Anthony Painter

I have just come back from an utterly engrossing 90 minutes with Lord Mandelson along with a number of other left bloggers in Harper Collins HQ. Despite the ferocious reaction to Lord Mandelson’s memoirs, I was determined to approach this with an open mind. And it wasn’t in any sense disappointing: whatever your feeling about Lord Mandelson he has such a breadth of experience and thought that it benefits to pay close attention to his thoughts. Fascinatingly, even for a breakfast involving bloggers, Lord Mandelson was meticulously prepared- he gave a ten minute introduction using notes so you know everything he said has been considered.

If one of New Labour’s shortfalls was a historical myopia, then it pays to not fall into the same trap when assessing ‘The Third Man.’ It was clear from our chat that it is rich with historical insight that is valuable not just for Labour but across the political spectrum.

In addition to its political values there were two main things that struck me about the conversation this morning. Firstly, there was a warning. He recounted a telephone conversation with the late John Smith in 1993 where the latter was complaining about agitation by modernisers. Smith made reference to ‘these f**king boat rocking modernisers.’ This comment was referred to in reference to the future. Almost under his breath, Mandelson implored people in Labour to ‘rock the f**king boat.’ He seems to hinting at a similar concern with Labour in opposition as I’ve voiced (at one point he talked about Tony Blair’s style of opposition- outflanking the Tories rather than confronting them each and every time which is instructive.)

Secondly, his reflections on Labour’s defeat went further than I thought they would as he gave a full analysis of the defeat and also, somewhat surprisingly, and honestly an assessment of the shortcomings of the former Prime Minister. He put the defeat down to incumbency, the Prime Minister being right for the ‘war’- i.e. the credit crunch- but not for the peace, Labour failing to articulate that it was about the future not the past, and, in perhaps what was a bit of a swipe at people such as Ed Balls, the fact that Labour was too rooted in a scarcely credible ‘investment v cuts’ narrative.

Then he came onto Gordon Brown. For Lord Mandelson, Gordon Brown was ill-equipped to fight the ‘most presidential election in our history’ where the TV debates dominated everything. While he passed the test with flying colours with his understanding of an exceedingly complex crisis that wasn’t enough. Brown was good at the big picture- understanding the world and the right policy responses. However, he failed at the ‘small things’: relationships, management and communications. And in the Gillian Duffy incident the nature of modern politics was crystallised: there is no hiding place, EQ is at a premium, and everything is magnified. How would Harold MacMillan have coped in such an environment? Quite. And Gordon Brown faced similar challenges.

Of course, this does pose the rather uncomfortable question of why the Prime Minister remained in place given these shortcomings.

But this book isn’t simply about personalities; it’s about the policy and strategic conflicts of the New Labour years. Some will see this book as an act of disloyalty. That’s the easy and knee-jerk response. What is more difficult is to engage properly with history, experience, judgements, and lessons of one of New Labour’s not so holy trinity. These three men defined British politics for three decades. It’s easy to dismiss ‘The Third Man.’ It would sorely be a mistake to do so. This book is an honest account. Parties that ignore their past are destined to make the same mistakes in the future. That in itself makes it a worthy read. Beyond that, this story sizzles and crackles just as its protagonists do. While we may wish to put the psycho-drama behind us, the historical lessons- more positive than negative- must remain with us. And we could do well to remember that, from time to time, we will have have to rock the Labour party’s boat.

Gregg McClymont MP has an interesting post on Next Left about Keir Hardie’s acceptance of liberal ideas but rejection of the Liberal Party. The final point he makes about a party’s primal instinct being revealed as it approaches power is an interesting point. To quote:

“Again, there is an insight from West Ham. Led by Thorne, West Ham in 1898 elected the first ‘Labour’ Council in Britain. The governing Labour Group included several unaligned Liberal/Radical members and embarked on a programme which involved enlarging the municipal workforce and bringing it directly under public control so as to improve pay, conditions and job security. By 1900 the Labour Council was no more. It was defeated by an alliance of Liberals and Conservatives, who, aghast at the distributive consequences of municipal socialism in action, united in opposition to the common enemy.

This pattern would be repeated. Across the twentieth century the tensions between Labour and Liberal have been most evident at the local level. This is partly because it was only in local government that the Liberals could wield power – and only when close to power are the instincts and prejudices of a political party revealed.

Labour councillors around the country have been telling us this for years about Liberal Democracy. Now, with the Coalition, we see the same dynamic at the national level.”

There is something I find worrying about this. It’s not the historical analysis per se- McClymont’s credentials on the historical front are impeccable. It’s more the implications that are drawn in the final sentence above. There are two concerns I have: firstly, Labour has worked perfectly respectably with Liberal Democrats in devolved Parliaments and Assemblies as well as on constitutional reform in the early years of the New Labour Government. To allow ourselves to fall into a mindset that Liberal Democrats will always revert to classical or Manchester liberal orthodoxy will mean that fruitful opportunities for dialogue and engagement may not be pursued which could be an error.

And secondly, we are now getting a better insight into the Liberal Democrats from voices such as Richard Grayson who is at the head of the Social Liberal Forum and has written a Compass pamphlet (which was summarised in the New Statesman last week.) His point is that the Liberal Democrats are under-factionalised. There is an ideologically social liberal minority and a similarly ideological ‘Orange book’ tendency- also a minority. In between, there is a non-ideological majority and where they swing depends very much on which of the ideological wings are in the ascendancy and circumstance.

Labour faces a pluralistic political landscape where hung parliaments may become far more frequent if not the norm- especially if the next election is fought under AV. If it allows itself to fall into ‘they are all untrustworthy classical liberals really’ trap then it may fail to develop what could be a fruitful dialogue with Liberal Democrat elements who are broadly centre-left-liberal in their political philosophy.

And if you need any evidence of this then it is worth reading the Grayson pamphlet. Just take his perspective on poltical economy for instance:

“In developing new ideas which go beyond the latest manifesto, social liberals could be arguing for a new political economy, which puts issues of power in the workplace and the ownership of assets back on to the political agenda in the way that the Liberal Party once did.”

And what would be holding Labour back from joining in that discussion? It certainly feels like a more constructive discussion that a constant sticking to the ‘don’t challenge the market’ guns. I’d rather be looking at the power of the individual in the workplace and the market than just accepting economic orthodoxy and trying to make the best of a bad job. Sadiq Khan MP makes this point ably on Labour Uncut in his rebuttal to John Woodcock’s defence of labour market flexibility of last week. And if there are social liberals who wish to engage in that discussion also then great.

Thought it would be worth putting up some bits from my LabourList column yesterday. Having watched Labour in opposition over the last few weeks it is clear that it is ducking some of the big strategic questions. While the leadership election is in process, this is probably understandable but there is a risk that it will acquire bad habits now that it won’t be able to shake. Moreover, the leadership election itself seems to be ducking these big questions.

Whether the objective is to attract the Liberal Democrats into a more centrist/ centre-left coalition after the election or provide a clear alternative to the Coalition in its entirety, it’s clear that a reflexively oppositionalist standpoint vis-a-vis the Coalition and a defensive standpoint with respect to the last Labour Government will provide limited success.

The piece argues:

“So should we simply accept that this short-termist and retrospective form of opposition is temporary? The problem is that there is an addictive quality to this approach. You get the high of being on a full frontal attack. Your troops line up behind you – loyally. You get to look the enemy in the eye and finally unleash all the emotional energy that has been building up over the years.

It’s a real trip this opposition. The problem is that it’s corrosive. You don’t see the long term impact. Your friends move on. They whisper behind your back in sympathy and despair. They look for others to hang around with. After a while even your family gives up on you. You might be life and soul of the party now. Down the line, you just look a bit lost, sad and irrelevant.”

And what will be the consequence of Labour not raising its strategic game? It will seem backward looking and so will come a repository for a protest vote and little more. Parties who look like the past rather than the future do not win elections. If there is a basic rule of British politics, that is it for me. The new leader may transform this but in the meantime, let’s not be under any illusions and indulge ourselves: Labour faces an enormous strategic challenge.

by Alex Canfor-Dumas

Soon after England’s dismal exit from the World Cup, theories about how to turn the national side from also-rans to champions began to fly about. The most prominent was that our failure was down to foreigners. Siren voices from the world of football have beckoned us closer to the rocks of knee-jerkism.

Last week, the President of Spain’s La Liga, José Luis Astiazarán, pointed to what he saw as the key difference between the English and Spanish game:   “We invest more and more in young Spanish players than in young foreign players…In Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United there are a lot of young Spanish, French and Italian players – maybe this is why at the moment you are not creating young English players.” Among pundits, journalists and fans, calls for a limit on the number of foreign players in Premiership squads are getting ever-louder.

At about the same time, the Tory – sorry, Coalition – government was outlining its plans to introduce a cap on economic migrantion. Herein, of course, lies a parallel between football and politics – one of the few not to have been picked up already in the frenzy of World Cup-related activity in the left-of-centre blogosphere. The proposals are similar, and their consequences  will be similar too: both will fail to achieve their aims, and instead cause a good deal of harm. Let’s look at each in turn – starting, of course, with the most important.

The rationale for a limit on the number of foreigners playing in the Premiership, it seems, runs like this. (1) For every foreign player playing, there is a young English player not playing. (2) If there were fewer foreigners playing, more English players would play. (3) This would improve the national team.

If this is indeed something like the argument, it’s a pretty weak one. To sustain it, one would have to believe both that there are currently young English footballers who are forced out of their Premiership club sides by (superior) foreign players, and that these same players have such exceptional potential that they could conceivably go on to become not just full internationals, but players of such quality that they would transform England from a last-sixteen or quarter-finals team to a potentially World Cup-winning side. These players surely do not exist. If they do, where are they? They’re not playing in the Premiership (by definition) and they’re not playing abroad (Jermaine Pennant and Matt Derbyshire are the only English players playing in major foreign leagues). So presumably, if they exist at all, these potentially world-beating stars – denied an opportunity on the big stage by foreign players – are languishing in the lower leagues or dropping out of the game altogether. I just don’t buy it.

The England manager is allowed 23 players at a World Cup, and only eleven can fit on the pitch at the same time. Manchester United alone have over a dozen English players in their first team squad, and there are hundreds playing in the Premiership. The best 23 that England has to offer are getting their chance – they just aren’t good enough. Taking foreign stars out of the Premiership will only make them worse, by starving them of practice against the best in the world, while at the same time decreasing the value of the British game to advertisers and broadcasters, thereby taking away the money that sustains the grass-roots and youth systems. Not one European league has a limit on the number of foreign players, which suggests that we need to dig a little deeper if we want to work out how to improve the England side. That we have subjected our young talent to too much competition, I suggest, is unlikely to be the answer.

What of the cap on immigration proposed by the new government? Leave aside the fact that, in a rare bit of foresight (or populism?), the government has excluded footballers from the cap – it’s even harder to see what the rationale is here. The government claims to want to reduce the total number of immigrants – but the cap applies only to non-EU workers, who make up just 5 per cent of total migration, and the limit arbitrarily selected for this year (24,100) is more than last year’s inflow under Labour’s points-based system. So calling it a ‘cap’ is clearly misleading; at best it tinkers around the edges. But perhaps sheer numbers aren’t what the policy is about. Perhaps it will help the country’s economic plight? The reaction from small businesses – so often dubbed the ‘engine’ of our economy – suggests otherwise, and a policy that limits the ability of firms to hire skilled workers seems to fly in the face of George Osborne’s apparent desire for Britain to be ‘open for business’.

Maybe, though, the policy will make it a little easier for the unemployed to find work in an extremely tough job market? Think again. Under existing rules, employers can’t take on immigrants unless the post has first been advertised in Britain, and has remained unfilled. This means that the immigrants that the cap will now prevent from coming wouldn’t have been taking vacancies that could otherwise have been filled by unemployed workers already in Britain, but rather would be doing jobs which require skills that the current labour force lacks.

Any economist will tell you that caps are almost always inefficient, because they are arbitrary and necessarily inhibit searches for optimum points. The caps on foreign players and on foreign workers will both be counterproductive, damaging English football and the British economy. They reflect an unwelcome tendency to seek scapegoats for our failures, rather than looking hard at ourselves and working out how we can do better. In the aftermath of Spain’s deserved victory last night, it is clear that we need our home-grown footballers to be better-trained in the technical skills that they currently lack and which will be necessary for success in the future. The same, of course, is true for the workforce as a whole. The FA and the government must decide whether they actually want to deal with these difficult issues, or if populist and ineffective solutions are the order of the day.

Alex Canfor-Dumas is a Watford fan, a Labour Party member, and a graduate student in politics at the University of Oxford.

Sunder Katwala has published a monumental and powerful Next Left blog post written in response to David Miliband’s Keir Hardie speech. He cautions us not to run away with the view that Hardie’s triumph was to reject liberalism; in fact, he tactically engaged with it at critical moments- not least in the aftermath of the 1910 election which enabled fundamental constitutional reform and in the early stages of his own parliamentary career. To quote the blog:

“…party tribalism may have a strong intuitive appeal to activists in all parties, but it can have important costs for progressive political outcomes, nor is it as dominant in the Labour tradition as is commonly assumed.”

So Katwala’s cautionary note is important. If Labour history is used as a means to reject a pluralistic political strategy then that would be grave error. It is not clear what the posture is of any of the potential leaders when it comes to constructing a broader political dialogue and perhaps, if only in defined areas, building a set of new alliances. Their response to this question will be critical in determining the success of their leadership.

The importance of Labour’s renewed interest in its history is to build a greater common understanding of its roots and its values. There is a democratic republican strand to Labour thinking, while not entirely hidden, has tended not to be explicitly articulated. In practice, this has meant that Labour has not embraced political reform- within the party and the political system more widely- quite as it might. And it has meant a certain reticence in challenging concentrations of economic power and wealth once nationalisation ran out of political and economic steam.

By reaching back to this obscured democratic republicanism, first Jon Cruddas and now David Miliband are engaging with a renewed discussion of what it means to be Labour. They are also reaching beyond the limits of Labour’s redistributive capitalism model in Government. Ed Miliband’s new ‘social democracy’ speech also interrogated those limits. The archaeology is actually about reinforcing the foundations.

It would be a tragedy if the conclusion of this exercise was that Labour should pursue a majoritarian path. The UK is an increasingly pluralistic society and a majoritarian politics sits increasingly uneasily with that. At the very least, the future for the party means finding ways of building a centre-left dialogue that is open and forward-looking. Across the political spectrum there will be increasing unease at the impact of the fiscal strategy pursued by the Coalition. If Labour’s response is ‘we told you so, now make the Vichyist Lib Dems pay’ then that won’t be convincing at all. This is not to suggest that the Coalition’s policies should not be critiqued and in the strongest terms when they get it wrong.

But the alternative has to be a Labour party that is confident in its identity and purpose while open and conversational in its political strategy. This renewed historical interest will underpin the former and offer some support for the latter. History is never conclusive nor can it provide a definitive direction. It provides meaning but no sure answers. Labour is on its own once it looks to the future again. Misread or misuse history then instead of grasping the future, it will remain stuck in the past.

David Miliband has given a speech tonight in Mountain Ash in honour of Labour’s first leader- Keir Hardie- which I have had sight of. It is an incredibly powerful expression of Labour’s core ideals (about which I had some thoughts just prior to the election) linked to the historical formation of Labourism as a strategy and philosophy distinct from liberalism albeit one that contains a strong thread of social and civil liberalism. It’s just with the economic liberalism element- which Hardie saw as the Liberal’s strongest urge and primal instinct- where the two outlooks diverge.

Beyond reminding the party of its heritage and re-vivifying a core and strangely mysterious figure at the core of Labour’s history, Miliband’s speech is important in two respects.

Firstly, it reclaims a language driven by human values and associations for Labour. Miliband argues:

“A life fit for a human being is about more than money and benefits.  It’s about, responsibility, love, loyalty, friendship, action and victory, values that used to be engraved upon the Labour heart but which we have carried too lightly of late.”

That is a language of resuscitation. The Labour movement become a machine and now a spirit of movement is awakening again.

The second crucial point that he makes is that Hardie was a socialist not a statist. This is a constant theme which emerges of any re-reading of the voices of ethical socialism from the early to mid twentieth century- Tawney and his notions of building a common existence through transcending division, GDH Cole and his rich understanding of the transformative power of human association and fraternity, and Attlee’s somewhat paradoxical yet heartfelt conviction that socialism was about freedom and the flourishing individual- all spring to mind.

In all these ethical voices there are routes out of old v new Labour; socialism v social democracy v social liberalism; traditionalism v modernity; and republicanism v communitarianism. The creation of a plural left is dependent on this historical and self reflection. And Miliband’s speech manages to tread that careful line between nostalgia and modernist myopia. Fields of vision and timeframes are important in politics. Traditionalists see the present as a continuum of a distant past. Modernists see today as only connected with yesterday and give the past a cold shoulder. This speech managed to avoid both those traps:

“The first [peril] is nostalgia and the temptation to view his life and times as not simply better than our own, but to ignore the poverty, the exploitation, the insanitary housing, the illiteracy, the dangerous pits, the precariousness of the lives of working people at that time.  Without that understanding, the genuine heroism of Hardie’s achievement in organising and leading a movement that stood at odds with the prevailing beliefs, and realities, of the time would be diminished.  By disregarding the real progress that has been made, in freedom, in knowledge, in technology, in health care, in education, in politics, we undermine our understanding of how politics can shape a better world and of our real achievements in redistributing power.

The second peril is a superficial modernist contempt for the achievements of our forebears in perilous circumstances.  It was not necessary to dispossess the peasantry through enclosures in order to improve agricultural efficiency.  The alternative view – that it was – is indifferent to the sense of loss, of grief, of the disruption that change can bring.  This is the loss of connection to people and places, to crafts and congregations, which is so often dismissed as the price we pay for progress.

The ‘third way’ that Hardie steered, between a nostalgia that is hopeless, and a contemptuous modernism, which is reprehensible, provided a very strong orientation for our Party which is a great strength to us now.”

While the speech does not provide the strategic vision for Labour, that is not its purpose. Instead, it lays down the principles and their origin that can serve a Labour renewal. And it plants them in fertile ground: a new understanding of fairness that is linking to reciprocity and contribution; a rebalanced political economy with more restrained capitalism in the City of London in order to generate more capitalism elsewhere; the community values of soldiarity, responsibility and a ‘bigger society’; internationalism; and a thriving and involved democracy.

I strongly recommend reading this speech. Along with brother Ed’s speech last week on a ‘new social democracy’- who also called for a different type of state responsive to individual lives and needs- it means there is now some serious engagement with the rediscovery of a political history and language that it seemed Labour had lost forever. Both these candidates have now sought to give meaning to the hollow shell that Labour became. Labour is embarking on a journey. These reflections are a better place to start than the shrill and tactical oppositionalism (as opposed to constructive and strategic opposition) that we have begun to see elsewhere.

In a blog on AV last week, I argued the following:

“The honourable thing for Labour to do- given that it was in its manifesto- would be to support the referendum legislation. It seems obvious that Labour should support it. Surely it won’t do the dishonourable thing and abstain? If it did then it would fail to secure its desired objective- creating discord in the Coalition to the degree that it falls apart. The legislation will pass anyway and Labour will look shoddy. There is a tactical temptation here but it makes neither tactical nor strategic sense ultimately. Better to get enthusiastically behind the legislation

That is, unless the legislation sets in motion the process by which the number of constituencies is cut by 10%- which would be a shoddy thing for the Coalition to do. Then Labour would be absolutely right to consider opposition.”

Foolhardily, that is exactly what the Liberal Democrats allowed to happen. The legislation- if it passes- will now pass with a 10% cut in the number of MPs. This was a mistake on two counts. Firstly and most importantly, it will reduce democratic engagement and scrutiny. The major reason that I like AV-based electoral reform is that it increases engagement between parties and the electorate (if you have to persuade more than 50% to vote for you instead of 29% you will engage more.) If you cut the number of MPs then representatives will have to choose- to a greater extent than they do already- between good local engagement and sound executive scrutiny. This is bad.

Let me be crystal clear. This is a different argument to equalisation of constituency sizes. That is fine in principle as long as you make sure you absolutely maximise registration.

Secondly, it diminishes Labour support and commitment to electoral reform and it feels nobbled by the legislation. This may be a mixture of perception and reality but it is the case. It’s not scientific but see this straw poll for an illustration. To win the referendum, the Liberal Democrats need Labour. It has a vote-harvesting machine which is a valuable thing. One reason the Liberal Democrats only got 23% in the election is that their machine is significantly weaker. In supporting this 10% cut in MPs, the Liberal Democrats have tried the patience of Labour.

The only argument in favour of a 10% cut in constituencies is financial and that argument is very weak. Is it really worth risking harm to democracy for a total saving of £12million? Of course, for more equal constituency sizes to keep pace with population change then you will need to have more regular boundary reviews- every five years say at a cost of £15million+ a time so you start to lose the financial gains very quickly. But surely it is perverse for parties who claim to believe in improving democracy to fire cost arguments at this issue? It is very dangerous to start framing arguments in this way. Value for money discussions are fine but once you start chopping away chunks of democratic representation to save cash then you are in very dicey territory indeed. That is where this coalition finds itself.

But it’s not about the cash really (which makes the framing even more irresponsible.) It’s about correcting the Labour bias in the electoral system which is why Labour is shrieking in opposition- a poisonous package according to John Prescott. But the academic evidence is extremely mixed about whether this will particularly harm Labour- its vote is very well distributed even at 29%. So there may not be a huge amount to worry about on this front; the attempted gerrymander- which it is- may fail. If it does all the Coalition will have achieved by it is to harm democratic engagement and accountability- good work great reformers!

But from Labour’s point of view, that element of the legislative package will, in all likelihood pass whatever I’m afraid. It is AV that is up for grabs. Labour has the opportunity to show that it can embrace reform and pluralistic politics. It can show that it is not stuck in the past; a defensive party unable to confront the future. And it is the right thing to do from the perspective of democratic accountability.

The Coalition has made a huge mistake with its decision to cut the number of constituencies. It is arbitrary, dangerous and destructive. Unfortunately, Labour will be unable to stop it. So it must make its arguments as best it can but then show an absolute commitment and determination to salvage electoral reform and democratic renewal from the wreckage.

I would also highly recommend reading Sunny Hundal on this earlier today.

by William French

As Rafael Nadal basks in his second Wimbledon triumph and la furia roja prepare for their World Cup semi-final against Germany, one could expect Spanish sports fans to be lustily belting out their national anthem in triumph. Except, of course, for one small detail – La marcha real does not have any words. The former Francoist lyrics were deemed unsuitable after Spain’s democratic renewal in the late 1970s and although the same tune was kept, the Spanish national anthem remains without words to this day.

National anthems reveal much about a country’s sense of self and how it wishes to be projected to the wider world. Spain has opted for a model which combines continuity and compromise, and which itself could be seen as symptomatic of a country where the notion of one single unifying national identity is hotly contested.

One of the delights of the World Cup even for a non-football fan is listening to the whole range of anthems and how they influence fans and players alike. Few can fail to be moved by the revolutionary chorus of La Marseillaise, even if ideas of egalité and fraternité were not hugely in evidence amongst ‘les bleus’ on the pitch. Similarly, there can be no better example of South Africa’s post-apartheid reinvention as a “Rainbow Nation” than its new national anthem which fuses the stirring ANC standard Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika with the old Boer hymn Die Stem van Suid-Afrika in a gesture of deft inclusiveness and magnanimity.

What then of England? It would be going too far to blame their disastrous World Cup on having to sing God Save the Queen before every game, but certain parallels do suggest themselves: anachronistic, boastful and ill-suited for the modern world. Just as the lumpen performances of Terry, Lampard, Rooney et al showed the lack of confidence and cohesion in Capello’s team, so our royalist anthem reveals a warped self-image which obscures the dynamism and vibrant flair we see around us every day.

For while other anthems celebrate defining moments of shared national experience, Britain – and particularly England – remain in hoc to an eighteenth century invocation of the divine right of monarchy. The “ties that bind” in this case are those which continue to fix the Royal Family at the apex of the British class system, still commanding a degree of respect, deference and indulgence from the rest of the country which ought to offend every democratic sensibility.

The pernicious influence of the monarchy runs much deeper than just the tawdry soap opera of the Windsor family. Ultimately the individual personalities and characteristics of this family are irrelevant; it is the institution they literally embody which is a constant affront to modernity and an insidious promoter of a deeply conservative ideology. The great 19th century poet and radical Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that “monarchy is only the string which ties the robber’s bundle” and the metaphor still holds today.

If and when Prince Charles does become King it should not be his views on architecture, science or education that should cause us greatest concern (destructive and ignorant as they are). Rather it is the fact that he will be upholding a tradition that places one family above all the other millions of families in this country by dint of blood, that rewards privilege and inherited wealth over independence and innovation, and that condemns the country to be forever looking back to an imperial past rather than building a better future for all.

Of course, changing a song sung before a football game will never answer all these complex issues, let alone resolve the debate on how to devise an inclusive republican alternative. But it can lead to some very simple yet profound questions being asked. Who are we singing for? What does our country mean to us? What do we look and sound like to the rest of the world?

And even if we agree on answers to these questions, we are then faced with one pressing, practical choice: what should we sing instead? The Scots and Welsh already have Flower of Scotland and Land of my Fathers for the sporting arena. For the England fan too, there is a clear alternative; the poetic, stirring and well-loved Jerusalem. Blake’s haunting verse combines with Parry’s solid English tune to form a true national anthem that more than holds its own against our peers.

But what of Britain? If we are to move away from an archaic vision of Queen and Country, pomp and circumstance, we need an anthem that truly represents all those aspects of modern life that make Britain great – multiculturalism, music, creativity, fashion, an ability to laugh at ourselves, and irony. We need an anthem that celebrates all parts and peoples of this country, not just one German-Greek family, but which doesn’t reject all the tradition and heritage which continues to inform our current identity, however obliquely.

I once read an interview with Mark E. Smith of the Fall when he talked about meeting Dutch fans who had listened to his band on Radio 1’s Peel Sessions and kept wanting to know more about the minutiae of his lyrics – such as “what does ‘mithering’ mean?”. To me that sums up the glorious richness of British cultural life, its strong regional identity, linguistic diversity yet also its ability to appeal to people way beyond our national borders.

Wit, a defiant quirkiness and a delight in the absurd are central strands of British identity from Chaucer to Lewis Carroll and Monty Python. So for a new national anthem, what about the Fall’s cover of the Kinks’ own tongue-in-cheek homage to imperial bygones, Victoria? Just imagine a Wembley crowd singing along with one voice to the opening line; “I was born, lucky me, in a land that I love…” Blake couldn’t have put it better himself.

William French is a Labour member and former foreign correspondent.

The Guardian has an interesting comment page today with Julian Glover and Jackie Ashley seemingly in direct contradiction of one another. Since the first TV debate in the election campaign, The Guardian has had the same divided feel as the wider left in the country at large. This is no bad thing- if we live in pluralistic times then let’s have a properly pluralistic discussion. So Martin Kettle/ Julian Glover seem to represent a liberal, pluralistic, centrism while Jackie Ashley and Polly Toynbee are the paper’s social democratic beating heart with Jonathan Freedland representing non-aligned reasonableness.

And so this morning you get Jackie Ashley in a foreboding warning to the Coalition that the worst is yet to come once the public realises that no-one will escape the swinging scythe of cuts and tax increases. She advises the Coalition to reconsider:

“The government would be better off asking hard questions about its strategy. Is this much pain this soon quite so clever? What if we are tipped into a double-dip recession? Even if it is able to blame Labour for the first “V”, the coalition will be blamed for the second. Is there a Plan B, any exit strategy or reverse gear if things radically worsen? Those are the questions ministers need to answer. We need less lip-smacking about cuts and more sober caution.”

She encourages Labour in its opposition, though warns of the need for constructive sobriety:

“This winter, we will have a new Labour leader, and a change in the national mood. I hope we get a truly serious critique of the government’s planned cuts – without spite or childish name-calling, but one that asks whether it is not going too fast, too far, and explains the alternatives.”

Glover on the other hand takes a more ‘no turning back’ approach. For him, the Coalition strategy is absolutely right- share the pain as pain there must be. And he warns the left against knee-jerk oppositionalism:

“The left is beginning to smell like sour yoghurt, a long moan against the world as it is and how the last government left it. The problem is not that Labour is heading towards interesting ideological isolation. The varied shades from pale pink to light magenta in which its serious candidates are painting themselves are not socialism. The problem is that the party is being bundled up in all sorts of shallow resentments and is assuming that the public will share this negativity.”

He also makes the extremely astute observation:

“UK politics is often characterised as a contest for the centre ground, but that misdescribes the nature of the quest. Centrism implies banality, but I don’t think voters want their governments to be mundane. There is a willingness to endorse radical action if it is explained and if it looks practicable.”

Labour would do well to heed this insight in its forthcoming renewal.

So who is right: Jackie Ashley or Julian Glover? In a sense they both are. Ashley is right that Labour must provide sound, grounded opposition to the Coalition and its economic and fiscal approach. Simply saying that it will go as far as the last Government just sounds irrelevant- no matter how loudly it is shouted. There is a left alternative if, in the words of Glover, it is explained and practicable. But simply sticking to its guns on the deficit means that Labour will not be listened to when it’s doing the explaining! This is not the same thing as Labour not opposing what is wrong, damaging and avoidable. It it does not then who will?

Glover’s analysis ultimately provides Labour with the stronger strategic insights. While the temptation is to simply pour scorn and hot oil on the Coalition and all its works, it will keep Labour locked in the past in the minds of voters. There are some tactical attractions to this. But it is ultimately a strategic dead end. There is a simply truism of British politics: parties win elections when they are seen as the future rather than the past. And Labour currently sounds very much like the past.

Labour, therefore, needs to follow Jackie Ashley on the need for constructive and well thought out opposition yet realise that the Glover strategy is the one that is of the most long-term use. When Labour is once again seen as the future, then it will be a viable alternative for Government once again. It has not even begun that journey as yet.

So a gross injustice was done last night to a muscular and technically adept Ghana side. I thought they were great against the USA and hoped they would prevail in what was a very even match against Uruguay. And they would have done had Luis Suarez not blatantly and deliberately handled on the line. Ghana missed the subsequent penalty. Suarez is the focus of much contempt this morning- across the globe. And though he has hardly distinguished himself it is not clear that what he did was a ‘cheat.’

Football is regulated activity much in the same way that banking is. In an ideal world people behave with honesty and honour. They do the right thing without having to be monitored and reprimanded. In high trust societies you can dispense with the transaction cost of laws and regulation, customs and mores sort it out. In such societies you only really need light level regulation and enforcement to guard against the risk of error that can still have negative consequences. Errors certainly happen at the World Cup. And there is a lot of cheating too.

In this respect, the World Cup is akin to a low trust environment such as banking where asymmetries of information benefit certain actors over others. There are so many different ways of interpreting the credit crunch (that will keep economists and historians occupied for centuries; me? I’ve got football to watch.) One is that there was a widespread and systemic failure of regulation that only came to light as a result of financial calamity. This view says little about the fundamental root causes of the calamity but let’s run with it for our purposes today.

Stephen Adshead, guest blogging on this site, detailed the contemptuous way in which a Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre, self-styled ‘Fabulous Fab’, wrote about products he was peddling:

23 January 2007 – “…More and more leverage in the system, the entire system is about to crumble any moment…the only potential survivor the fabulous Fab (as Mitch would kindly call me, even though there is nothing fabulous abt me…) standing in the middle of all these complex, highly levered, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of those monstruosities !!!”

These emails earned him and his employer, Goldman Sachs, a charge of two counts of securities fraud. The problem is that a month after his comments of January 23rd, he was still peddling the monstruosities [sic]. But this would have been widespread in the rip-roaring Wild West years on Wall Street and in the City of London. The difference was that Fabulous Fab got caught. Why? Because the bloody doors had been blown off the whole racket as the financial edifice crumbled. In another time, another economy, Fabulous Fab would still be, well, fabulous. Instead, Fabulous Fab is now a monstruosity.

If no-one had lost anything, it would have been fine. The weak financial regulators would never have known a thing.

I don’t know whether Fabulous Fab is a football fan or not. If he is he must be feeling a little sorry for himself. How galling it must be to look at Luis Suarez being held aloft like a hero for what the whole world regards as a cheat. But there is a difference. What Fabricce Toure is accused of is a cheat- if he is found guilty he was exposing investors and the financial system more widely to risks that he did not communicate. In this regard, he would be more of handling Thierry Henry against Ireland, or a diving Abdul Kader Keita for the Ivory Coast against Brazil resulting in Kaka’s sending off, or, in the same game, Luis Fabiano’s double handball then denial to the ref. Here is that last incident in stills:

These were all cheats. But financial markets are different to football. They are private, difficult to understand, and difficult to monitor. Football is a panopticon. There is almost nothing you can hide from the camera’s gaze (illegal substances perhaps but little else.) Financial regulators have immense difficulty catching a Fabulous Fab and it is mainly during times of crisis that their reckless risk-taking becomes obvious. FIFA- which regulates world football- has every opportunity to catch and punish cheats so they do not prosper. They choose not to.

It would be easy to introduce video technology to intervene to stop Henry’s handball. If it was used, he’d just own up and would be booked if he didn’t. It shouldn’t be down to the ref to ask Luis Fabiano whether he handled it. He should have proof. Again, if Fabiano didn’t own up right away he would get a yellow card. And as for Keita, he would be the recipient of a yellow card and preferably a fine rather than his innocent opponent. All these cases are in the same category as Fabulous Fab.

And yet FIFA chooses not to act. The difference between FIFA and financial regulators is that there isn’t a financial crisis to drive action. People are not going to stop watching the World Cup if FIFA doesn’t act so why should it care? It removes the very worst excesses and is blasé against anything else.

Where it does act it is limp-wristed. And this brings us on to Luis Suarez. He didn’t ‘cheat’ as such. He broke the rules. He was caught. He was punished- with red card and a penalty to Ghana- and he knew that was the price. Tough you might say. Only it wasn’t. Ghana were denied a certain goal and were given a 12 yard shot at a goal in exchange. The punishment didn’t fit the crime and Luis Suarez knew this. It was not his fault but FIFA’s. He chose to break the law and do the time. There was a price; he paid it. The price was cheap- and that is why he was held aloft by his team-mates and is now a national hero.

It was disgraceful and unsporting but it was not a ‘cheat.’ It was a blatant and open breaking of the rules which is different.

He is not the first and will not be the last. FIFA doesn’t care. The money comes in anyway and that is its priority. Until the World Cup is regulated by body completely independent of FIFA with a brief to eradicate cheating from the game then it will remain the same. But what will create the incentive for FIFA to sort this out? The reality is only by better and more principled leadership- no external force could be strong enough to change it.

Until that happens there will be cheats, injustices, and unsporting national heroes. What a great moral force world football has become. Cricket or rugby anyone?