Is the Labour party having a nervous breakdown?
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Version 0 of 1. Watching the daily hurly-burly of debate and pronouncements at the top of the Labour party, one begins to wonder how exactly to characterise what is going on. The phrase that keeps coming to mind is “collective nervous breakdown”, though perhaps that misses the mark. Thinking about it, the best metaphor might be a row among one of those aristocratic families whose stately home is falling down around them. The fortysomethings nominally in charge might argue, but none of them seem to have a clue how to turn things around; and the older members of the family will not leave them alone, continually poking their nose in to claim that it would all be OK if only someone could find a way of returning everything to the certainties of the last century, when everyone knew their place and that splendid Mr Churchill was in charge. Consider this week’s evidence. At Tuesday’s GMB hustings in Dublin, the five people who may or may not be on the final ballot paper did not exactly give cause for much hope: during the time they were on stage, the most enlightenment one got centred on the fact that the frontrunners have slightly different views on the government’s welfare cap, and the unfortunate revelation that Andy Burnham may not know how much petrol costs. Related: Labour leadership hustings at GMB conference in Dublin – Politics live Meanwhile, David Miliband – perhaps regularly Skyping from the Upper West Side – has entered the post-election debate with his usual sense of deep substance, claiming that his brother was guilty of “turning the page backwards”, and supposedly giving his clearest sense yet that he wants to return to the party’s front-rank. His old colleague Alastair Campbell says he will “happily lead the charge” to oust whoever is elected if they do not come up to scratch, which may give MiliD his opening. As if to compound the sense that what historians might call “the long 1990s” will not end, Tony Blair has also piped up, in the Times (it is always the Times). The best option, he says, is for Labour to position itself in “a radical centre in which you are able to take decisions for the future of the country”. I do not know what that actually means; I suspect that he may not either. Anyone sentient should understand the basics of Labour’s predicament: declining support since 2001, the long-term demise of the movement that once surrounded it, and a fast-changing economy and society that demand that any left politics have to be more imaginative and creative than ever. All this is reflected in something even bigger: the break-up of an old political model that is only held in place by first past the post. If any forward-thinking “radical centre” exists, its occupants would surely have something to say about that. But no: though a rising number of people in the Labour party support electoral reform, none of the Labour frontrunners seem to have a problem with the idea that their job is to game a stupid voting system that they still believe can return them to power – even if, in the unlikely event that that happens, the party will receive the support of around 25% of the electorate, and spend its time in office being scared of its own shadow. In fact, Labour is already terrified of itself, something illustrated by the fact that the frontrunners – along with the acting leader – seem to have accepted the idea that being seen to help the poor and vulnerable is politically problematic, and have decided instead to chase spectral voters who, they are told, are “aspirational”. None of them seem to have any sense that Labour’s wipe-out in Scotland is an extreme manifestation of what one Labour figure recently called a “profound cultural collapse”. The only candidate who styles herself as someone willing to look into the abyss is Liz Kendall, and she apparently comes close to doing so as a pretext for squashing what remains of the party’s social-democratic soul. She also illustrates that modern phenomenon whereby any words uttered in non-wonkspeak are held to be the stuff of bold insight. “What most people want is something to do, somewhere to live, something to look forward to, and someone to love,” said Kendall recently, echoing a former Labour leader from New Zealand. There might be a thin line between profundity and banality, but that falls the wrong way. Sorry to depress some readers even more, but there is one more thing. In terms of a voice that will at least full-throatedly point out the drawbacks of austerity and the danger of Labour being so accepting of Tory arguments that it will effectively rub itself out, it is probably a good thing that Jeremy Corbyn wants to stand. But the fact that he has emerged as the only standard-bearer for anything that could be called “the left” only underlines a malaise that runs far beyond the supposed frontrunners. Obviously, he has no chance of winning. His politics, though undoubtedly principled, are antedeluvian: if Labour was run his way, it would find itself back in a position akin to the one it faced in 1983, if it is not there already. This is a time of huge disorientation and uncertainty. I only know three things for sure: that the revival of progressive politics in the UK is going to take a long time; and that the left – if one can talk meaningfully about “the left” – faces huge challenges, but that there signs of hope, both within Britain (Scotland, chiefly) and abroad. Labour’s senior figures, of course, must affect a belief that the next election is winnable, that their party is still on the same crusade it always was, and all the rest of it. Fair play to them; it would be naive to expect anything else. But the least we should expect from people at the highest levels of Labour politics is a sense that they understand the vast problems their party has to surmount, and have at least some idea of how to hold true to their party’s supposed values while doing so. At the moment, even if you’re being generous, the chatter they emit suggests tactics, not strategy. And that, as the Chinese general may have once said, is the noise before defeat. |