As delegates assemble for Labour’s post-election conference, there is a palpable relief that the Tories have been thrown out, but it’s hard to detect the sparkling optimism that would be expected after the long-awaited election of a Labour government. Of course, part of this downbeat atmosphere is due to the toxic inheritance from the Tories after 14 years of austerity and the last few years of their manic scorched-earth policies.
Despite all the recent talk of “black holes”, nobody was realistically surprised at the mess the Tories made of the public finances. In a report that Andrew Fisher and I published last year on “Labour’s in-tray”, we calculated the amount needed to just return spending on our public services to 2010 levels was £70bn. Even though the political parties conspired to avoid the debate about just how tough it would be after the election for any government, people knew.
What has suppressed much of the optimism at the election of a Labour government is not the scale of the economic challenge, but Labour’s crushingly disappointing response. Potentially hanging over the Labour party conference is a black cloud of the threat of another round of ongoing austerity. People know from experience what Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer’s regurgitation of George Osborne’s language of tough and painful decisions means prior to a budget.
Labour is seen clinging to an out-of-date fiscal rule that restricts desperately needed investment in our public services and infrastructure. Ruling out the redistribution of wealth through tax reform to tackle the grotesque levels of poverty and inequality in our society poses the question in an increasing number of minds: just what does Labour exist for?
There is a deep irony in that the most popular policies brought forward so far by the new Labour government are the ones drawn from the 2017 and 2019 manifestos: rail renationalisation, the new deal for workers, a mass social housebuilding programme and bus regulation.
The reality is that the first honeymoon months of the government have been wasted by poor political judgment and the failure to control the self-serving arrogance of the heavies that now control much of the party machine, including the leader’s office. The early leaders of the Labour party must be spinning in their graves at the behaviour of some holding positions in its leading echelons today.
When Keir Hardie was elected as the first Labour MP, he went to work in parliament in his working man’s tweed suit. He wasn’t expensively clothed by rich sponsors because, as a matter of principle, he refused to ape the Tories and Liberals in their expensive frock coats and silk top hats.
A century ago, when the first Labour government took office in 1924, the intense debate in the party was about what socialism was in practice. A book was published, What is Socialism; A Symposium, in which 200 prominent Labour representatives and supporters defined what socialism meant to them. The argument among these key players was about the policies and priorities needed to implement socialism by the new Labour government.
They weren’t bickering over their pay levels, as we have seen in the unseemly backbiting in the media by policy advisers and bag carriers. Although in a minority, that first Labour government launched a mass council housebuilding programme, increased benefits to pensioners and the unemployed, and significantly, in the light of child poverty, doubled the children’s allowance.
Of course, the incoming parliamentary Labour party operated a whipping system to ensure its business was carried in the house, but any idea that a Labour MP would be disciplined for voting to reduce child poverty or keep pensioners warm in winter would be seen as unconscionable. At that time, and throughout its history, the Labour party has also been proud of being a political broad church. Harold Wilson famously remarked that, like a bird, Labour needs two wings to fly. Argument and challenge over policy and strategy are the life force of politics within a party and should be welcomed, not suppressed. They are the essential ingredients of creating better political decisions.
One of the lessons of Labour in government has been that the heavier the whipping applied to coerce members of parliament, the bigger the risk of mistakes being made and the greater the later regret. Consider the votes on Gordon Brown’s 75p pension increase, on New Labour’s tuition fees, on Tony Blair’s Iraq war and Labour’s abstention on the Tories’ imposition of the two-child benefit cap in 2015.
Although the Labour delegations are now so much more tightly controlled and the dominance of corporate lobbyists in the halls gives the impression of a CBI bash, the party conference can still be a place for party members to seek to speak truth to power.
In debating these first weeks of Labour in power, we need delegates from the local parties or the trade unions to issue a series of reminders: that Labour was founded to be the voice of working-class people, not the corporations; that our elected representatives are there to serve them, not line their pockets; and that our aim is to transform this economic system, not simply manage the status quo.
John McDonnell has been the MP for Hayes and Harlington since 1997. He was shadow chancellor from 2015 to 2020
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