Can Things Ever Get Better?
Misguided attitudes have bred dangerous levels of complacency within the Labour Party.
Criticism of the Blair government is two-a-penny nowadays. One side of the aisle laments his immigration policies, promotion of social liberalism, and changes to the constitution. The other recoils at his use of PFI, indifference to inequality and authoritarianism. Both sides condemn the disaster that was the Iraq War.
But perhaps the most potent political legacy he has left for his own party is the notion that ‘things can only get better’ — the refrain of the D:REAM song which accompanied the 1997 Labour campaign. The belief that Labour is on the ‘right side of history’ and, in his words (or thereabouts) there is a ‘progressive majority’ in this country (Party Conference Speech, September 2006).
This idea has corroded the mindset of Labour MPs, members and activists — along with their allies and sympathisers in the newspapers and elsewhere. And it helps explain the predicament in which Labour finds itself.
This general, nearly unalloyed optimism has abounded in the past decade despite the fact the Conservative share of the national vote has gone up in every election for the past twenty years. Perhaps it was muted in the aftermath of the 2010 and 2015 defeat. But in the periods of opposition thereafter and certainly after the 2017 defeat, there is the attitude present that Labour is a whiff away from power (eg, Jack Straw, in an interview with the Guardian in early 2014 on the subject of an EU Referendum said something to the effect of ‘it won’t matter, Ed Miliband will have won the election.’ There are numerous examples in the Corbyn period.)
There is even this sort of attitude among Conservatives — found either in their optimism or dread. Cameron, upon leaving office, was keen to highlight his introduction of gay marriage in 2013 (no doubt because it was one of his few legacies that was decent rather than disastrous — see poverty, defence, et all). Not in the Conservative manifesto, it led to countless resignations by party members who dreaded the prospect. It was another step in the journey of social progress, as it were — with progress in this area seeming more inevitable given its passage under a Conservative government.
This similar attitude — that it is a one way street — is reflected in the present Conservative Party. The Johnsonian party is obsessed to the point of paranoia with the supposed legions of ‘woke’ administrators, professors, lawyers and whatever else lying in wait behind every corner.
It all amounts to a narrative — or an apparition of one — that this is the way things are going to be. Either that things are going this way because people who want those things have the levers of cultural, professional, legal and other power in this country (if you are a particular form of social conservative) or that things are going this way because of the ‘arc of history’ (thanks, Obama) and that these social policies constitute such progress.
This latter sort of view is expounded by a particular form of social liberal, many of whom reside in the Labour membership, and among those ‘woke’ professors, actors and journalists that the Conservatives like to rail against. (They do exist. Though the extent to which they, like James Bond’s nemesis SPECTRE ‘are everywhere’ is open to question.) Normative statements about the history, nation, family, men, women, sexuality, race, immigration, gender and so on are presented as empirical fact, from which there can be no derogation and about which there is little self-reflection.
The nigh-on Maoist approach to dissent by such people and groups is the subject of another tract, but suffice to say that this arrogant and inflexible approach to social issues, and the lazy assumption about the voting patterns of people in Britain, have led the left to a complacency from which it seems difficult to get out of. If there is a progressive majority, and if there are empirically ‘right’ answers to social issues (which may not be the case), then why try harder? Why should we, the righteous, cavort with bigots? Why should we, the majority, try and convince anyone who votes Conservative to vote Labour? They probably think that we ought to reduce immigration! They probably think Britain is a country to be proud of! The racist xenophobes!
Unfortunately, these attitudes afflict not just the twitterati, but MPs, journalists and even leaders. Not to say ‘I told you so,’ but it was manifestly clear that, after 2017, Labour would not win the subsequent election. Why? Because the Tories would do all that they can to avoid paving the way to a Corbyn administration. It was manifestly clear they would do so. Their words were and are public record. And that is what happened. Even with the wearing down of May’s de facto majority, which under normal circumstances may have lasted until 2021 or 2022, Corbyn could not cut the mustard. Not just because of his own failings, but that of course helped. The Conservatives contrived, cajoled and changed enough to win 2019 in a landslide. There certainly seemed to be little in the way of Labour overtures to Conservative voters to convince them to join an alternative electoral coalition. If someone repeatedly said the party you voted for was evil, and trod on all the things you hold dear — be it the nation, the flag, family values or anything else — would you consider listening to what else they had to say?
The sheer laziness to assume in July and October 2017, or in 2018 or 2019 that Labour was a hair’s breadth away from winning is incalculable. And yet, Corbyn seemed to think it, as did much of the party, along with Pogrund and Maguire (or so it seems given the comments in Left Out) as with many other journalists at the time.
There was, and even after 2019, is no attempt to really grapple with the fact that there is no progressive majority in this country. And if there is, it is latent, and the winning coalition must be built. There is no sober realisation that the rights and ‘progress’ many take for granted are not inevitable. They can only be realised — implemented or protected — through winning at the ballot box. Labour did not affect the repeal of s28, or enact the Race Relation Acts through carping on about it from the opposition dispatch box.
Labour must realise that it has to go to the people and not wait for the people to come round to it. That may mean compromise between the different elements of a putative winning coalition. It means the membership, PLP and leadership talking more softly about certain things and speaking more loudly about others. It must realise that it can perish, and it must sweat to survive.
Keir Starmer may not be Jeremy Corbyn, but, excepting some lines from his conference speech, little appears to have changed in the policy the party is offering to the public or its general political attitude. He must realise that the rights which he defended in Court for so long are not a given. And he must realise that Labour is very, very far away from power — and act like it rather than just say it in the odd interview. He must actually listen to what the voters have got to say and actually change and adapt the party accordingly. Mealy mouthed statements to that effect are no substitute for action.
This is the toxic legacy of ‘things can only get better.’ It has left the Labour Party so complacent it is now practically moribund.
As a final thought: That this is a legacy traceable to Blair is a touch ironic. If you read his memoir or those of his contemporaries, he doesn’t exude this sort of complacency. He was well aware that he had to fight for the voters’ trust and fight for every vote. That same anxiety — that same shiver up the spine — is not found among the Labour leaders of today. Perhaps this shows that the two-a-penny criticisms of his leadership focus on myth rather than reality. And maybe it is another instance of Labour having long since lost touch with the real world.