Training | 2009.10.05
It is the time to look again and back Labour once more | Jackie Ashley
We\'ve all kicked it up and down the newspaper columns and TV shows, but this remains a party with the right instincts
Only a few hours into the Labour conference , and we had already learned one thing. Gordon Brown not only isn\'t stepping down, he has somehow discovered a little of his old punch. For the first time in months he has sounded more like a leader, even if his habit of delaying any hard decision until the last second remains intact.
I fear he remains a liability for Labour, and also that in the Westminster bubble, the senior ministers still don\'t get it – it being the scale of the electoral catastrophe that faces them, and the depth of the public\'s dislike for Brown. Everywhere I go, they talk about their departmental plans and look up, startled, when you point out they are unlikely to be around to implement anything.
But there we are. They are not bold mutineers, and the ship\'s captain has tied himself to the mast. Those of us who share Labour values now have to ask what we should do. Is it time to accept that David Cameron, unknown in so many ways, deserves a chance to show that there is a kinder Conservatism? Is it, more likely, time to think again about the Liberal Democrats, who share so many of the party\'s values and, on some issues, are to the left of New Labour?
Well, there may well be big questions about the reshaping of progressive politics after the election, if the polls are anything to go by; but I\'d argue it is time to stand back and look again at Labour – and then, despite all the mistakes and disappointments, to back the party once more. There have been terrible moments, and at times we seem to have had a cabinet of shadows, exhausted and punch-drunk wraiths; but there is another side to the story. There is a symmetry about the New Labour tale: at first there was far too much adulation and credulity, now there is too much abuse and contempt.
Take the most famous recent Tory catchphrase , that Labour didn\'t fix the roof when the sun was shining. If we think back to the state of public services by the mid-1990s, the proper retort would be that Labour didn\'t "fix the roof" because it was busy rebuilding the entire bloody structure, from the basement and floors up, after decades of woeful under-investment.
Remember the appallingly overcrowded and insanitary hospitals that led to the huge rise in health spending; remember the rotting Victorian sewers; remember the schools where pupils had to dodge rainwater; remember the underpaid nurses and underpaid doctors? With hindsight, knowing that a huge global financial crisis was going to come, slashing the tax base and swelling welfare bills, Labour may have spent too freely. But there were good reasons for it. Few people did see what was coming.
And it was hugely popular – even the Tories were muted at the time. Don\'t forget the minimum wage, or the fairness legislation. There are plenty more "don\'t forgets" that are worth pausing over before we wave Labour goodbye.
They add up to an aspect of the last decade that has been brushed aside by current anger. Add to it the fair point, made by Brown yesterday, that Labour did act fast when the banking crash happened. We know all about the financial pain of the rescue. We forget that for a while it looked perfectly possible that the banking ATMs would close and that millions of people would lose everything as banks really failed. It\'s worth holding on to that thought.
And even while one rages at the deception around the Iraq war, the awful loss of life there and in Afghanistan, let\'s remember too that we have not suffered the kind of rolling, mass-murderous terror campaign that seemed possible, even likely, after the 7/7 attacks in London. You have to keep your fingers tightly crossed even saying this, but at the very least, some of all that new money for the security services, and those new protections for public buildings, seems money well spent.
Labour does not deserve special favours from the electorate, but we owe it a fair assessment. Even then, you might say, that\'s all history. The far bigger question is, what follows next?
I hear a worrying number of seasoned observers saying that if there need to be cutbacks in public spending, it might be better to allow the Tories, who really believe in it, to do the job. I can\'t think that\'s going to help us out of recession.
What\'s more, under the radar, you can glimpse some genuinely radical Labour thinking. Brown may not have advertised it well, but the so-called Walker code just being agreed with Lloyds and RBS really will change the bonus culture, delaying bonuses for top paid bankers and allowing a clawback if profits recede. Meanwhile at Health, under Andy Burnham , there are moves towards some kind of national insurance scheme to fund decent long-term care for the elderly, a massive social problem that one minister compares to climate change. And if Peter Mandelson has really had a late conversion to interventionist industrial policy – I am sceptical but others insist he has – well, I\'ll even raise a half-hearted cheer for him.
The new promise on cancer diagnostic waiting times is a good idea. Getting young people into training and jobs is a Sisyphean task, but here too there are interesting new initiatives – and unemployment is unlikely to be helped by deeper and faster Tory spending cuts.
None of this will save Labour. A party that once managed to define itself by its successes and swerve glibly past its failures, is now defined by its errors. The public mood of angry disenchantment is unlikely to shift. For now, at least, I think Brown will stay on, and then both he and his party will be hammered. Huge confrontations over public services, Europe and the future of the UK will follow (and many first-time Tory voters will whine: "Why didn\'t somebody tell us?").
But as I mingle in Brighton with Labour delegates, MPs and tired ministers, I feel that they remain largely decent people, with a lively social conscience. They are, to put it bluntly, my kind of people, and people most Guardian readers ought to feel instinctively warm about too. There are a few crooks and plenty of outsized egos, politicians who have forgotten what it\'s like outside the Whitehall bubble, but this remains a party with the right instincts.
And that means it is one worth supporting when the time comes. We have all kicked it up and down the newspaper columns and the TV shows. I remain livid about the wars, the spivvery and the nest-feathering. But unless you actually want a less fair future, the time to rally round has arrived.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]28/time-look-again-back-labour
