ‘new’ Labour voters still turned out.
I see that in the area of Hackney where I live – one Labour canvasser has knocked on my door since 1997 – whereas just last weekend I saw the De Beauvoir Labour ‘team’ rushing into one of the new build yuppie blocks that has gone up around my estate. That story is repeated across the borough.
To me, Socialists voting Labour in 2010 will resemble battered wives returning to an abused husband, not just for the umpteenth time, but after the battered husband has actually tried to kill you.
I ask you again: Get out whilst you can…………
I can’t imagine what will happen over the next few years. The structure of the workforce has changed, the nature of work has changed, the unions have become just one pressure group among many ie animal rights, nature conservationists etc. How can a strong, workingclass, socialist party rise like a phoenix from the flames? I don’t know, has anyone got any ideas. To be honest, I feel more and more it is a choice between ‘Socialism or Barbarism’ (on a global scale). I could make suggestions as to what should be done, but it’s not going to happen. The capitalists can’t even sit together in a room and decide a strategy to ensure the future of the planet, so what makes anyone think that they can act for the best interests of humanity. I think that eventually ‘ordinary’ people will be forced to act to defend their livlihoods and lives (internationally) and it will be a case of the socialists being there to put a revlutionary case.
What did it mean for the sick and the disabled, under the Tories my benefits went up by massive amounts, including getting DLA and AA the two benefits labour wants to remove now which gives people £100 a week extra in benefits, Labour trying like hell to remove that for pensioners. Under the Tories my benefit rise always covered the rise in rent and council tax, Blair removed that. Under the Tories my benefits went up normally by about £3.90 and always covered the rise in council tax. Blairs first benefits rise for me was 75p. Since then not once has he paid me enough to cover my council tax never mind anything else.
I’m sorry I think we would be better off with a Tory government because New labours done sod all for anyone, now not even the rich
anyone who has followed NL’s welfare reform programmes will know they are no friend of the poor. In fact,they are the direct descendants of the Victorians who brought in the Workhouse and later the National Govt who brought in the Means Test, sickening.
All these deliberations about which is a worse government, Labour or Tory, don’t really get us anywhere it terms of what are the tasks of socialists today. We should call for a vote for Labour, not because they are progressive, but for the reason that we prefer to keep the tories out.
Much more important than voting is building a socialist alternative, which carries on campaigning against cuts, for socialist policies like building more council housing and taxing the rich, confornting the BNP on the streets etc, whichever party is in power.
Dear Dave
If the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance members of Labour’s National Executive Committee got their heads together with the TU group, then a positive package to mobilise a coalition for Labour victory could be assembled in time for the next meeting.
Peter Kenyon
elected member, Labour Party NEC, constituency section
John E states:
“We should call for a vote for Labour, not because they are progressive, but for the reason that we prefer to keep the tories out.”
May I ask why?