Howard Reed

In August 2010, Labour leadership frontrunner David Miliband made the argument that his brother Ed’s policies risked returning Labour to “the comfortable but deadening policies of the past… its comfort zone”, by which he meant the pre-New Labour era of the 1980s and early 1990s. And almost as soon as the election results had been announced on 7 May, key Blairites in the Labour Party – including Tony Blair himself – reactivated this line of attack. We are being told that aspirational working class and middle-class voters in England were alienated by a radical economic policy which had tilted too far to the left to win the centre ground; and that the only way forward is to return to the New Labour strategy of triangulating for the so-called centre ground. This narrative will no doubt dominate the Labour leadership campaign and produce a new leader promising to recapture the golden years of Tony Blair’s three general election victories. It’s a powerful narrative which will no doubt persuade many Labour activists, but there’s a problem: it’s an almost total fabrication and distortion of what Ed Miliband actually did as Labour leader.

It’s certainly true that, during the Labour leadership campaign in 2010, Ed Miliband tacked noticeably to the left, attacking the Blairite obsession with the “New Labour comfort zone” – the belief that, despite a collapse in Labour’s vote share from 41% in the 2001 general election to 35% in 2005 under Tony Blair, and then 29% under New Labour co-architect Gordon Brown in 2010, the party could simply present reheated and rehashed centrist (and in some cases centre-right) Blairite policies, election after election, and expect to reverse its decline.

However, strangely – and disappointingly – once Ed was installed as leader in September 2010, he proceeded to head for exactly the same New Labour comfort zone as his two predecessors. That’s not to deny that there was a shift in rhetoric; unlike Blair, Ed believed that reducing inequality – not just poverty – should be a key goal of government, and he wanted to transform British capitalism into something more akin to the German model, with a shift from “predators” to “producers”. But these were just aspirations, and often somewhat confusingly expressed aspirations at that. On actual policy (as opposed to rhetoric), as explained in detail in my review of Labour’s 2015 manifesto for Compass, it was a hotchpotch which combined slight leftward shifts from New Labour in some areas (taxation, housing, employment rights) with rightward shifts in others (fiscal policy, social security, immigration).

Most worryingly, there was no attempt to present an alternative economic narrative to the one which the Coalition Government, the Tory-supporting press, the BBC and Sky News have hammered home for five years, painting Labour as economically incompetent and addicted to wasteful public spending and running exploding fiscal deficits. The “two Eds” insisted that Labour had not spent too much prior to the 2008 economic crash but they presented no evidence to back up this assertion, which made them look like they were in denial to most of the electorate. They spent three years insisting that Coalition’s five years of spending cuts were “too far and too fast” before accepting these cuts more or less en masse in the 2015 manifesto and indeed even planning some additional cuts on top of them (although nowhere near as much as the Tories now plan).

No Labour minister ever even tried to present the case that austerity was fundamentally flawed, even though its impacts have been economically disastrous. A radical economics alternative, involving the reversal of cuts, a more progressive taxation system, and a substantial increase in infrastructure investment paid for by Green quantitative easing was available as early as 2011 (Compass’s Plan B) but the Labour leadership chose to ignore this, instead ploughing deeper into the New Labour comfort zone. Right-wing Labour leadership contenders – and their backers among Labour grandees – will now argue that Labour adopted a swathe of radical policies which failed comprehensively with the electorate. In reality the truth is the complete opposite; Labour was almost completely, shockingly devoid of radicalism. It presented a few tweaks to the Coalition’s “business as usual”, and a watered down continuation of the Coalition’s economic strategy delivered by politicians who didn’t look like they meant what they said, but who were saying it anyway because they believed it was the only available option. Compare and contrast this with the Conservative message that “our long-term economic plan is working”. Despite the fact that the Coalition Government had missed all its deficit reduction targets and growth had been non-existent in the first half of the parliament and anaemic at best in the second half, the Tories had a very clear – and constantly repeated – narrative, which superficially rang true.

The Conservative narrative was also reinforced by Labour’s decision to copy and amplify certain aspects of it, attacking “welfare scroungers” and pledging further restrictions on immigration in an attempt to look tough on these policy areas. On top of this, the Tories also had, in David Cameron, a leader viewed as more charismatic and able to take tough decisions than Ed Miliband. In the end, given the choice between the genuine Conservative article and Ed Miliband’s insincere-looking attempt to present Labour as the Tory Party with the nastiest, roughest edges filed off, many swing voters went for the people who obviously weren’t faking it. Meanwhile, many other voters chose the more genuine anti-austerity stance of the Green Party, or the incoherent but flamboyant “kick Westminster up the backside” approach of UKIP. Many of these voters were potentially in play for Labour; combined, they could have put Ed Miliband into 10 Downing Street. But not with the policies and approach of Labour’s 2015 campaign.

Labour’s problems are deep-seated and structural, and despite Ed Miliband taking full responsibility for the result, it is not clear that anyone else could have done any better with any conceivable variant of the “New Labour comfort zone” approach. Unless something drastic happens to discredit the Tories’ record for economic competence while they are in office (as happened with Black Wednesday in autumn 1992), it is almost impossible for Labour to win on an ‘ersatz Tory’ platform; the Tories will always do ‘nasty but competent’ better than most Labour imitators, even ones with much more charisma than Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband. There is one obvious exception to this rule: if the Tories do drop the ball while in office (as they did spectacularly in 1992) this does open up a window of opportunity for Labour to present itself as a more competent version of the Conservative Party, as Tony Blair showed with spectacular results in 1997. However, winning with the New Labour strategy of being “right wing but not quite as right wing as the Tories” comes at a very heavy price; witness the continued right-wing drift of British politics and the eventual defeat of New Labour’s ersatz Conservatism at the hands of the revitalised real variety (as happened in 2010). As a strategy for the long-term survival (never mind flourishing) of the British left, New Labour – in any variant – is wrong-headed.

So, where next for Labour? Given that the only way Ed Miliband was able to win (by a whisker) in 2010 was with a large lead in the trade union section of the electoral college, the abolition of the electoral college system of leadership elections in favour of One Member One Vote means that the prospects for a successful left-wing leadership challenge are almost zero. Instead it is likely that the new leader will drag Labour further to the right, away from the progressive alternative which so badly needs to be presented to an exhausted and battered electorate. If there is another economic crash and the Conservatives get blamed for it, then this strategy may produce a win for Labour in 2020; but on a Tory economic platform, which will simply result in a slightly slower drift to the right until the Tories regain their mojo and sweep Labour aside once again. If there isn’t an economic crash, then a move right will reap no electoral dividends, and indeed may well do worse than the 2015 result (due to leftwing defections to the Greens in England and Plaid Cymru in Wales; in Scotland Labour is already at rock bottom electorally so could scarcely do any worse than now).

The sad conclusion from all of this is that in its current form, Labour is simply incapable of winning power as a progressive government. Ed Miliband is a decent man with something radical in the heart of his soul. He tried his best to win by talking a good fight while trapped within the straitjacket of New Labour ideology – and it wasn’t enough. Something very drastic – and quite possibly originating outside of the Labour party – will be required for a renaissance of the left in England and Wales. Rather than retreating back into its New Labour comfort zone, Labour needs to reach out and engage with the rest of the progressive movement including the Green Party, the nationalist parties and activists and volunteers operating outside the current party structure, to develop common positions on key policy areas to oppose the Tory government more effectively. It is likely that Labour will be in a position to win the 2020 election only as a vital cog in a larger progressive alliance – which could include electoral pacts as well as common policy development. If Labour attempts to “go it alone” in 2020 the consequences for the party and the country could be disastrous.