I have seen much debate about whether Labour need to get over the 2010 General Election or whether they need to dissect the result, to see where things went wrong.
I postulate that it is in fact the trio of General Elections from 1983 to 1992 that Labour still have not “got over” and since then the Party, especially the Left wing of it, have been operating out of FEAR.
What have they been afraid of? Firstly and over-arching of course it is defeat but this can be broken down into component parts:
No.1 The media
No.2 Vilification
No.3 The markets
No.4 The so-called “Middle Classes”
No.5 Public Dis-unity
It was “the Sun wot won it” screamed the headline in 1987 the day after the Maggie got her third term. I was a schoolboy sitting my “O” Level exams and I saw the headline in the newsagents just outside school. Since then , especially under Tony Blair, Labour have assiduously courted the media and there became a 'bit of a love in' between New Labour and Murdoch. This meant that New Labour shied away from any policy that might upset its new found friends, especially regulation in the newspaper industry.
They called it the longest suicide note in history ... the 1983 manifesto, Nationalisation, Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament, Financial regulation... in a word Socialism. It was treated scathingly and the 2010 equivalent bore no semblance, to it. The party has ditched each and every one of those principles. Never again did they want to be vilified in the same way.
'All power to the markets.' 'We can’t regulate the banks too much, they might go elsewhere.' 'We can’t run a deficit, some little understood ratings agency may mark our credit worthiness down.' 'We can’t tax too much.' 'We can’t choose our own economic policy because the markets might not like it.' And we claim to be a democracy.
The common cry is now,' We can’t move to the left. We would lose the middle ground.' and the Party of Democratic Socialism is stuck as a mildly ameliorating party of capitalism, because it is too scared of losing a semi-mythical group of voters.
Lastly, why have the rank and file allowed this all to happen? In the early eighties the party was very publicly split down the middle between the Left led by Tony Benn and the Right, much of which split off and formed the SDP, leaving the Labour Party to gain merely 28% of the vote in 1983. Even as a young lad I remember some of the coverage of Party conferences, dramatic affairs often decide by block union votes. Because no-one wanted a return to such open warfare, the Left of the party acquiesced to allow Tony Blair to steal the Soul of Labour, to leave behind so many of its principles, and turn conference into an anodyne leader approval meeting.
So where can Labour go now? They have to throw off the shackles of fear and regain the principles that the once great party stood on.
The country is no longer the same as that of the 1980s, and much of it is sick and tired of deregulation. The country does not like to see bankers and market men earning millions whilst we are told we are all in this together ... tougher regulation is needed.
The press is deeply criticised and with the current phone hacking scandal, regulation could prove popular. With the growth of the internet newspapers are no longer omnipresent.
Most people would not blink if Ed Miliband were to announce that Labour would scrap Trident, Re-nationalisation in the right place would no longer be vilified. Banks are already largely owned, and the railways are crying out for it. The latter would probably save the tax-payer money, given the amount being paid out in subsidies.
Many of the middle classes could potentially welcome a principled critique of a patently failing free market system, but even if Labour lost a chunk of this vote, there is an untapped reservoir of those who no longer vote Labour because there isn’t that much difference between them and the other two parties. “They're all alike” a common cry.
They were not all the same until 'true' Labour ran and hid. Perhaps it is time for the Party of democratic Socialism to stand up and hold a rallying cry for its beliefs. A world where people are in charge not newspapers or markets, where wealth is not concentrated in the hands of a tiny few but is distributed far more equitably and where life is not just about working ever harder to stay afloat.
