Must Labour Die?
Nearly ten years ago, Andy Pearmain wrote that ‘Labour Must Die’[i], an analysis of the dead-end called New Labour. He suggested that at the 2010 election we might “by a fortuitous combination of luck and tactical design, arrive at a hung Parliament” in which the Lib Dems might push through some kind of proportional representation leading, at last, “to the beginnings of a properly democratic, modern political system, which genuinely reflects the real currents of popular feeling.”
Unfortunately, he overestimated the moral fibre of the Lib Dems and the degree to which Labour and the Conservatives together would sabotage even the minor shift to AV voting. He was right to suggest that “far more likely is a New Tory Cameron government, sooner or later displaced by some form of neo-Thatcherism, which remains the strongest ideological impulse in Britain.” So, right on the money there.
His conclusion then was that Labour had to be replaced by a new political formation; that Labour must die. As we approach the May election the same question arises; vote Labour to get the Tories out or vote for a better alternative on the left to push Labour down and look to a more distant horizon. A sudden surge in belief in the Green Party as such an alternative makes the question even sharper. In 2010, Labour’s share of the vote was just 29%, only just above its lowest ever share (27.6%) in 1983 when the vote was split following the formation of the Social Democrats and the defection of a number of its MP’s. In fact, 2010 can be seen as the continuance of a long-term trend since 1945 as the Labour share of the vote drifted steadily down from the high 40%s in the 1950s, with the thirty years since 1983 an aberration after the reshuffling of the Liberal, Labour and Social Democrat votes. 1983 to 1997 now looks rather like the shocked reaction of an electorate to a new neo-liberal agenda and 1997 to 2010 a growing realisation that Labour was not much different.
Share of
vote at UK general elections since 1945: Labour, Conservative, Liberal and
Other
The hope, indeed the prayer, of the Labour apparatus is that
the Lib Dem 2010 share at 23% will collapse and flow to Labour whilst the ‘Others’,
notably UKIP, will eat the Tory vote. And such was the general view of the
political commentariat until first the SNP and then the Greens poked up their
tousled heads. The Labour nightmare is that the SNP (1.7% of the national vote
in 2010) might claim, say 5% of Scotland’s roughly 8.5% share of the national
vote and the Greens (0.9%) perhaps another 5%, all out of Labour, whilst the
Lib Dem vote could either stay firm or go to the Greens.
If Labour’s national
share did continue the trend down towards 25% or so then it really would be in trouble.
The Greens and the SNP are not the only
possible ways that Labour will be hit. In late 2014, Paul Salveson[ii], a long-time Labour
stalwart and councillor, joined Yorkshire First, a quirky regional party aiming
to do what the label says. The defection of such a figure suggests, as Salveson
did, that “At the end of the day Labour have had a long time in which to push
forward with devolution and other issues concerning greater social justice that
I’m campaigning for. We don’t know what will happen with next year’s vote but
we live in a democratic society so it’s time that we got away from the idea
that we must vote for Labour as the progressive vote. We believe that we are
the new alternative.”
He put forward Scotland as the inspiration for his
move and will be standing in Colne Valley, a seat which must be high on the
list of Labour target seats. If Labour starts to die in strongholds such as
Yorkshire as well as being wiped out in Scotland and being challenged by the
Green vote then the political landscape would indeed be shifting.
What makes the 2015 election
quite different to anything seen since the 1920s is that it does offer a real
choice on the left: either to vote for a discredited centre party clinging to
the shreds of a long-past reputation for progressive social change on the
grounds that this is the only way to keep out the Tories or to register a
protest against the current political structure and cause the Labour Party to
finally relinquish its grip on left politics. Ironically, it is the threat
posed by a populist English party which will also strip away Labour votes which
makes this latter alternative a good deal more plausible. The likelihood that
in Scotland, the SNP will actually win seats from Labour will, as the example
of Paul Salveson shows, give an important moral push to all those who have been
on the brink of jumping ship for years.
It would be unsafe to draw too
many conclusions from the victory of Syriza in Greece. However, what it does
demonstrate how quickly apparently dominant parties can collapse. After a muted
first effort in 1974 when it received only 13.5% of the national vote, PASOK,
the Greek equivalent of Labour, bounced up to the 40%’s in 1981, a level held
through to 2009. In 2015, PASOK gained just 4.7% of the national vote. Labour is unlikely to collapse so
dramatically but, on the other hand, it is already a long way down the path to
effective oblivion.
The form of the coalition of
groups and parties, for such it would have to be, which might replace Labour is
not clear. The lack of any clear alternative organisational form is one reason why Labour
has held on for so long. But perhaps we need to stop thinking in terms of national
parties and instead focus upon forms of power in which different groups of
people could exercise choice; locally, regionally, in different sectors,
collaborating in ways which are at present unthinkable in our centralised
monolithic system in which winner takes all. But one thing is clear. Andy had
it right. Labour must die.
Tragically it seems we cant even 'vote labour without illusions'. There is very little left of value, except occasional resistance to Tory excesses and Lib Dem fudges. Most people I know would vote for a proper socialist party ,but will make do with the Greens for lack of anything else.
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