Unless it acts now, Labour could end up like the Tories: haunted by Europe

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/12/eu-referendum-labour-britain-tories

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Already two things can be said with confidence about Britain’s next prime minister: it will be someone who appeals to people who backed the Conservatives last week, and it will not be David Cameron. The Conservative leader ruled out a third term at the start of the election campaign, so whoever leads Labour in 2020 will not have to defeat the incumbent.

The job will still involve earning the trust of the millions who voted for him. There is no other route back to power. The strength of support in Scotland for a party that outflanked Labour in its hostility to Tory economic policy – and indeed everything else about the Tories – is already being cited on the left as proof of unmet public appetite for redder-blooded social democracy. But the Scottish National party channelled rage against a collective Westminster foe, to which end Labour’s depiction as a tepid “red Tory” tribute act was a convenient fiction.

Related: David Cameron may bring EU referendum forward to 2016

Without question, Labour’s challenge in winning back Scottish voters is different to the one it faces in England. But the notion that the puzzle is solved by aping the SNP’s anti-austerity postures, only without the emotive nationalism that gave them potency, is class-A delusion.

Cameron is moving on to new projects. He would like nothing more than to face an opposition girding itself for fighting a battle it has already lost. That doesn’t mean Labour must acquiesce to cruel budget cuts or restyle itself as the handmaiden of corporate greed. But those are positions that the left likes to project on to bogeyman “Blairites”, rather than the actual recommendations of those in the party who aim to salvage some spirit of New Labour’s election-winning formula.

The party’s next success will look unlike its old successes because times and the electoral map have changed. Labour will have to stop haggling over the past and start articulating a vision for the future sooner than implied by a fixed-term 2020 election date. Cameron will soon legislate for an EU referendum and Downing Street is considering a polling date in 2016, a year ahead of the deadline set in the Tory manifesto.

By moving quickly, the PM can brandish his winner’s mandate at surly backbenchers and appeal to the country for support

There are good reasons to get a move on. The original plan allowed time to steer the referendum through another possible coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and to negotiate as attractive a new membership deal as possible. But the Lib Dems are no longer an obstacle, and it is clear to Cameron that there is no available deal to placate the hardcore of Eurosceptic Tory MPs – perhaps as many as 60 – who are determined to leave the EU come what may.

The best Cameron can hope for from Brussels is a postdated cheque for future reforms: an extra year won’t make that much of a difference. Except the longer he leaves it, the more his newly amassed pile of political capital will have decayed. (French and German elections due in 2017 also limit the time available for constructive bargaining.) By moving quickly, the prime minister can brandish his shiny winner’s mandate at surly backbenchers and appeal to the country for support. That will get harder as mid-term malaise deepens.

Labour now has a big EU-shaped problem. Most of the party is instinctively pro-European. It fought an election opposing a referendum but lost, shedding a good few votes to Ukip along the way. If it handles the coming campaign badly, it could further alienate former supporters who feel culturally and economically marginalised by what they see as the arrogant, liberal, metropolitan elitist impulses of the EU “in” camp. On that front, immigration is a more pressing concern than the reach of Brussels. But the anti-Europeans can credibly argue that, under the rules permitting free labour movement between member states, the two issues are really one.

A temptation for the opposition will be to duck this challenge, loitering on the sidelines in the hope of scavenging battlefield opportunities as the Tories tear themselves apart in civil war. That would be a terrible mistake. Labour needs to win arguments about the kind of Britain it wants, and in terms that will somehow appeal both to those who have benefited from economic recovery and those who feel left behind. It won’t be easy, but to try it while circumventing the Europe question will be impossible.

A clear, optimistic, passionate case for “in” will earn more credit with sceptical voters than a mealy-mouthed tactical fudge. Ed Miliband’s refusal to hold a referendum may not have been his most popular stance, but when his strategists played videos of his TV performances to swing voters, the robust defence of that choice was identified as a highlight. People respect the honest expression of a view with which they disagree more than a queasy appeal to their own opinions that reeks of opportunism.

The referendum is coming, and Labour must embrace it if it wants to get back into the debate about the future. The opposition could start by voting with the government on the enabling legislation, seeking only to amend it in the Lords – where there is a potential Lib-Lab majority – extending the franchise to 16-year-olds. It is their future, after all. And Scotland’s independence ballot has set the precedent.

Younger voters may not swing the result but their engagement would be an opportunity to sound a little more interested in Britain’s trajectory through the 21st-century, when currently Labour looks trapped in an ideological vortex from the 1990s.

There are dangers in proximity to Cameron’s position on Europe. Sharing platforms with Tories did not help Labour’s standing in Scotland. But the greater danger is looking peripheral to an argument that will shape politics in the first years of the new parliament. Labour may not like the shape of European reform pursued by the government, but then it should set out better alternatives. Candidates for the leadership must not be spared scrutiny on that question.

Meanwhile, a strategic point for the opposition to remember is that Cameron will not be Conservative leader at the next election. So if he really wants to exhaust second-term political capital saving Britain’s EU membership, and then bow out leaving his party divided and embittered, Labour should stand ready to help.