Anthony Painter

Or, at least, what can Afghanistan teach Nick Clegg and David Cameron about the new politics? Well, more than you’d think. The big issues with this new coalition politics is that there is a democratic deficit. 59% of the electorate voting for the parties who made the agreement but the coalition agreement itself is an elite construct. Just as the early post-war Afghanistan state was an elite (and international construct.) Over time a new way of engaging Afghan society has been innovated (see full LabourList article here.)

What this does is give Labour an opportunity to reclaim the new politics. But as yesterday’s NEC vote to close nominations for leadership candidates from MPs next Thursday shows, the party is still in the mindset of guillotines and machine control. This is all too soon. The discussion about where Labour is proceeding in step with the conversation about where it goes next. There is a real risk that Labour asks the wrong question and so comes up with the wrong answer. The Conservatives had an exceptional leadership election in 2005 and that started a few months after the election which gave them time to take in and analyse their third successive defeat and ready themselves for a change of direction.

So this leadership election will become about the telegenic and the superficial. That is not not a reflection on the three (four? five?) leadership candidates, all of whom have substance to offer but in different ways. We’ve heard Ed Miliband’s analysis of failure- Labour didn’t convey a clear purpose and sense of mission. Fine as far as it goes. For brother David, it was a change election and Labour failed to embody change.

This is the cognitive dissonance at the heart of the Labour leadership election. On one hand we are told we lost votes because of immigration, i.e. too much ‘change’, and on the other we are told that we lost because we didn’t represent ‘change’ in what was a ‘change election.’ But the two outlooks pull apart from one another.

Actually, I’m not convinced it was a ‘change election.’ Labour lost votes over a period of thirteen years often as a result of not shielding people from change. Immigration which everyone seems compulsively focused on is but one aspect of this. My reading of this election is at one level those C2DE voters that Labour lost were motivated by change fatigue.

In despair they turned in all sorts of directions. Labour’s narrative was basically ‘we saved the economy and we invested in public services.’ And the response from a large section of the electorate seems to have been ‘that’s nice but I’m still working harder, I’m more insecure, public services seem better but is that it?’ New Labour was all about change. Novelty was its core ethos. By failing to have a different narrative and challenge to free market, many people felt that New Labour’s approach involved too much change and better public services weren’t sufficient compensation.

So a Labour politics that is authentically new involves accepting this basic issue. Many people turn to Labour for security not change and yet the party’s basic offer has been about change. The dilemma is how to mesh together the optimistic and idealistic with the pessimistic and materialistic. Sound impossible? Well, if Labour is to have a majority ever again it will need to achieve just that. As will anyone else.

*For an early analysis of what happened in the election, see this Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner analysis (which frustratingly uses the ‘change election’ language in the title but shows aversion to change in its detail.)