Harriet Harman in Thanet, the Cabinet reshuffle and Labour’s prospects
Last night I attended a dinner with Harriet Harman in Pegwell (near Ramsgate) on Thanet. As with a lot of the rhetoric from both sides recently, Harman in her speech concentrated on the judgment and experience of Gordon Brown as regards extracting Britain from the poopy-pile. Of course it didn’t mention that this new found taste for regulation has been generated by ten years of trying to curtail regulations, and that our Saviour is bailing banks out with taxpayers’ money.
That last bit I find particularly amusing on the basis of the number of City bosses who were so determined not to become taxpayers themselves to any great extent.
Time and again at Labour events where New Labourites are speaking, the rhetoric is virtually impenetrable. Talk of progress, of helping the poor, of all those things which any self-respecting Left-winger could possibly want, peppers every speech. You would have to bring wire clippers and an axe to hack your want into the rhetoric in order to extract the grubby truth: we’ve not been terribly bothered about helping the poor until the Conservatives kicked off.
Ten pence tax rate, fumbling over energy bills, Academies and selection by the back door, Foundation hospitals, billions on war and the renewal of Trident, pay rises which don’t meet inflation…I could go on but the litany gets tiresome and one feels the need to repeat it at length every time one is confronted with the vapidity of New Labour speeches. That same vapidity has characterised the recent debate over Cameron’s ‘judgment’ or Brown’s ‘experience’, and so on ad nauseam.
Now with the cabinet reshuffle, Alastair Campbell’s role as an external advisor is hyped and we have the return of Count Dracula himself, fresh from Romania – or at least Brussels. Yes, Peter Mandelson is back – and no doubt Choice is coming soon to a theatre near us as a result. It may come at the expense of efficiency, unionisation, wages, health and safety, democracy or Armageddon, but hey you pay your money and you takes your chances. Thems the breaks and insert other clichés here.
Forgesian Thinking relates why the return of Mandelson to the Cabinet is a real coup for Labour that might put us on the road to a fourth election victory – but I think they left out one thing. He’s an asshole. During the leadership election, weren’t the Brownites trying to convince grassroots supporters that Labour would be more, well, Labour-like, under Brown? And now he reappoints Mandelson. Hmm. Something has gone just a little bit wrong somewhere.
As for exulting in Campbell’s role, his media strategy amounted to “If at first you don’t succeed, lie and lie again.” Straight faced lies to reporters, cosy lunches with editors from the media establishment and the basic subversion of the only real check to unbridled corruption, lying and nepotism we have left. These were Alastair Campbell’s calling cards. So why are we celebrating his return? Maybe we’re off to war again and the JIC need some help on how to word their documents.
It’s difficult to say what sort of effect this is going to have. If Labour poll numbers increase and the Tories look shaky, it could solidify Gordon at the top and that could neutralise increased union influence and the potential unravelling of the New Labour project. On the other hand, union influence is anyway negligible in many respects – and if Gordon’s numbers continue to decline, the revival of Blairite favourites might drive even the rather unpolitical backbenchers towards a group like Compass.
Clearly Gordon’s trips back and forth to the United States have been more than merely an efficacious means of averting disaster with US banks, just as Darling’s telephone calls to the Irish Republic have focused on defending British interests. While this continues, a Labour turn-around looks possible – though bearing in mind the 12-point lead the Tories have regained following their conference, it still looks unlikely. And even if Labour did win a small majority by crushing the Lib-Dems, to what end?
If we dispense with poll based punditry for a moment, I feel that this is the core question that will eventually eat Labour from the grassroots up. On major issues such as constitutional reform we’re still stuck in neutral. We’ve completely bungled the European issue, which makes retaining any seats in the southeast much harder. Many of our best activists don’t feel like Labour policies are a worthwhile return on the time and energy they invest to get Labour elected.
As a campaign manager, I feel that the candidate I’m supporting won’t be intimidated by hackery and will be better than the dinosaur Canterbury currently has – but in other constituencies, I have to confess to seeing few differences between the Labour and the Lib-Dem, or even the Tory candidates. Truthfully it seems that the only major difference is that the Tories will take Labour’s worst ideas and ram them home. Is this really what we expect to motivate people to fight for us?
“we’ve not been terribly bothered about helping the poor until the Conservatives kicked off.”
Not sure that’s entirely fair. Poverty in Britain fell between 1999 and 2005 – the first time ever since records began that it fell for six years in a row.
And abroad, the government has made some pretty significant efforts to reduce global poverty, both by increasing spending and trying to secure international co-operation.
More could, and should, have been done, of course, but that’s a rather different matter. And since 2005, which was when the Conservatives got interested in this issue, the government’s record has been much worse.
In a day or two I might dig out some material to counter with – such as the increasing disparity between wealthy and poor. And don’t get me wrong, relatively speaking I sing this government’s praises on child poverty eradication.
On the subject of reducing global poverty, we should also point out that by privatising our overseas investment arm we’ve been contributing to the rising food prices and such. So let’s not call out the stone masons just yet.
As to your last sentence, if that is genuinely true – and colour me intrigued – is that not an even more damning assertion of our Party than what I said? We’re alright helping people along EXCEPT when the going gets tough because of the opposition. We have the right ideas but we’re cowards.
In Thanet unemployment is up in three figure numbers while the Joseph Rowntree Foundation lists 12 wards where the percentage of children from families on benefits is at least twice the national average and we (Thanet) are on that list twice. The current government may be doing “things” to reduce child poverty and much of it has been good (The Sure Start program especially on the Millmead Estate (Dane Valley) springs to mind as a particularly successful example) a lot more must be done for a sustained period to make more than a slight dent in things here.
Perhaps it does not help that the council is Conservative (you tell me) but Thanet is hurting and in desperate need of much, much more help.
I don’t disagree. The point about the Conservative council is important though. It is the Tory councils of Thanet and Canterbury which are seeking to put homeless back on the streets instead of continuing to fund a programme which gets many of them long-term accommodation, jobs and achieves what government has failed to do: reintegration.
You tell me how that’s likely to affect Thanet?
I agree, in terms of child poverty, more needs to be done – and I’m a member of the left-wing group within Labour that would do it – but in relative terms no government has done more than Labour. The Sure Start programme is of course the corner stone of those efforts.