There's nothing wrong with opposition parties taking time out to see why they aren’t winning and what they can do to make themselves more attractive to voters.
Labour has taken a long time agonising over why it hasn’t won a UK general election since 2005 and shows no sign of ending its navel gazing any time soon.
The irony is that it currently finds itself with a healthy poll lead over the Conservatives thanks not to such navel gazing, but to the outrageous behaviour of Boris Johnson and his cohorts.
Once again, it’s events that have created a new political dynamic rather than ideology.
Having said that, Labour’s Covenant: A Plan for National Reconstruction deserves to be taken seriously because it analyses why the party has struggled to make an impact in England in recent years.
It’s important to pay attention to this, because unless and until the people of Wales vote for independence, they will have to put up every time with a UK Government elected by their neighbours.
The report from the Labour Together group has been compiled after talking to academics and a wide range of others, not all committed supporters of the party. Describing Labour’s three historic victories in 1945, 1964 and 1997, it states: “In these election victories it combined a pragmatic competence with a set of social values about fairness and decency.
“Most of all, it told a story about a better future for the country: one which was more compelling, just and hopeful than the one offered by the Tories.
“Our history teaches us what we must do to win: unite as a party behind a convincing and hopeful story of national renewal.”
Asserting that social changes have robbed Labour of its traditional working class support in England and Scotland, it says: “Labour’s Covenant is the first step toward creating a consensus-building politics of the future that will resonate with people’s everyday lives.
“Who and what does Labour stand for? What is its purpose? What kind of politics will build a broad coalition of voters and beat the Conservatives?
“Twelve years after the electoral defeat of New Labour in 2010, the party has still not found answers to these critical questions.”
Harking back to Labour’s glory days in 1997, when it swept to power in a landslide, the report says: “Tony Blair’s government introduced the minimum wage, reduced poverty, raised skill levels, and introduced the Sure Start programme to support children’s development.
“Labour presided over a long period of economic growth and started to repair the country, improving the lives of millions. Britain became a far better place to live. The party should celebrate and promote its achievements. Today’s Labour Party needs to learn from the New Labour years – and then move on, because times have changed.”
The report argues that New Labour accommodated itself to the liberal market politics established by Margaret Thatcher: “Beneath the surface of a booming consumer culture, society was breaking apart,” it states.
“The British economy functioned in the interests of the already wealthy, concentrated in the south east of England. English politics was dominated by the university educated.
“Among the governing classes there was a failure to recognise the widespread feelings of loss, disorientation and humiliation created by the speed and scale of demographic and economic change. Many experienced what politicians called progress as the destruction of their way of life and their country.
“Wage stagnation, along with the growing distrust of the Westminster government, led to the inevitable backlash of an anti-elite populism.
“Liberal market economics did not lead to entrepreneurial wealth creation. There was no Thatcher miracle, no national economic revival, no sustained bursts of innovation, and no rapid increase in productivity.
“Instead, GDP growth consistently fell below post-war levels. In many sectors wages flatlined. Many low-productivity firms chose immigration and cheap labour over training and technological innovation.
“The burdens of flexibility and risk shifted from business onto workers, creating widespread economic insecurity. Casualised work re-emerged and there was an extraordinary expansion of ‘very, very low tech jobs’.
“Welfare benefits started to subsidise low wages, and people resorted to borrowing, increasing levels of personal debt. Following the 2008 financial crash, the Conservatives responded by rewarding the bankers and punishing the poorest with a decade of austerity.
“The long-term decline of the industrial working class and its fragmentation into low-skilled, often insecure work has been accompanied by the increasing cultural and political influence of the higher-educated professional and managerial class, which has expanded with the growth of health and education services, NGOs, and the media, digital and communications industries.
“Labour’s electoral coalition once united these two groups, but no longer. It has been split by the faultline between those with a degree, who have cultural capital and status, and those lower down the cultural status hierarchy, with lower wages and fewer prospects. Many voters view Labour as the party of London and of the higher-educated middle classes who behave as arbiters of cultural taste, language and values. Labour has been unable to overcome this negative perception of its cultural exclusivity and self-righteousness.”
The report argues that to defeat the Conservatives, Labour needs to develop “a credible plan for national reconstruction across the UK that prioritises work and wages, families, and the places people live – the object is to build a new economic model that shifts growth from assets and rent seeking to wages and productivity in order to increase working people’s share of national income.”
Explaining how this could be brought about, the report says: “National reconstruction would involve reshoring key manufacturing capacity, undertaking the major structural changes required for regional regeneration, and the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. These will require reform of the failing British state and deepening and extending democracy, starting with the involvement of City Mayors and the smaller nations of the UK in national reconstruction.
“Unless nation states regain the trust and support of their disaffected citizens, none of the most intractable problems of this age – from environmental degradation to social care to high levels of chronic ill health – can be resolved.”
The report goes on to make a series of recommendations including establishing a network of regional banks, rejuvenating the British manufacturing industry, having union representatives on company boards and increasing capital gains tax to income tax rates.
Many of the ideas have merit in themselves, but ironically they are more likely to appeal to the middle class professionals that Labour Together acknowledge have taken control of the party, alienating working class voters.
While acknowledging the success of Welsh Labour in combining “national sentiment and Labour politics” and praising the agreement between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru as a positive example of cross-party working, the report fails to convince how such ideas might translate into an English context.
It is also a major failing of the party’s position that it is prepared to do nothing to soften the damaging hard Brexit that Mr Johnson negotiated by pledging a return to the single market and customs union - a move that would help the economy immensely and have popular support.
No doubt we can expect more reports like Labour’s Covenant between now and the next general election. But in the end, as current polling suggests, such philosophical musings are likely to have less impact than voters’ sense of whether they trust the Conservatives to run the UK Government with integrity and efficiency. That’s how Tony Blair came to power in 1997 and it may be how Keir Starmer becomes prime minister in 2024.
