Political turmoil is not just engulfing the Tory Party over
an in/out referendum on Europe . It is about to
break over Labour in a big way as its Blairite wing gears up for a massive push
against what they consider a weak Ed Miliband leadership.
Progress, the unashamedly New Labour pressure group, is not
affiliated to the party but exerts considerable influence. So much so that the
GMB union once tried to get the party conference to ban Progress.
That move came to nothing, but the trade unions still consider
Progress as a “party inside a party”. They are not far wrong there. Chairman of
Progress is shadow education minister Stephen Twigg, whose policies are hardly distinguishable
from those of Tory secretary of state Michael Gove.
Twigg is one of four open Blairites inside the shadow
cabinet. The others are Douglas Alexander, Jim Murphy and Liam Byrne, whose
support for the ConDem coalition’s “welfare reform” is viewed with horror by
disability groups and benefits campaigners.
With the prompting stage right of former prime minister Tony
Blair himself, David Blunkett and Lord Mandelson, the Progress group want
Miliband to take “tough decisions” on the economy to show the electorate he
means business.
Of course, while they were in power, the Blairites took the
softest approach possible. They encouraged the City of London to run riot through self-regulation and
helped to create the conditions that led to the financial crash that began in
the autumn of 2007.
Never mind about that. Progress has commissioned a poll
which backs up their view that the party is still seen as “nice” but incapable
of being “tough” in a crisis. YouGov president Peter Kellner described the
polling as "profoundly troubling" for Labour.
He added: "The central fact is that no successful opposition
in the past 50 years has gone on to regain power with such a weak image and
without achieving much bigger voting-intention leads at some point in the
parliament."
So Miliband’s attempt to rebrand Labour as the party of
“responsible capitalism” and in favour of “predistribution” whereby employers
get money to pay workers a “living wage”, have fallen on deaf ears as far as
voters are concerned.
The middle-classes undoubtedly find it all too vague while
working class voters struggling to make ends meet as austerity bite hard, are
unimpressed for other reasons.
The trade unions who stumped up the cash to get Ed elected
over his Blairite brother David should – but probably won’t be – shocked. They have been pinning their hopes on a
majority Labour government coming to power in 2015 and riding to the rescue of
their hard-pressed members. That prospect seems more unlikely with each passing
day.
Instead, the Blairites are back in business. In truth, they
never left the stage. They remade Labour as a party that embraced globalised
capitalism and the market-driven economy. For all Miliband’s huffing and
puffing, that’s where Labour remains to this day.
It’s likely to get worse. The infighting inside the Tory
Party over whether to announce a referendum on European Union membership
reflects the growing presence of the right-wing populist Ukip party. Labour is
already adapting to Ukip on immigration and will be tempted to respond with a
shift on its EU policy. That will only enrage the Blairites further.
All in all, the mainstream political parties are
increasingly as discredited as the political system they operate within. The
opportunity to create a movement that is fresh and, above all, democratic that
can free society from the grip of the banks and corporations should not be
passed up.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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