I’ve been teaching first years this week on the Parliamentary Labour Party. We looked at questions such as “Is Old Labour dead and buried?” (consensus: pretty much) and “If New Labour is dead, what does “Next Labour” look like?” (consensus: ask again later).
It occurred to me – as it did the students – that Labour’s evolution from Old to New and beyond has changed the party almost completely from what it originally stood for. Gone, completely, are the remnants of Clause IV socialism, the nationalise everything we can, the opposition to European integration and support for nuclear disarmament. In its place (circa 1997) we saw a Labour party which was socially similar to its roots (protect the NHS, fund more education, increase welfare spending, legislate for a minimum wage etc) but one which had almost accepted Thatcherite economics as the way to go (limited taxation, low inflation, don’t rock the economic boat). They were also much more pro-business and entrepreneurial than they had been previously, accepting the market as a good. In short, they moved from being borderline socialists to social democrats.
One of the comments that came out of discussions in class was that New Labour’s “Third Way” (as outlined above) was nothing more than an electoral strategy designed to get the party back into government. I’d say yes and no to that – of course the country had moved on from Labour’s last election victory (1974!) when we went to the polls in 1997 and what worked for them then wasn’t going to work for them again. Yes, they realised that to get into power they had to ditch some of the more radical left-wing stuff and chase the Middle-England votes represented by their “Mondeo Man” campaign. But they must have – and judging by Peter Mandelson’s autobiography, they did – believe in what they were doing, believe that this shift to the centre was not only good for their party, but good for the country.
This is where I return to the above, in a round-about way. If that New Labour philosophy is done (and Ed Miliband has suggested so) then what next for Labour? But more importantly I think – what does it say about a party when they can dispense with ideology and pick up a new one so quickly? I’ll come back to that.
Part of the reason I’ve been thinking about this stems from the week the Liberal Democrats have been having. To go into a campaign with a manifesto commitment which has to be shelved because of coalition negotiations (read: PR) is one thing. But to have your leader – and, indeed, most of your candidates -Â sign a pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees (an issue which the party is well-known and liked among students for) only to back track and back the abolition of a cap on fees is something else. But there is a wider point to be made.
Why do people join political parties? Obviously not because they agree with absolutely everything the party stands for – that would be near impossible. So you find a few issues you feel strongly about – perhaps university tuition fees might be one of them, or proportional representation, or funding for the NHS, or tackling poverty… etc – and you find a party whose views best fit with yours. Where you disagree, you go to conferences, you speak on motions, you try to convince others that the policy needs rethinking, perhaps you are successful, perhaps not, but your voice has been heard, the party understands the issues you have with the policy but you still believe in other things that the party stands for, so you stay.
But how far does a party have to stray from its ideology (and I use the term loosely) for you to leave? Labour, for example, is in a position at the moment – in opposition – where it can redefine itself, think about its position on any number of issues and emerge with different views than it currently holds. The same is true of the Lib Dems, though for different reasons – government forces decisions upon you as a party that you did not have to take in opposition.
My point is simply that there comes a point when what a party stood for previously is simply no longer represented by the party in its current form. And when that point comes, why do members stay with it? Presumably, it is out of loyalty, or for one or two issues that they still agree with. But for me, if ideology goes, if you define yourself as a “liberal” or a “socialist” how can you retain membership of a party which has shifted far from those ideologies? Incidentally, the same is undoubtedly true of conservatism and the Conservatives, but the point is better explained using more contemporary examples – plus the fact that conservatism has always had a degree of pragmatism attached to it.
I hope members of those parties – and others, for many are in a similar boat – don’t feel like I am attacking them as “blindly loyal” or their parties for being “empty vessels”. I know in a round about way that is what I am doing, but it isn’t intended to be offensive. It is simply a comment on the way that society – and politics – has moved in the UK in the last 20 years. Â We’ve become centrists, hugging the middle ground, coveting the swing-voters, trying not to offend. There is no longer any room for the radicalism of Old Labour, perhaps not even for the “radicalism” of real electoral reform. All that is left is three large parties trying to put forward policies which distinguish them in a minor way from the other two.
I think my original question remains – what is the point of these political parties when a) they are represent the same things and b) they’ve abandoned some of the things that made people join them in the first place? Honestly? I have no idea.
