There has been no more vociferous critic of Labour’s direction in recent years than Peter Mandelson. In an interview in the new issue of Progress, he repeats a familiar charge against Ed Miliband (albeit without mentioning him by name): that he has vacated the centre ground in pursuit of an imaginary left-wing majority.
Those who don’t give their political loyalty automatically to left or right – whose votes, therefore, are up for grabs – are a greater segment of the electorate now than they were when New Labour was being created in the 1990s. Therefore, it is even more important now to win the centre-ground to win electoral victory. Just as it is essential still to win on leadership and the economy, and to demonstrate that we are a party of conscience and reform that will talk to people’s values and concerns, not simply keep driving an agenda of our own regardless of the electorate’s views. That is why I get frustrated sometimes when people argue now that the country has moved to the left, therefore if we are more unambiguously leftwing and raise our ideological vigour, we are more likely to win the next election.
For “people”, read Miliband and his supporters.
It is an echo of the point made by Tony Blair in his article for the centenary edition of the New Statesman last year, in which he wrote: “The paradox of the financial crisis is that, despite being widely held to have been caused by under-regulated markets, it has not brought a decisive shift to the left. But what might happen is that the left believes such a shift has occurred and behaves accordingly.” Blair is likely to repeat this warning when he delivers the Philip Gould Lecture on 21 July to mark the 20th anniversary of his election as Labour leader.
For the former PM and Mandelson, remaining in the centre ground means, among other things, refusing to support higher taxes on the rich, avoiding policies that could be attacked as “anti-business” and advocating increased use of the private sector in public services. Labour’s leftwards trajectory is, they argue, one of the main reasons why it may struggle to win next year.
The party has certainly moved to the left under Miliband, but it is wrong to suggest that it is now further from the centre. As I’ve noted before, if the Labour leader is a “socialist”, so are most of the public. Around two-thirds of voters support a 50p tax rate, a mansion tax, stronger workers’ rights, a compulsory living wage and the renationalisation of the railways and the privatised utilities (actually putting them well to the left of Labour leader).
The insight that defines Miliband’s project is less that the centre has moved leftwards since the financial crisis, but that it was further to the left to begin with. It was New Labour’s failure to accurately reflect public opinion that led to the loss of five million votes between 1997 and 2010. Too often, for Blair and Mandelson (as for others), the “centre ground” simply means “policies that I support”.
While voters continue to lean right on issues such as immigration, the deficit and welfare, Labour’s stances have reflected this. It has pledged to reduce low-skilled migration (and apologised for refusing to impose transitional controls) and has promised to eliminate the current deficit by the end of the next parliament. The only welfare cut that it has committed to reversing is the unpopular “bedroom tax”.
Labour needs to do more to improve its credibility as a government-in-waiting, to win back economic trust, and to attract voters with a vision of national renewal. But the suggestion that this can only be achieved on a Blairite policy platform remains devoid of evidence.
See more:
Have we become more left-wing? (8 July 2014)
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