The break-up of old politics

The long-term break up of traditional party allegiances is confirmed by yesterday’s national and council elections. Last year’s general election stalemate may well prove the rule not the exception.

Neither the Tories nor Labour can command overwhelming support, especially as turn-out remains stuck in the low 60% range at general elections and much lower in other polls.

Labour’s loss of key seats to the right-wing populist Scottish National Party is indicative of the trend. Who would have thought that Lanarkshire, home of Keir Hardie, Labour’s first leader, would go over to the SNP? Once Labour could put up a donkey (and often did) and it would win in Scotland, enabling it to win at Westminster elections.

No longer. Labour’s bankrupt politics of embracing market capitalism has less and less appeal to working people in Scotland and elsewhere. New leader Ed Miliband’s appeal is so diffuse and undifferentiated from the Tories that he makes little impact. His support for the AV on the basis that it would force parties to broaden their appeal went down like a lead balloon.

The SNP’s demagogic populism even attracted the support of trade union leaders, according to party leader Alex Salmond. With half of Scots entitled to vote staying at home, it was hardly a resounding victory for the parliamentary democratic process or a vote for independence, which Salmond is now promising.

Political fragmentation brought the Lib Dems into a coalition with the Tories – and they took on the role of human shield for David Cameron and his “deficit reduction” plan – aka as massive public spending cuts. As a result, Nick Clegg’s party took a massive hit at the local elections and in Scotland while the Tories escaped relatively scot free.

This can only intensify tensions and contradictions at the top of the government, and even threaten Clegg’s position as leader. It is surely no more than 50-50 whether the coalition is able to stagger on for more than a year or so. Only a lack of organised opposition to its policies from Labour and the Trades Union Congress allows it to remain in office in any case.

The cuts in services and jobs at town hall level have been implemented by Labour, Tory and Lib Dem councils alike. Nothing will change as a result of yesterday’s elections, except that more Labour councils are ready to do the government’s bidding.

As they take control of town halls around the country, they will inherit cuts budgets and carry on with their implementation. Later this year, the new Labour councils will start work on budgets for 2012-13 which will involve further reductions in spending. Anyone who thought a vote for Labour was a vote against the cuts is sorely mistaken.

The elections solve nothing in that respect. Economic conditions continue to deteriorate, as the National Institute of Economic and Social Research pointed out this week. Its briefing said:

The weak recovery will feed through to lower tax revenues. That will mean that even if the spending plans are met over the next four years, public sector net borrowing will fall only to 3.6 per cent of GDP in 2015–16 rather than the 1.5 per cent projected by the Office for Budget Responsibility.



In plain language, it means that the government’s deficit is out of control and that deeper and deeper cuts are on the cards. The market capitalist economy has failed. Replacing it with a sustainable, not-for-profit economy is a political task that of necessity means going beyond the existing system and creating a real democracy.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Point of no return

The crisis within New Labour shows no signs of abating as MPs stare electoral oblivion in the face come the next election. In fact, matters are getting worse. Wendy Alexander, its leader in Scotland, has broken ranks with Gordon Brown’s position on an independence referendum in a bid to steal some votes from the nationalists, while opponents of the abolition of the 10p tax rate are resuming their campaign. These are further indications that New Labour has reached and passed the point of no return. It seems inconceivable they can win the next general election – whatever Brown does.

The votes are simply not there any more (and, in truth, haven’t been for some time). Evidence from last week’s elections shows that New Labour sustained a double whammy, losing the support of both formerly loyal working class voters as well as the middle class who had benefited from tax cuts and rising property prices. So it seems that New Labour’s one great “legacy” will be to return the country to Tory rule, allowing a party that was almost wiped out in 1997 to recover sufficiently to take over the reins of power, as it has already achieved in London.

What of the future for New Labour itself as an organisation, and what can its remaining activists do under these conditions? They could and should:

• Denounce New Labour’s leaders for siding with big business and financial power over the interests of working people, thereby creating the conditions for a Tory comeback.
• Recognise that Brown is incapable of changing tack and adopting new policies radically different from the present ones, especially as the economic position is worsening.
• Abandon any notion that New Labour somehow exists separately from a kind of more traditional, reformist Labour party hiding secretly in the background. The truth is that New Labour has remade all the structures and policies of the party in its image, destroying the old organisation in the process. History cannot be rewound.
• Acknowledge that capitalism in the period of corporate-driven globalisation does not allow sufficient space for governments of a reformist character and that this poses an historic political challenge for the labour movement which founded Labour to perform precisely that role.
• Support all struggles against the government and campaign for the defeat of the capitalist Brown regime inside and outside parliament. This is the best way to prepare for a return of the Tories to government.
• Call on the trade union leaders to break off all relations with New Labour, and to withdraw financial support from a government that has trampled over workers’ rights and is now enforcing pay cuts in the public sector.
• Demand that union leaders call a conference to discuss the political crisis and accept that the way forward lies beyond New Labour, in the creation of a forward-looking political alternative that can challenge and overturn corporate power and control.
• Appreciate that large numbers of people are alienated from the political system and do not believe that voting from time to time gives them any meaningful influence over government. Any new movement must therefore propose forms of democracy and involvement that extend beyond the extremely limited and somewhat discredited parliamentary system.

A series of bold initiatives along these lines would begin to end the political impasse that New Labour has helped to create. The deteriorating economic position is equally an opportunity to discuss alternative policies and solutions and that’s why the LEAP/Labour Representation Committee conference “Beyond the Market Economy” on May 24 is timely.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor