No-one has a monopoly on wisdom and 100,000s of union members and Labour party members today chose- by a whisker- to try Ed Miliband’s liberal social democracy. In so doing they have rejected Blairism. The party’s platform will in no way now resemble the market accommodating, state reformist, strong law and order state, and international interventionism outlined in Tony Blair’s memoirs. That version of New Labour is no longer a contender as a governing philosophy. Not on the left anyway.
Gordon Brown never took on the authoritarian aspect of New Labour- and indeed tried to extend it- so the illiberal element of Brownism has now gone also. In fact, for the first time in living memory, all three main parties are socially liberal and have a liberal reformist instinct on criminal justice. Labour could have continued with the authoritarian arms race but Ed Miliband has chosen not to do so. the Coalition created the political opportunity to reject that agenda and Ed Miliband has taken it. This is an enormous shift of British politics in a liberal direction. The importance of this should not be understated. Liberalism has won against authoritarianism- for now.
However, Ed Miliband adopts Brownite social democracy in all its essential elements. He favours a strategic interventionist state in expanding future growth prospects. He will resist in full-blooded fashion the Coalition’s cuts. And Labour will continue to see a more significant role for the state as a redistributionist counter-weight to market injustice. Expect a restorationist manifesto for the party at the next general election with regards public services. In all these respects the Labour party remains the party of Gordon Brown instead of Tony Blair.
The next election will be a straight fight between liberal conservatism and liberal social democracy. It is impossible to predict which will be the winner at this stage. Once again the democratic republicans in British politics- who are more concerned about addressing power imbalances over formal equality and are consequently suspicious of market and state power- have lost out. They can console themselves with the fact that Ed Miliband is a genuine democratic reformer with a commitment to constitutional reform, greater localism and the living wage.
So the course is now set for the next few years. It is clear. Yet the outcome of the two-way liberal social democracy v liberal conservatism is anything but clear.
September 25th, 2010 at 20:56
Good article Anthony…. but you say:
who are more concerned about addressing power imbalances over formal equality and are consequently suspicious of market and state power- have lost out.
Why do you say this? Would like to see this elaborated on
September 25th, 2010 at 21:12
Hi Sunny. I think it’s summed up best in my LabourList article this week here and check out Ben Jackson’s interview with David Marquand in the current edition of Renewal (available online.)
September 25th, 2010 at 23:22
Interesting article. I think Ed is socially liberal. But he is also a social democrat and does believe in an active State. I think the Tory version of localism has very little place for local government – whether the LD’s have realised this is another matter. I also think that the obsession with constant reform of public services will recede and there can be a much more fundamental debate on the importance of having them – and here I certainly think Ed Miliband is very much a Labour man – thank goodness.
September 27th, 2010 at 13:45
“those who are more concerned about addressing power imbalances over formal equality and are consequently suspicious of market and state power- have lost out.”
On the contary. They are alive and well in government. See Vince Cable’s speech to the Lib Dem conference for an example – and note the howls of ignorant rage from big business and the Daily Mail at what was pretty conventional economics.
“I think the Tory version of localism has very little place for local government” I think you are probably right – “whether the LD’s have realised this is another matter.” Here I think you are probably wrong. It has taken about 15 minutes of the appalling Eric Pickles to disabuse anyone who may have thought otherwise. What the Lib Dems in government (and outside it) have to do is to develop a strategy /platform for distancing themselves from those parts of Government policy that is Conservative policy.
September 27th, 2010 at 16:31
“Gordon Brown never took on the authoritarian aspect of New Labour” – true enough, though worth mentioning that Blair does say in his memoirs that GB opposed ID cards at the time of their introduction.