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Tony Blair: His Part in Labour’s Downfall

This is the second of fourteen sections of our essay 'Do You Support the Aims and Values of the Labour Party?' which can be read in full on our Wordpress blog.

YEAR Leader POS Vote (numbers) Vote (%) Seats Total Turnout

1987 Kinnock 2nd 10.029m 30.8% 229 75.3%

1992 Kinnock 2nd 11.560m 34.4% 271 77.7%

1997 Blair 1st 13.518m 43.2% 418 71.3%

2001 Blair 1st 10.725m 40.7% 413 59.4%

2005 Blair 1st 9.552m 35.2% 356 61.4%

2010 Brown 2nd 8.607m 29.0% 258 65.1%

2015 Miliband 2nd 9.347m 30.4% 232 66.4%

Those are the raw facts from the general elections of the last three decades, which tend to be spun in one of two key ways. In the first interpretation, Blair and his team were geniuses, who manufactured the longest consistent period of electoral success for the Labour Party, keeping the Tories off-balance by reaching into their traditional support. In the second version Blair and his team came along just as the Tories were imploding, consistently lost support among traditional Labour voters, fuelling the rise of the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the Green Party, until the Tories were able to rise to a level where they were less unpopular and less distrusted than Labour.

Obviously there is truth to both interpretations.

Particularly interesting is the fact that two of Blair’s three elections as leader received a lower number of votes than Kinnock’s second election, and the final of the three received a lower total than either of Kinnock’s two elections. But Blair’s worst performance won 356 seats from 9.552m votes; Kinnock’s best performance won 271 seats from 11.56m votes. It seems that Blair’s electoral achievement isn’t necessarily that he won more voters to the party in the long-term, but that he won different voters — the crucial Labour — Tory swing-voters.

That isn’t necessarily an insult — it’s vital for a politician to win over people who don’t instinctively agree with their philosophy. And in comparing Blair and Kinnock’s share of the popular vote against their number of seats, it’s clear that Blair managed to achieve more with less.

It’s worth remembering that, judging by his actions, Blair wasn’t a leftie but a centrist. There were some issues on which he moved the nation leftward — introducing a minimum wage to Britain for the first time; the Northern Ireland peace process; introducing SureStart centres. But there are other issues where he moved the country rightward — introducing tuition fees to Britain for the first time;expanding the outsourcing of state services; and has been accused of introducing a form of social authoritarianism which ran counter to Labour’s traditions.

It’s often argued that lefties are the people of principle, and centrists are the pragmatists — a claim even made by many centrists themselves. But this isn’t necessarily true.

In July 2015 Blair made headlines by saying that he “wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.” At the time this was widely interpreted as a sign that Blair lacked loyalty to the party, but it can be seen as principled as well — Blair has his own set of beliefs, and isn’t willing to compromise them for power. Set aside whether you think his analysis is correct or incorrect, he says that he would stick to his principles rather than doing what he believes to be in his own best interest, because, “it wouldn’t be right because it wouldn’t take the country forward, it would take it backwards.” There is a sense of honour and decency in that position. The problem is that Blair spent his time in power demanding that the party compromise it’s principles to comply with his.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM1Vt6MyKj0

To hammer home the point, centrism isn’t necessarily unprincipled. The West Wing — alongside A Very British Coup probably the work of fiction most strongly associated with political idealism — is politically a work of centrism. In the above video Toby Ziegler, a White House staffer and often the show’s voice of idealism, meets with a backbench politician, Senator Seth Gillette. Gillette is angry at the idea of the President moving to the right on welfare, environmentalism and a precursor to Black Lives Matter. He threatens to run a third-party Presidential bid, splitting the left vote. In terms of ideology, Gillette is a Jeremy Corbyn-type figure — being awkward with the centrist party in power, but knowing that they are closer to his own ideology than the other major political party are ever going to be.

Hopefully we’ve established that it is at least possible for centrists to be honourable, a point which seems to be rejected by a majority of Blair-haters (a group we’d include ourselves among). But accepting that centrism can be honourable doesn’t mean that it’s smart. We’ll quote the Scottish Green Party’s Peter McColl:

Both Blair and Clinton were successful premiers, winning more elections than they could have expected to. So why is triangulation a problem? It’s because after a while the electorate loses any sense of what your party means. In 2000 the Democrats were unable to beat a uniquely weak presidential campaign by George W. Bush. After the Blair years Labour is in real electoral trouble. Further, they haven’t achieved much of their programme. Child poverty hasn’t been eliminated, social mobility is diminishing and a whole range of indicators show a society less equal than before.

When you compare how effective administrations that don’t triangulate have been, you can see how ineffective this strategy is. Both Thatcher and Reagan managed to fundamentally change the way the state works. Thatcher came as close to creating a parliamentary revolution as has ever happened. Neither lost an election. Their legacies are still felt today.

And there are problems not only with centrism generally, but the specific Progress/Labour First Tendency overseen by Blair. Authoritarianism and central control of the party has been one consistent area of criticism.

In 1997 Labour MEPs including Hugh Kerr were critical of changes to the internal candidate selection process, and a proposed code of practice which would limit MEPs’ right to be critical of the party leadership. Kerr’s fellow Labour MEP Alex Smith complained at the time that Kerr and two other MEPs were being punished for ”merely participating in a discussion programme on the radio, something which is normally regarded as being part and parcel of political life”. Eventually Hugh Kerr and Ken Coates were forced out of the Labour Party for refusing to abide by these rules, although Kerr’s honesty about his disagreement with Blair also likely to be a factor. (see inset)

In 2007 Bob Wareing was removed as Labour candidate for the Liverpool West Derby seat he’d represented for 24 years, believing his awkwardness towards the “New Labour Mafia” as the motivating factor. Wareing went on to argue that “Anti-Labour policies, such as privatisation, tuition and top-up fees for students and the stock transfer of council houses (with the threat that no repairs would be carried out if they remained under council control) forced tenants to concede to New Labour’s wishes.” Stephen Twigg, the then current chair of Progress, was chosen in his place.

These incidents are worth bearing in mind when Labour supporters of the Progress/Labour First Tendency complain about their MPs being recalled in favour of candidates of the Momentum/Red Labour Tendency. Everything that they complain about has already been done, by their own allies.

By instinct, the co-writers would consider ourselves moderates — we want to encourage both sides of a conflict to see the other’s side, and learn to work together. Despite seeing ourselves as lefties, we hold some right-wing views, and understand concerns about the culture of the country changing too quickly, for example. But seeing the value in listening to those on the opposing side does not mean compromise is always a good thing. The ‘semi-controlled demolition’ theory is deliberate nonsense; the idea that outsourcing makes the state more efficient is, from our personal experience and broader analyses, equally nonsensical. But this is where centrism naturally leads, if you try to compromise between the left and right on every issue. Sometimes it’s important to stand up and say that the left-wing idea is not only more idealistic, but plainly smarter.

Labour supporters of the Progress/Labour First Tendency who lament Jeremy Corbyn’s rise should realise that he is only a symptom of a wider movement, in the same way that the rise of the SNP and the ‘Green Surge’ had been before him. By managing the party’s messaging ever more tightly from the top of the party, and forcing through tuition fees, outsourcing and the War in Iraq (which we’ve deliberately avoided mentioning in this section, as it has come to overshadow everything else in his premiership) Blair has discredited the form of politics he stood for. He, more than any other individual, is responsible for the party’s current situation.

#tony blair #centrist politics #Centrist #centre ground #The West Wing #Jeremy Corbyn #Corbyn #Labour #Labour Party #PFB #politics #UK politics #PoliticsForBeginners #Toby Ziegler #Peter McColl

https://politicsforbeginners.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/the-importance-of-political-narrative/

#politics #UK politics #Blair #Tony Blair #centre ground #centrist politics #extreme centre #Labour #Tory #green #UKIP #Green Party #Green Party of England and Wales #SNP #election #story #storytelling #narrative #public relations

Dan Hodges, writing in New Statesman, discusses the battle between Miliband and Cameron for the centre ground:

In the aftermath of Cameron’s conference speech, I asked one his advisers why, if the centre ground was so important to the Prime Minister, he hadn’t just stood up and said: “We are the party of the centre now.” The public reason given was a tactical one. “Our strategy is show, don’t tell. Look at Ed Miliband’s speech. It was all about what a strong and decisive leader he was. Well, if you really are strong and decisive, you don’t need to shout about it.”

#Politics #Centre Ground #David Cameron #Conservative Party #Labour Party #Ed Miliband

No middle ground

Where is the middle ground between fat people are inner directed autonomous beings and we are unconscious outer directed puppets?

Between disease and person?

Fully human and less than?

Sometimes, one position is mostly wrong and the other mainly right. If you can't recognise assuming their must be a middle ground, then you have dismissed fat people's self perception.

That shows your view is based on your estimation of the people concerned-fat people as nothing others as everything.

If you saw fat people as fully human, you'd see fat acceptance is the centre ground (often mistaken for "middle").

Calling for a "middle ground" is informed solely by fat phobia.

#centre ground #fat phobia #bad logic #fat liberation #fat acceptance