Darren Murphy's View of the World

New Labour: not dead just sleep-walking

Tony Blair famously told the 1997 Labour Party conference that the Conservatives were “not dead. Just sleeping.” To make such a comment when the Conservatives had been so throroughly thrashed at the general election only four months previously was remarkable. Equally memorable though should be Blair’s next line in that speech: “Let their fate serve as a warning to us.”

Today, with Labour looking becalmed at around 30% in the polls, with the Parliamentary Labour Party looking ever more fearful of having to make bold and radical reforms necessary to improve the public services, with the economic crisis so crushing and with some Cabinet ministers – who should know better – preening themselves and posing in public like peacocks for a potential leadership position, it looks like Labour has failed to heed Blair’s warning. In this context, it is not surprising commentators are saying: ‘New Labour is dead’

I do not believe new Labour is dead but I do believe it is sleep walking to defeat. Incumbent governments win elections when they are capable of showing the electorate that they have more to offer than they have already delivered: that they can be both continuity and change; not just that they haven’t run out of ideas but that their ideas are right for the times.

The economy of course, is taking the lion’s share of the resources and the reporting at the moment. That is only right.  Unfortunately, too much of the rhetoric continues to be anti-market and anti-city – both positions which will come back to haunt Labour in the future; partly, because Labour will need both the market economy and the City to recover and prosper if Britain is to grow our way out of recession and partly, because anti-free market sentiment will be used by those on the left to call for a re-allignment of Labour politics which is actually about trashing the government’s record and moving Labour leftwards.

I appreciate scope for action on the economy is limited but where are the ideas and radical reforms from elsewhere in government capable of making the case that Labour has more to offer in the future? Sadly, they currently appear absent.

Take the publication on Tuesday of the government’s ‘vision for the future shape of public services’. Much of what was in the paper was fine, harmless stuff. The fast-track teacher training is OK. But frankly, the idea that the way to make the radical leap required in public service provision is to ape TripAdvisor by having internet reviews would be laughable if it did not signal so surely that New Labour is sleep walking to defeat.

Or take the loss of David Freud, the welfare reformer, to the Conservatives. I do not believe Freud is a natural conservative. He believes in progressive reforms. He appears to have walked because, despite his excellent work, the government as a whole (probably not James Purnell himself) just does not look interested in pursuing them.

Or take the government’s overall legislative programme. Of course, the Marine and Coastal Access Bill is necessary but, with the exception of the Royal Mail Bill the government’s legislative programme seems to be rather empty. Watch the Parliament Channel any evening (as sadly I do) and there just doesn’t seem to be anything much going on.

Where are the policies to raise standards in schools, to drive choice and contestablility in healthcare, to reduce and remove our reliance on carbon power generation, to address anti-social behaviour and increase personal security, to show Labour are as radical after 12 years in office as they were after 18 years in Opposition?

I believe New Labour isn’t dead. Just sleepwalking to disaster. Labour has just months to put that right. To heed Tony’s warning.