Ed Ain't No Tony Blair
The nub of this opinion piece by Daniel Finkelstein is that 'Ed Miliband ain't no Tony Blair' which is a play on the put down used by Lloyd Bentsen who famously told his political rival, Dan Quayle, in a vice-presidential TV debate:
"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."
Ouch!
Blairism worked – but we can’t go back to it
By Daniel Finkelstein - The Times
The famous ‘third way’ was possible because there was money in the kitty. Now, 20 years on, Labour must reinvent itself
Just after I wrote my very first piece for The Times, the comment editor took me to lunch to explain what the paper was after. It was the middle of the 1980s and I was still a member of the SDP. The paper wanted someone who wasn’t a Tory, he said.
Labour was boycotting The Times because of the Wapping dispute, and the comment editor explained that the columnist they had wanted had been forced to withdraw because he was a Labour MP. This, despite the fact that the junior MP in question was apparently quite frank that he thought that the Wapping dispute was wrong, believed the print unions needed to be defeated and regarded the Labour boycott as bonkers.
And that was how I first heard the name: Tony Blair.
Monday was the 20th anniversary of Mr Blair’s accession to the leadership of the Labour party, and to mark the occasion he gave a speech to supporters on the principles of his third way and how they were for life and not just for Christmas. But only two days earlier, the current Labour leader, Ed Miliband, had announced that his party would be “moving on from new Labour”.
There’s no doubt which speech I found more attractive. Mr Blair’s was much better in tone and content. Yet on the question of a return to new Labour, I’m equally in no doubt. Mr Miliband was right. There is no going back to Tony Blair.
The core insights of the Blairites were well summarised in Mr Blair’s speech. They recognised that the electorate had changed. Class barriers had eroded and prosperity had changed relationships with the state. Voters were much less interested in collective rights and more interested in individual ones. And they were much less attached to parties, no longer regarding it so much as part of their class identity.
To respond to this, Labour had to move away from traditional socialist ideas and programmes. Instead it should defend Labour values (vaguely defined as caring about poor people and being “progressive”) but be endlessly flexible about methods. It should embrace free markets, be tough on crime, keep taxes down and reform public services.
Mr Blair was emphatic on Monday that this flexibility did not require him to abandon his principles, and I think he was correct. It didn’t. Yet in this lies the first clue as to why there will be and can be no return.
Mr Blair was able to accommodate a more individualistic electorate and the views of Middle England because, as I discovered that very first time I heard about him, he shared these views. When I read his memoirs I realised that everything that had been said about him really being on the centre right was true. The extent of it is quite striking.
He didn’t have to abandon his principles to woo Conservatives because he agreed with the Tories on a vast range of issues.
The unique nature of Tony Blair, a centre-right politician leading a centre-left party, is not the only reason that the Blair years would be impossible for anyone else to replicate. The other big reason is the money.
The money made the “third way” possible and now there isn’t any.
With the economy growing strongly, and a relatively relaxed attitude to borrowing, it was possible for Labour to spend more on public services without penal rates of tax. It was possible to pay public sector workers more, keeping them relatively content, even while the government spoke about reform. It was possible to raise welfare budgets and keep welfare advocates onside while talking about reducing fraud. And it was possible to boost the wages of low-paid workers with tax credits, no matter how expensive.
The trick pulled off by Mr Blair — to keep both public sector and private sector, both low paid and well paid, both consumer and producer onside — was not a magic one. It wasn’t the result of his (admittedly strong) charisma. And it wasn’t the result of a hitherto undiscovered strategy that somehow dissolved all political differences and reconciled all interests. It was done by the money.
It isn’t necessary to resolve the contentious question of whether Labour borrowed more than it should have in order to make this simple observation — what Labour did after 1997 cannot be done again. This fact alone would make a new third way almost impossible.
Without money, governments cannot buy off both sides in a clash of interest. They have to cut services or increase tax, or both. If they reform the public sector, they will do so when workers are already being paid less and are less willing to accept change. It will be decades before the lessons of the massive deficit disappear altogether. Until then a “big tent” in which everyone is on the same side and borrowing keeps them that way, cannot be erected.
Money is the biggest reason why Mr Miliband will have to look — is being forced to look— beyond new Labour, but it is not the only reason. Other compromises will not be possible to return to either.
Mr Blair’s insistence, for instance, that joining the euro has no political implications, and is purely a question of practical economics, is also now impossible to sustain. The constitutional issues have become obvious. It would not be possible for an integrationist prime minister (as Mr Blair was) to avoid arguing with mainstream opinion about integration (as, in the main, Mr Blair did).
The new Labour formula wouldn’t work on Europe. Just as it wouldn’t work on immigration. It is no longer possible with any political success to respond to popular concern about immigration merely by making the right sounds while letting the numbers rise rapidly.
What happened over Iraq showed the limits of the third way. In the end, here was a question that couldn’t be avoided, rephrased, dissolved with money, smothered by charisma. It had to be answered — act or don’t act. And he had to make friends (me) and enemies (everyone else). The new Labour “big tent” approach didn’t even see out Tony Blair.
In other words, Ed Miliband cannot repeat what Tony Blair did because even Tony Blair couldn’t. And because Ed Miliband isn’t Tony Blair. And because the conditions won’t allow it. New Labour is the party’s past, but it can’t be its future.
The famous ‘third way’ was possible because there was money in the kitty. Now, 20 years on, Labour must reinvent itself
Just after I wrote my very first piece for The Times, the comment editor took me to lunch to explain what the paper was after. It was the middle of the 1980s and I was still a member of the SDP. The paper wanted someone who wasn’t a Tory, he said.
Labour was boycotting The Times because of the Wapping dispute, and the comment editor explained that the columnist they had wanted had been forced to withdraw because he was a Labour MP. This, despite the fact that the junior MP in question was apparently quite frank that he thought that the Wapping dispute was wrong, believed the print unions needed to be defeated and regarded the Labour boycott as bonkers.
And that was how I first heard the name: Tony Blair.
Monday was the 20th anniversary of Mr Blair’s accession to the leadership of the Labour party, and to mark the occasion he gave a speech to supporters on the principles of his third way and how they were for life and not just for Christmas. But only two days earlier, the current Labour leader, Ed Miliband, had announced that his party would be “moving on from new Labour”.
There’s no doubt which speech I found more attractive. Mr Blair’s was much better in tone and content. Yet on the question of a return to new Labour, I’m equally in no doubt. Mr Miliband was right. There is no going back to Tony Blair.
The core insights of the Blairites were well summarised in Mr Blair’s speech. They recognised that the electorate had changed. Class barriers had eroded and prosperity had changed relationships with the state. Voters were much less interested in collective rights and more interested in individual ones. And they were much less attached to parties, no longer regarding it so much as part of their class identity.
To respond to this, Labour had to move away from traditional socialist ideas and programmes. Instead it should defend Labour values (vaguely defined as caring about poor people and being “progressive”) but be endlessly flexible about methods. It should embrace free markets, be tough on crime, keep taxes down and reform public services.
Mr Blair was emphatic on Monday that this flexibility did not require him to abandon his principles, and I think he was correct. It didn’t. Yet in this lies the first clue as to why there will be and can be no return.
Mr Blair was able to accommodate a more individualistic electorate and the views of Middle England because, as I discovered that very first time I heard about him, he shared these views. When I read his memoirs I realised that everything that had been said about him really being on the centre right was true. The extent of it is quite striking.
He didn’t have to abandon his principles to woo Conservatives because he agreed with the Tories on a vast range of issues.
The unique nature of Tony Blair, a centre-right politician leading a centre-left party, is not the only reason that the Blair years would be impossible for anyone else to replicate. The other big reason is the money.
The money made the “third way” possible and now there isn’t any.
With the economy growing strongly, and a relatively relaxed attitude to borrowing, it was possible for Labour to spend more on public services without penal rates of tax. It was possible to pay public sector workers more, keeping them relatively content, even while the government spoke about reform. It was possible to raise welfare budgets and keep welfare advocates onside while talking about reducing fraud. And it was possible to boost the wages of low-paid workers with tax credits, no matter how expensive.
The trick pulled off by Mr Blair — to keep both public sector and private sector, both low paid and well paid, both consumer and producer onside — was not a magic one. It wasn’t the result of his (admittedly strong) charisma. And it wasn’t the result of a hitherto undiscovered strategy that somehow dissolved all political differences and reconciled all interests. It was done by the money.
It isn’t necessary to resolve the contentious question of whether Labour borrowed more than it should have in order to make this simple observation — what Labour did after 1997 cannot be done again. This fact alone would make a new third way almost impossible.
Without money, governments cannot buy off both sides in a clash of interest. They have to cut services or increase tax, or both. If they reform the public sector, they will do so when workers are already being paid less and are less willing to accept change. It will be decades before the lessons of the massive deficit disappear altogether. Until then a “big tent” in which everyone is on the same side and borrowing keeps them that way, cannot be erected.
Money is the biggest reason why Mr Miliband will have to look — is being forced to look— beyond new Labour, but it is not the only reason. Other compromises will not be possible to return to either.
Mr Blair’s insistence, for instance, that joining the euro has no political implications, and is purely a question of practical economics, is also now impossible to sustain. The constitutional issues have become obvious. It would not be possible for an integrationist prime minister (as Mr Blair was) to avoid arguing with mainstream opinion about integration (as, in the main, Mr Blair did).
The new Labour formula wouldn’t work on Europe. Just as it wouldn’t work on immigration. It is no longer possible with any political success to respond to popular concern about immigration merely by making the right sounds while letting the numbers rise rapidly.
What happened over Iraq showed the limits of the third way. In the end, here was a question that couldn’t be avoided, rephrased, dissolved with money, smothered by charisma. It had to be answered — act or don’t act. And he had to make friends (me) and enemies (everyone else). The new Labour “big tent” approach didn’t even see out Tony Blair.
In other words, Ed Miliband cannot repeat what Tony Blair did because even Tony Blair couldn’t. And because Ed Miliband isn’t Tony Blair. And because the conditions won’t allow it. New Labour is the party’s past, but it can’t be its future.
