Events | 2010.06.14
A progressive movement can still make history | Neal Lawson
It is a dull race for leader of a Labour party that has lost its purpose – but it\'s up to us all to change that
And so Labour\'s search for a new leader begins, with a whimper not a bang. Only three candidates can seriously hope to win – Ed , Ed and David . All of them clever, earnest and committed. People of fundamentally good hearts. But judging them by the first weeks of the campaign, wholly incapable of understanding what needs to be done. How could they? They have been submerged for almost two decades in New Labour, when it was as New Labour that the party lost.
An air of unreality hangs over proceedings: not just because Labour\'s second worst result on record was masked by the expectation of something even more catastrophic, but because no one, in their heart, thinks we have yet hit bottom. Because all that is on offer, so far, are minute variants of a one-more-heave strategy that is most likely to leave us with that worse result. In the unlikely event that Labour actually wins next time, the party will be back in office, but as far from power as ever.
So the starting point is a process of truth and reconciliation. If we don\'t understand the depth to which we have fallen then it is impossible to judge how high we now have to aim. The scale of defeat is simply daunting. Eleven million votes for the Tories, nine million for Labour and seven million for the Liberal Democrats. Overnight a perceived progressive majority of 16 million has been turned into an 18 million voting bloc for the centre right .
But the numbers are overshadowed in the most serious and audacious power grab anyone in British politics has seen. At a stroke, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have reordered the political world. It is a reverse takeover of a historic British political tradition that in effect creates an ideologically coherent new party that is both socially and economically liberal. Of course it can implode, but don\'t expect it to.
Labour itself did not become the nasty party, but it did become lumbering and arrogant. And much worse than its presentational problems, it became plain wrong. Wrong on the relationship between the market and society, wrong on pluralism and democracy, wrong on Iraq, and wrong on this being a Conservative country. It ended with no vision of the good society and what we value. Aspiration was purely material. New Labour simply dried up and gave up.
Of course, during 13 years in government good things were done. We all have our list of Sure Starts and minimum wages . But the judgment cannot be based solely on outcomes. There would always be disappointments and frustrations. The real test is whether the centre left became stronger as a movement – of the party, the unions, local government and civil society. Were public arguments won? Was the country more committed to redistribution, not less? Britain could not be transformed in one term or three – but only, like Sweden, slowly and surely over decades. On all these counts this tenure was a failure. We are weaker on every count.
So now we pay the price in a leadership race that fails to get the hairs on anyone\'s neck standing. Because Labour has lost its purpose. The candidates start as they mean to go on, carefully calibrating how to look different, humble and new, while still playing it safe. This is a cautious generation of politicians who succeeded through a combination of parachutes and patronage – and the habits of a lifetime are hard to shake off.
But it\'s not their fault, and we shouldn\'t blame them. They are a product of their time; an era of defensiveness and decline for the left. Marx said: "We make history but not in conditions of our choosing." The collapse of existing socialism, east and west, means that these have not been fortuitous times for progressives. But we still "make history".
The "we" is those still in Labour\'s ranks and the thousands who left; the nine million who despite everything voted Labour, as well as those who couldn\'t bring themselves to do so. It is the millions of Liberal Democrats dismayed at the deal their leaders have done, the Greens, and all who care about sustainability. But much more, it is the millions living anxious and insecure lives, those who know that they are only one payslip from homelessness. It is a majority of Britain that no one really represented at the last election.
In the end it is not leaders who betray us – we only betray ourselves by not joining, fighting and struggling for something better. Schopenhauer said that "every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world". One person sees very little, only a movement can see everything. It is a time to sow deep seeds of slow but lasting change.
So Ed, Ed and Dave, step up to the plate with us. The good leader is someone we adore, the great leader leaves us knowing we did it ourselves.
Neal Lawson is chair of Compass and author of All Consuming. The Guardian is a sponsor of the Compass conference, A New Hope, this Saturday at the Institute of Education www.compassonline.org.uk
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]ip-hustings-coalition-politics
