A Journey (118 page)

The danger for Labour now is that we drift off, or even move decisively off, to the left. If we do, we will lose even bigger next time. We have to buck the historical trend and face up to the reasons for defeat squarely and honestly.

Of course, you can point to the fatigue after thirteen years, the loss of trust over Iraq, the wear and tear that comes with power, but none of those things is determinative. We won in 2005 after Iraq, and the public were hardly likely to elect Labour under the prime minister who took the country into war, then wait five years to take it out on the person who didn’t. The Tories’ 1992 victory shows it is possible for a party to win again despite thirteen years in power. It could have been done. The 2010 election was our equivalent of 1992, not 1997.

If Labour wants to come back, it has to realise just how quickly defeat has altered the political landscape. It means the Tories get to clear up the economic deficit and define its nature, and can do so while pointing the finger of blame at the previous government.

If Labour simply defaults to a ‘Tory cutters, Lib Dem collaborators’ mantra, it may well benefit in the short term; however, it will lose any possibility of being chosen as an alternative government. Instead, it has to stand up for its record in the many areas it can do so, but also explain where the criticism of the thirteen years is valid. It should criticise the composition but not the thrust of the Tory deficit reductions. This is incredibly difficult. Of course, the key factor in our economy, as elsewhere, is the global economic crisis and all nations are having to cut back and adjust. However, we should also accept that from 2005 onwards Labour was insufficiently vigorous in limiting or eliminating the potential structural deficit. The failure to embrace the Fundamental Savings Review of 2005–6 was, in retrospect, a much bigger error than I ever thought at the time. An analysis of the pros and cons of putting so much into tax credits is essential. All of this only has to be stated to seem unconscionably hard. Yet unless we do this, we cannot get the correct analysis of what we did right, what we did wrong, and where we go now.

Attacking the nature of the Tory-Lib Dem changes to public spending requires greater intellectual depth and determination, and each detail has to be carefully considered. So, for example, if we attack as we should the cuts to school investment, we have to be prepared to say where we would also make more radical savings than the new government. But it is better than mounting a general attack on macro policy – ‘putting the recovery at risk’ – and ending up betting the shop that the recovery fails to materialise. It is correct that the withdrawal of the stimulus in each country’s case is a delicate question of judgement, but if you study the figures for government projections in the UK, by the end of 2014 public spending will still be 42 per cent of GDP.

Such an approach is the reverse of what is easy for Oppositions, who get dragged almost unconsciously, almost unwillingly, into wholesale opposition. It’s where the short-term market in votes is. It is where the party feels most comfortable. It’s what gets the biggest cheer. The trouble is, it also chains the Opposition to positions that in the longer term look irresponsible, short-sighted or just plain wrong.

The real challenge for the coalition will be simple: the Tories and Lib Dems don’t really agree. In many areas of domestic policy, the Tories will be at their best when they are allowed to get on with it – as with reforms in education. They will be at their worst when policy represents an uneasy compromise between the Old Labour instincts of the Lib Dems and the hard decisions the Tories will instinctively want to take; or where, as with the Tory and Lib Dem insistence on being the ‘civil liberties’ proponents, they end up failing to meet genuine and legitimate public concerns about security.

On the other hand, they have a common interest in stability. The Lib Dems desperately desire the game-changer: electoral reform. And there are areas such as Europe where the Lib Dems will have a healthy effect on the Tories.

The Tories are the only party with options: they can work with the Lib Dems, in which case, fine; or they can cut them loose and seek a mandate on the basis that they are governing OK but could do better without the ball and chain. The Lib Dems have to cling on, or the coalition will be seen as a historic mistake.

Labour has no option but to be credible in its own right. That means, as I say, having a coherent position on the deficit. It means remaining flexible enough to attack the government from left and from right. It means being ready at any time to assume the mantle of government. It has to be permanently in contention.

Where the Tories will be vulnerable is where they always are vulnerable: their policies will be skewed towards those at the top, fashioned too much by the preoccupations of the elite (which is why they despised action on antisocial behaviour) and too conservative, particularly in foreign policy.

Labour should also focus attention on renewing the party, and it has to do this in a genuinely radical and modern way. I wish I had had the time to devote to this when prime minister, but the prime minister never does. We should use this period of Opposition to restructure membership, methods of selection, and policymaking. We should resist any notion of letting the now heavily amalgamated and concentrated trade unions get back any dominance in policy. We should link up with other modernising progressives across Europe and beyond, where at present our representation in government is pretty limited.

From this it can be seen that I still favour the third-way progressive politics, still believe it represents the best chance, not just for the centre left but for the country; and indeed not just for the UK but for others too.

Many people on the progressive wing of politics, however, will read the analysis of the financial crisis and the security threat and say: But there are those on the right who can agree with that, so what’s progressive about it?

The answer to that question is vital, decisive even of the fate of progressive politics. First, what makes you a progressive? I would say: belief in social justice, i.e. using the power of society as a whole to bring opportunity, prosperity and hope to those without it; to do so not just within our national boundaries but outside of them; to judge our societies by the condition of the weak as much as the strong; to stand up at all times for the principle that all human beings are of equal worth, irrespective of race, religion, gender (I would add of sexuality) or ability; and never to forget and always to strive for those at the bottom, the poorest, the most disadvantaged, the ones others forget.

Notice these are all values, not policies. They may beget policies. Hence the trebling of aid to Africa and the cancellation of debt during my time as prime minister (an example of great cooperation between myself and Gordon, rightly celebrated for his part in it). Or the investment in health, education and inner cities. Or better maternity rights. Or civil partnerships. Or the minimum wage. Or the winter allowance for pensioners. But we are defined by values that are static, immoveable, not subject to the ravages of time; rather than by policies which necessarily are ravaged and altered.

Second, it is true there are people on the right who might share some or all of these values and some of the policies. Today’s Tories are committed to aid and development, and as a party, not simply as individual ministers. George Bush doubled the HIV/Aids programme of the US. It is also true that some programmes cross left and right. The Obama administration continues the Bush commitment to charter schools; David Cameron’s government continues my commitment to academies. Sarkozy has socialist ministers in a UMP government. In other words, the policy space is now as much shared as in single occupation.

The point is: that’s the way it is! And it’s not a bad thing – in fact it’s rather good, and the public, by the way, understood this ages ago. Defining where you stand by reference to the opposite of where the other person stands is not just childish, it is completely out of touch with where politics is today. Progressives should not fret about or feel threatened by such cohabitation. They should be entirely comfortable with it because, in being at ease, they have more chance to lead it.

In fact, the real risk – right or left – is that at the very moment when the public has lost its enthusiasm for traditional political divisions, the parties and their activists become more obsessed with them. The result will be a dangerous incongruence between ‘normal’ people and ‘abnormal’ political militants, which will only increase public disaffection with politics.

The differences of course between Tories and Labour or Republicans and Democrats may be great, and actually the financial crisis has, to an extent, brought them back in vogue (though I suspect the fashion is more dominant among politicians than people). The point is that these differences aren’t necessary for progressive politics to remain progressive. And even where policies are in the same space, progressives will often slant them towards the poorest, whereas conservatives will not. You don’t lose your identity as a progressive simply because you share space with conservatives. It is the new world, and we should get used to it.

The genius of Barack Obama was precisely that he reached out and over the partisan divisions. He did so explicitly. The desire of some of his present-day critics to drag him back from the centre is absurd. The espousal of centrist politics is not a betrayal. It was what he promised.

Third, there is a new divide in politics which transcends traditional left and right. It is what I call ‘open vs closed’. Some right-wingers are free-traders, others aren’t. Likewise with the left. On both sides, some are pro-immigration, others anti-. Some favour an interventionist foreign policy; others don’t. Some see globalisation and the emergence of China, India and others as a threat; some as an opportunity. There is a common link to the free trade, pro-immigration (controlled, of course), interventionist and pro-globalisation political positions, but it is ‘open vs closed’, not ‘left vs right’. I believe progressives should be the champions of the open position, which is not only correct but also a winning position, as Bill Clinton showed conclusively. However, it is a huge and important dividing line in modern politics.

Fourth – and tactically hardest of all for the centre left – progressives have to be proud of policies that lead to efficiency as much as those that lead to justice. Why? Because the lesson learned since 1945 is that driving value for money through public services is not a question of being efficient rather than just – it
is
just. Spend less on bureaucracy and you spend more on front-line care. To me, reform of health care, education, welfare and pensions was based on both efficiency and justice. Better services were also fairer. Likewise I was as keen on Bank of England independence as on a minimum wage; on encouraging business as on giving people the right to be union members; on growth as much as on tackling poverty. Now it is true some of those policies and even sentiments are sometimes more associated with the right; but that’s our fault – and our bane, actually.

This will focus especially around the role of the state, which is why it is so important not to misread the political consequences of the financial crisis. Big-state politics today will fail. In fact if you offer ‘small state vs big state’, small will win. Even now, after the crisis. Progressives have to transcend that choice, and offer a concept of the state that actively empowers people to make their own choices and does not try to do it for them. So the state will be smaller, more strategic but also active – not a necessary evil, as some on the right would have it, but redesigned for today’s world. In that world, the choices technology offers have undergone a revolution. Any political position that doesn’t assimilate this is doomed.

So what is crucial is not to leave the people with a dilemma: a right-wing solution that at its worst is nationalistic, socially regressive and economically indifferent to the plight of the disadvantaged; or a left solution that unfortunately, whatever its good intentions, is a different form of regression, where we confuse the state with the interests of the people. Face people with that dilemma and there is a real risk they move right. Third-way politics is the only way out of it, for progressives.

There is also the issue of a general malaise about politics which is a real problem in Britain and elsewhere. This has crystallised around the supposed corruption of our representatives, but the MPs’ expenses ‘scandal’ is a metaphor for all that is wrong with the way the current debate about politics is conducted.

Back in the 1980s, there was a perfectly sensible solution to MPs’ pay, put forward by an independent commission, the Review Body on Top Salaries, which proposed that rather than MPs voting on their own pay, it should be linked to that of a senior civil servant grade, and expenses would be strictly limited. Parliament should have passed this solution but it baulked at a time of pay restraint in the public sector. Instead, an unspoken pact arose: pay would not rise in line with such a link, but a regime bordering on total self-assessment was allowed on expenses. The abuses were clear and indefensible yet also entirely explicable. But the savaging of MPs as basically a bunch of wasters and fraudsters was unjust and deeply damaging. As ever with such an outpouring of outrage, the innocent or mildly stupid have been executed along with those who really did cross the line. It is a real shame that no one stuck up for the MPs. Instead, everyone competed in condemnation of them.

It is damaging because it also completely misses the point. The problem with the modern generation of MPs has nothing whatsoever to do with their character. On the whole, in my experience, of whatever party, they are a pretty public-spirited lot. The problem is lack of experience of real life, a huge narrowing of the talent pool for political representatives, and the obsessive nature of the activity required to get on the greasy pole of politics today. The very thing that people think is the issue – the absence of full-time dedication to the job of being an MP – is the opposite of the case. The problem is precisely that most MPs now come into politics from university, become researchers or work for political parties, get selected, get into Parliament and, no matter how able, have absolutely no experience of non-political life. As I described earlier, my seven years as a full-time barrister in industrial and commercial law were invaluable. They taught me how real people, real businesses and real life work.