Guest Post by Jen Izaakson and Ross Speer : Blairism killed Labour, it cannot revive it

Blairism is the sickness infecting Labour. The strategy of triangulation that fueled its electoral success was based on shifting the Party to appeal to wealthier Home Counties residents through an ideology of progressive individualism, whilst assuming its working class base would have nowhere else to go. Permanent majority.

But things did not turn out the way they were supposed to. Since 2001, Labour’s core voters have increasingly just stayed at home. As much was evident again in 2015: voting turnout in northern working class constituencies was generally below those of Tory supporting areas. But, since 2010, those voters have once again come to the ballot box to vote UKIP – who are unafraid to talk the language of class – and the Green Party – who defy the Blairites assessment of the situation to pick up votes in the southern counties on a left-wing platform. Turnout in the former Labour heartlands of Scotland bucked the trend, as voters were finally coaxed back into action by the SNP’s leftwards anti-austerity pitch. Blairism waged war on the Labour Party’s own base in order to attract Tory voters. Now it is reaping what it sowed.

If the left is to rise again it must correctly identify the ills of society. Blair failed to do just that. He gave in to the basic themes of Thatcherism: The state is problem, the unrestrained market the solution. Industry is gone, the service sector will deliver the goods. It did not turn out like that. The transfer of wealth from poor to rich continued unabated, driven by a buoyant property market and stagnant real wages. Austerity was merely the culmination of a long trend; itself possibly amongst the biggest single upward transfers of wealth in history.

Blair’s defenders point to the minimum wage and Sure Start as unambiguous successes. But would it not have been possible to do those things without, say, pulverizing Iraq, PFI schemes, attacking civil liberties, allowing the expansion of inequality and tax dodging, and the fattening of an unrestrained financial sector? And let’s not forget the failure to build new council housing, permitting massive rent rises, letting the Murdoch media run wild, maintaining the anti-union laws, introducing tuition fees, giving up on nuclear disarmament and keeping major infrastructure in private hands. Were those really the price of victory, or were they gratuitous concessions to the right? It is certainly not obvious that the historic capitulation of Britain's premier left party to the dictates of big business was worth £6.50 an hour. The Blairites like to talk about aspiration, and they’re right to do so: We aspire to do better than what they offer.

What the left needs is a vision, a narrative that starts out from policies and positions that are already popular. Fortunately, we have plenty to work with here. From nationalisation of the railways and energy companies, to higher taxes on the rich, to pegging the minimum wage to the living wage, there are numerous ways the public is to the left of anything being proposed by the Labour Party. And that is before the case has even seriously been put, for no major force in England currently makes these arguments. Miliband tried to sprinkle a few vaguely left policies on top of Tory austerity, all infused with a dash of UKIP-style immigration policy. The result pleased no-one. Labour did not lose because the Tories rallied many more people to their crusade than in 2010 – they increased their vote share by a measly 0.5% compared to Labour’s 1.5% - but because the Miliband Compromise between the Party’s left and right failed to sufficiently inspire its natural voters. All the elements exist for a Blairite-free program of the left; we only now lack a cohesive story about what Britain is and could be in the 21 century to bring them all together.

A battle for the soul of Labour is underway. If the catastrophe of Jim Murphy’s election to the Scottish leadership has sunk Labour north of the border, there remains a chance in England. The Blairities have, as usual, been first to the draw. They are eagerly spinning a tale of how Miliband’s illusory left-turn lost them the election. If they succeed, they will turn the Labour Party into the Tory surrogate that they so sorely desire. Their final crime may well be the rise of UKIP, who will eagerly seize upon the working class voters that they are abandoning. Mandelson has already begun a renewed assault on the trade unions. The silver lining may be, if McCluskey & co. finally decide the game is up, that a new social democratic could be set up in Britain. If that comes to pass, then the Blairites can keep their hollowed out brand.

Green? Stay red

So, you're considering voting for the Green Party?

I suspect I like you. I suspect, at least, we have a great deal in common politically. I mean there is just the outside possibility that you're some Barbour-clad NIBMYish eco-fascist, in which case I have nothing to say to you. Vote Green, for all I care, they're welcome to you. But you're probably not like that at all.

In all likelihood you're the kind of person who ends up in the bottom left hand corner of those 'what's your political alignment?' quiz things. You are probably anti-austerity, supportive of feminism,  clear about migrants' rights, anti-Trident, and in favour of public ownership of utilities. You, like me, realise that things need to be done to safeguard the environment, but you will want those things done in a way that makes big polluting business, rather than ordinary people, bear the brunt of the cost. You, like me, will have been underwhelmed by the Labour manifesto launch earlier today. Sure there was some welcome stuff - commitments on health, education, zero-hours contracts, and non-doms. But the broader context was set by acceptance of the iron-logic of austerity, and that's before we even get near the horrible, indefensible, pledge about immigration controls. It's not good enough. We agree on that.

Yet I am suggesting you don't vote Green, but vote Labour instead. Isn't this madness? Don't the Green Party's policies fit much better with those you and I would both like to see? I don't deny it for one moment. But I don't think elections should be viewed as a form of policy bingo.

More about that in a moment. First, it is at least rehashing one of the tired old objections to voting Green in a First Past the Post electoral system. Like many tired, old, objections there is something to it. Do you really want to help a Tory or Lib Dem candidate? In only a handful of seats are the Greens realistic contenders; elsewhere, in an incredibly tight election, you are in danger, by voting Green, of helping your least favourite parties. Because, and here I will part company with the more fundamentalist anti-Labourites, there is a difference between the Tories and Labour. Not enough of a difference, to be sure, but a real difference. A difference that will be felt most by those in our society least able to afford it. As the local elections last year in the notorious Tory borough of Barnet demonstrate.

But that's not my main argument. I think that the impulse to vote Green often arises because someone, not unreasonably, thinks: there's an election coming up, whose policies most fit with my own preferences? If you're in any way left-of-centre, and live in England or Wales, the Green Party are likely to be the best fit.

Yet there's a basic contradiction here. You are minded to vote Green because you think there is something fundamentally wrong with the world, and that radical change is needed. Perhaps you might go so far as to describe yourself as an anti-capitalist. Certainly, you are likely to be hostile to the individualistic, market-driven nature of our society. And yet you are, I claim, adopting an approach to elections that is a product of that society. You, the isolated individual political consumer, pick the product from the shelf that best fulfils your bespoke requirements.

The politics I am interested in starts from a very different perspective - not with lone electoral consumers, but with the recognition that real social change comes through movements of people, through our collective strength. It is about more than voting once every five years. It is about winning change in our workplaces and local areas; about exerting pressure continuously on those at Westminster and elsewhere who claim to represent us. This has to be a collective endeavour, and so the question arises, which movement of people is best placed to win the change we want to see, and how does this relate to voting?

The trade union movement, for all its imperfections, is the only millions-strong movement of working class people in Britain with the history and present capacity to win any serious level of change. The Labour Party was its hard won creation; and what makes the worst Labour government better than the best Tory government continues to be the pressure to which it is susceptible from trade unions. It was this that made even Blair introduce a minimum wage. It anchors Labour in working class politics in a way that the Greens, ecclectic and unpredictable as they have been in local office, are not. Electing Labour representatives strengthens the union's voice, and empowers us to fight for ourselves 365 days a year outside parliament. A Labour vote is a vote for a movement, for our collective strength - whichever political inadequate standing on a lightly-rewarmed neo-liberal ticket might have the Labour candidacy. (And if you're, rightly, angry about that, why not join the LRC and help to change Labour?)

You may or may not be convinced. But at the very least I want to hear your alternative. Not simply your alternative on voting day. That's one day in five years. I want to hear about your alternative movement for transforming society at the root. That's my truth - the working class and its institutions - you tell me yours.

Sunday Quicky - Answer this

A question for you. The London Borough of Barnet has one of the nastiest Tory Councils in the country, intent on privatisation and social cleansing. The Tories have just held it by the narrowest of margins*. Here are the results from the key Childs Hill ward:

Local election results 22 May 2014- Childs Hill

Name of candidate	Description (if any)	Number of votes recorded
AJAKAIYE Ade	Labour Party Candidate	1408
COHEN Jack Bernard	Liberal Democrat	1509 (elected)
DAVIES Jonathan Maurice	Liberal Democrat	1198
GROVER Rohit Roshyan	Conservative Party Candidate	1500
HENRY Charlotte Alexandra	Liberal Democrat	1222
MARASCO Francesco Edoardo	Green Party	501
PATEL Nila	Labour Party Candidate	1381
RYDE Shimon	Conservative Party Candidate	1544 (elected)
SMITH Andrew	Labour Party Candidate	1463
ZINKIN Peter	Conservative Party Candidate	1536 (elected)

You'll note that the difference between the highest Labour vote and the lowest Tory vote is easily less than the Green candidate's vote.

Now, tell me this - I'm particularly interested in the views of those leftists who advocated a Greeen vote - what was achieved by voting Green in this ward? Or indeed by the Greens standing at all?

This post is really just a forerunner of a more thorough discussion of why I think it is still right for socialists to vote Labour, and for that matter to be in Labour, but this kind of thing really annoys me.




*One seat. Voting in a safe Labour ward was delayed because of the death of a candidate.