[A-List] Third Way shock: "we need a new politics"

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Angry young threat for New Labour
By John Lloyd
Financial Times: June 10 2002 

New Labour has come to the end of a road. From the prime minister down,
party leaders and thinkers are seeking to understand seismic movements
in electorates in the UK and continental Europe.

Of immediate concern is a movement in society dramatised by the
re-emergence of a figure not seen since the 1950s: the Angry Young Man.
But these are no longer bourgeois radicals kicking out against
Britishness; these are working-class lads who wrap Britishness round
themselves and feel that their politicians have abandoned them.

Philip Gould, New Labour's pollster and for a decade Tony Blair's
closest adviser on election strategy, has taken soundings of the
nation's electorate. He has seen the anger of the young men and of
others and he has come back to warn of a great danger. He believes that
Britain for the first time has more in common with continental Europe
than with the US.

Mr Gould gave his findings at a Buckingham hotel over the weekend, to a
group of Third Way strategists. The meeting, attended mainly by senior
members of the Labour party and the US Democratic party, included talks
by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, with the former US president taking a
seminar on "progressive internationalism".

Mr Gould was blunt to his distinguished audience. The danger of a
defection of the left's core supporters to the extremes of politics was,
he felt, real and growing.

New Labour, he said, had modernised later than other social democratic
parties but had done so more completely than others. It had kept its
heartland working-class voters, even as it had acquired middle-class
supporters. Its ratings on traditionally Tory issues - handling the
economy, law and order, taxation - had surpassed those of the
Conservative party.

But the future is dark. In polling and in focus groups over the past few
months, Mr Gould and New Labour have suffered a severe jolt. The
continental European pattern of a surge of support among the working
class for rightwing populist parties, built on fears about crime and
immigration, is a real concern for Britain. "It can happen here," warned
Mr Gould.

Much of the electorate has taken economic buoyancy for granted and, as
one senior New Labour strategist noted, no longer thanks any government
for it. Besides, though all have enjoyed benefits from growth, New
Labour has not increased relative chances for those at the bottom of the
socioeconomic pile.

As David Miliband, the new schools minister, told the conference: "We
have something called a tri-lemma. We want to keep employment high, be
fiscally responsible and get greater equality. We have been good at the
first two but have to bind in the last."

Mr Gould has met, in his polling and focus groups, "angry, young,
working-class men who feel disengaged from politics and feel abandoned
by politicians". These voters feel strongly British, not European. They
resent rises in crime and they are hostile to asylum-seekers and to
immigration. "They are," said Mr Gould, "in the mood for radical
change."

He described the danger facing all left-of-centre parties as that of
"post-socialist populism" parties. Such parties, often with a
charismatic leader, position themselves as close to the people, in touch
with their concerns and neither left nor right in the traditional
senses.

Further, these parties are being taken into coalitions with
right-of-centre parties, such as in Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and
Norway. They are becoming part of coalitions that retain the largely
middle-class, right-of-centre vote and build in a rightwing,
working-class vote as well. Such coalitions, said Mr Gould, could
dominate politics for years to come, denying the left a space.

His antidote to these problems is for parties to change fundamentally -
a change he describes as a "revolution". He believes that the 2001
general election in the UK, which Labour fought successfully on its
economic achievements, was the last to be held on the "old rules". In
future, parties must campaign more on values and especially on those of
trust, honesty and fairness, which are held most highly by voters
polled.

The central feature will be that of community. Campaigns must be fought
"from the bottom up", with candidates validated by their ability to
engage and to listen, and able to acquire positive reputations through
word of mouth rather than by tele- vision advertising.

"We need a new model," said Mr Gould. "We need a new progressive agenda,
a new politics. We can do it. But if we don't do it, many working-class
voters will stay away, which is bad, or start voting for the far right,
which is terrible."

Continental Europeans present at the weekend retreat, including
delegates from Germany, Sweden, France and Italy, tended to underscore
Mr Gould's gloom. One said: "We became the elite, lecturing people on
how to think and react."

Britain's governing class has joined the continental parties in facing
the spectre of a working class rendered volatile and uncertain by
globalisation's real or imagined insecurities. The difference, the New
Labour strategists believe, is that they can see it coming and avoid it.

But they have not done so yet. And for all of their domination of the
political centre and of the polls, they can feel as insecure as the
heartlands whose votes they fear to lose.