Since I last wrote, the unthinkable happened. Months of polling proved unanimously inaccurate as the Tories won a majority government at the expense of Ed Milliband and Labour, who suffered a catastrophic landslide of a defeat.
Reactions in the Labour camp were swift, with Milliband resigning at around midday on Friday, with over a dozen seats yet to declare. It has now gone from swift to utterly chaotic. The leaderless party is at a twenty-year low in terms of influence and popularity. New contenders are already puffing their chests out and making their names known in media appearances - Chuka Ummuna, Liz Kendall, Tristram Hunt and (my personal choice of the current favourites) David Lammy.
Along with the new faces have come the old. Lords and Peers pouring out of the woodwork from all corners to lament the current state of the world around them. Amongst them was Tony Blair's own personal Grand Moff Tarkin, Peter Mandleson. Mandleson declared to Andrew Marr that Labour "had gone back to the 80's", becoming far too left-wing and abandoning the good work he and Blair did in 1997, changing Labour from an outside force into the biggest Labour majority of all time.
Mandleson's claim that Labour needs to lurch back towards the right wing shows a complete lack of understanding of why Labour lost so badly, however. The perception of Ed Milliband being a left-wing radical was absolute nonsense, successfully proliferated by the media despite Milliband himself being part of Mandleson's New Labour treasury in 1997.
The political leanings of a new leader don't matter, because it's the media that make or break them. If David Milliband had won the leadership contest all those years ago, we wouldn't have seen half as much personal nastiness and outright lies told in the press in order to destroy his character and deny him any chance of public popularity as a leader. Labour must pick the right person before the right policies. Milliband was painted as a dweeb, a man who probably wouldn't have been there if not for an old-fashioned leadership system, elected by Old Labour cronies to spite Blair's legacy. The next Labour leader has to cast off the old-new Labour dichotomy, and stand for progressiveness above all. Of the current favourites for the role listed above, only one is a white male - an encouraging sign of the increasing awareness within the party that Labour simply didn't offer a clear alternative to the Tories to win votes this year.
Mandleson's claim that the party needs to dive towards centrist values is incredibly stupid. Typically centrist constituencies, such as those in the Southwest, are usually a straight fight between Tory and Lib Dems. Labour lost the election not just because of their weakness, but because of the Lib Dem's weakness too. If the Lib Dems hadn't lost over 45 seats, there'd be no majority Government. Attempting to turn Labour into Lib Dem v2.0 wouldn't be worth it, because I haven't even gotten to the most important reason Labour did so poorly yet.
SCOTLAND. Everyone is talking about it like their ADHD nephew. "Oh god, she's running wild that one. Poor Aunt Kelso, she's being trodden on left right and centre. God help us if she grows any bigger and more willful. Whatever will we do?" The SNP won 56 of 59 seats in their country. Labour, who have been safe and sound there for decades, are left with one seat North of Hadrian's Wall.
The South continues to misunderstand why Scotland voted in the SNP in such a landslide. The media are keen to push this divide as "a surge in nationalism", a sudden fuck you to the English from a nation that voted to stay sisters with it just a year ago. Don't be misled. The SNP stand for much more than nationalism. They stand for a proper Scottish voice.
Scotland has always been Labour because Scotland are a nation of grinders. The weather is worse, and the culture is different. Grand, historic manual industries like fishing and mining make their economy tick, as opposed to the twinkling financial skyscrapers of London. It's completely logical that they require a different political position to us waxed and shiny Southerners. So why, when the party just lost a shitload of seats there, is Mandleson suggesting that Labour needs to become less appealing to the Scots by looking more like the Tories again?
Scotland didn't vote for the SNP because of nationalism, they voted SNP because the Labour party couldn't deliver a clear message for working-class people. They couldn't promise that they'd stop austerity, the spending and welfare cuts that have hit so many of the poorest so hard. They were in favour of Trident, Britain's needless, expensive nuclear weapons that are docked dangerously on Scottish waters. They couldn't promise action on the EU - not just an in/out referendum, but working with the EU on fishing and production law to make Scotland as productive as possible. Most of all, they couldn't promise that Scotland would be given a culturally representative voice in Westminster.
The SNP offered all of that, and more. Lord Mandleson, with all respect, is wrong. Labour doesn't need to lurch further to the right. It needs to lurch further to the left. Because as Scotland has shown, having an actual alternative that actually fights for your rights in Parliament is much more likely to win votes than having no alternatives to the status quo at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment