DON’T ACCEPT THE LABOUR AGENDA: BUILDING AN ALTERNATIVE DISCOURSE

I think it is really important for those of us who have just experienced the 2010 general election to not allow the agenda for the left to be set by Labour.

Their response to losing is not to investigate the mistakes made in government ( although Ed Balls thankfully does finally seem to be doing some self investigation ) or how they could change their own decision-making processes & communication with the grass roots ; or to choose a leader who represents something different from their last 7 years of poor government, but instead choose to deflect criticism by aiming their guns at the Liberal Democrats, whipping up a frenzy of self righteous concern about appalling damage to the benefits system ( read taking away tax credits from well off middle class families & questioning the relevance of a universal system of child benefits for the same) & conjuring up the succubus of Margaret Thatcher.

We need to be encouraging a discourse that gets its fact straight – because for those of us on the Liberal left it’s quite easy to get sucked in to this distorted Labour world view - & we need to be able to stand back to understand what is really going on here. It’s basically political positional game –playing & it’s offering a fundamentally refracted picture of what is actually happening: it's defining the future by what happened in the past.

Why is it so important to get this right ? Because if we don’t the tone of the first chapter of this government will have been set before it’s too late to challenge the hypothesis upon which the argument has been constructed: & as today’s budget (which by removing 900,000 low income families from taxation; removing those earning less than £21,000 from the public sector pay freeze; affecting the income of single parents & low paid families by only £20 p year, pensioners by £2 per year compared to middle class families at £438 per year – a budget which as promised protects the poor against the vast majority of the cuts) proves - it’s a false hypothesis.

How do we know it’s distorted ? Well, take a look at how the ex- government operated: an ex- cabinet that is now full of recrimination at the removal of a loan to the Sheffield Forgemasters, but which itself refused to bail out Jaguar or Vesta & which systematically dismantled the Post Office; an ex- government which is complaining about a review of public sector pensions & pay – which it also wanted to freeze; an ex-government which is now free to criticise any form of cuts to public spending, although as Will Hutton rightly said in the Observer this week it had “already committed to a greater & faster reduction in the budget deficit than any British Government in modern times” in the pre budget report before the election.

An ex-government that is already seeking the platform for its re-election before the first steps of the new coalition have even taken effect – within less than 8 weeks of it taking office – prejudging the issue because the process of negative spin in opposition is proving just as effective as the process of positive spin did in government.

What matters as far as Labour is concerned is setting an ideological agenda – raising the spectre of Thatcherism as a means to rally back the disaffected because as a party it is totally bereft of ideas & of solutions .



It’s important here to remember what it was that the voters were running from : a government that chose in Blair to remould itself around the Thatcher agenda by making public services operate on the private business model; that sought to deliver services by developing a growth model which was fundamentally unsustainable (& which essentially caused the recession) because it was built on debt . Two kinds of debt : private debt with its subsequent failure of regulation, & public debt through the ubiquitous & pernicious PFI – that albatross around the neck of the Treasury that is partly responsible for the increases in the structural debt of the UK on a year by year basis. Criminally irresponsible policies which failed to recognise the fundamental truth of all markets – one which was painfully revealed even to the 17th century pioneers of venture capitalism: after rapid expansion they collapse.

This is the fundamental difference between Liberal Democrats & Conservatives : we believe in sustainability through regulated growth in a local as well as a global economy & we believe in redistributive measures as the way of tackling the debt crisis. Taxing the banks; taxing the profit of the banks & capital gains; making the wealthy who have profited from Labour’s lack of regulation pay to protect those of us who have suffered from it. Strangely - all policies which have found their way into today's budget !

This ex-Labour government did not produce redistribution; inequalities of wealth expanded during those 13 years under the mistaken belief that so long as most people also got richer when the rich got richer, then that was better than all of us.

Playing to the comfortably off middle-classes led to a clear impact: under New Labour the poor got poorer. So it’s particularly rich that in targeting the middle class recipients of benefits originally designed for the poor that it’s the Lib Dems who are being pilloried by Labour now. Because this is where the majority of cuts will fall now – on the middle classes. So who are Labour trying to defend here – the middle classes or the poor ? Don’t fall for it – don’t let them shape the agenda.


The only way those of us on middle class incomes ( & no I do not need child benefit & I do not claim child tax credit - although I needed both when I was briefly a single parent) can afford to receive these benefits is if benefits for people in genuine need are cut, if we are all taxed more or if the benefits to us as middle class earners are cut. Tell me one thing – why should WE be holding the state to ransom just for a few extra hundred pounds in the pocket that we will be repaid through tax cuts on the first £10,000 of our income anyway ?

Under new Labour the poor got poorer & child poverty was not alleviated despite large amounts of spending on the welfare state. This is where the Liberal Democrats are far more radical than Labour – we believe in local, tailor-made solutions designed within communities, perhaps involving charities & voluntary organisations supported by the state, & geographically varied solutions rather than a one size fits all centralised model.

Centralisation was another defining problem of the ex-government & redefining the role of the state so that it can deliver without it is the main challenge of our times & one that Labour is aeons away from addressing. It was this target driven, top down, rigid culture that you voted against this May.

So what about Thatcherism ? Well – the UK today is hardly the same country with the same problems that Thatcher inherited & the coalition does not even come close to the 1979 cabinet: Danny Alexander is not Keith Joseph; Vince Cable is most certainly NOT Norman Tebbit ;& although Ken Clarke is still, unfortunately, Ken Clarke, his later years in the Major administration (pro Europe, rebuilding the economic damage wreaked by Lawson) were far more liberal & constructive than his early years spent slashing the education & health budgets. Idiosyncratically un-Thatcherite I’d say.

The condition of Britain in 2010 is different in both good & bad ways. The UK HAS fundamentally changed - & not being a tribalist I’m prepared to say that much of this is down to the first 6 years of New Labour.

British industry however was thinned down by Thatcher & never rebuilt by Blair & Brown – the main difference in our economy is overdependence on the financial sector – unleashed by Thatcher in 1988’s ‘big bang’ & only encouraged by 10 years of a Brown chancellorship & by the policies of Brown’s coterie – Ed Balls & the Milibands.

This same lack of regulation fuelled the housing crisis , failure to address which is Labour’s greatest let down after 13 years in office & one which makes the slating of the coalition in abandoning regional spatial strategies particularly rich in hypocrisy. Surely the first responsibility of any Labour government following the right to buy fiasco was replenishment of the depleted housing stock ? In 13 years they failed to do this. What’s the point of earning even a half a decent salary if you can’t afford a place to live ? It’s an area where the ex-government simply got its priorities wrong.

Lack of available affordable housing stock stimulated high demand in the smallest private units, fuelling rising prices & lining the pockets of solicitors, estate agents & the banks. Labour chose not to regulate this industry by linking house prices to inflation or through setting a ceiling on debt by limiting mortgages – they did the latter only when it was too late. A signal failure over 13 years to address the single most important issue to people on low incomes.

So before you listen to the arguments that the coalition is somehow a reincarnation of the monetarist daemon just remember what Labour did wrong – what their senior party members - & that includes ALL former ministers - failed to challenge, & how the Liberal part of this new government has committed it to redistribution; has confirmed it will NOT support the rich at the expense of the needy, but instead will make practical choices about the finances that deny the false syllogism: that to cut means to inevitably damage the worst off. When it’s the middle classes who have benefited most from universal payments that is simply just not true.

Thatcher’s cuts were ideological (remember the Miners’ strike) & starved the British economy of the oxygen of recovery. But whatever you may think of George Osborne, Vince Cable is not Margaret Thatcher – the reforms planned at the Department of Business seek to make investment in the economy work hardest with local variations which will respond to local need –regional enterprise boards & partnerships , increased credit to small firms, lower corporation tax.

Progressive government is not protectionist of the rich; & before you take on board hook line & sinker Labour’s flawed analysis, just remember how much they stand to lose if they do not reconquer the left/middle ground: as Mervyn King said before the election – whoever becomes the government risks being banished from power for the next generation. That is the ground Milliband & Balls are laying – the Labour confidence trick – full of spin, bereft of substance. It ill behoves us on the left to swallow the argument before the evidence can be tested.

I would encourage you therefore to judge everything by the old adage –‘ by the evidence of their deeds shall ye know them’. Measure every current accusation, every media spun scare tactic against the evidence of Labour’s record in government . If it wasn’t sorted in 13 years, what makes them better qualified to sort it now ? Measure the impact of the current changes 3 years down the line – to do so now is both unfair & precipitate. There is no room to abuse the coalition 6 weeks in for trying something different .

Be objective – measure up the facts against the performance. Do not accept the agenda currently being set by Labour – it is not straight; the syllogism is flawed – there is a strong ulterior motive - & it just does not add up; use your brain – refuse to believe it.