[Marxism] Death of a Presidency: Labour after the election (Alan Simpson MP)

["Jack Cade" <jack.cade@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Alan Simpson MP's column in Labour Left Briefing is an edited
version of a discussion paper which Alan has presented to the
Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. Here, we print the
discussion document in full.

Death of a Presidency: Labour after the election
(Discussion paper for the Socialist Campaign Group)

Full at: www.labourleftbriefing.org.uk/simpson.html

This is an historic moment. Ten years ago, if you had offered us
3 successive Labour governments, and a working majority of 66,
most Labour supporters would have grabbed your arm off. To
understand why today's victory has only a bittersweet taste to it
you have to look beyond the more obvious shortcomings of Tony
Blair's leadership and into the deeper, seismic upheavals taking
place.

On the doorstep, everyone knew Blair was the biggest single
factor that drove people from Labour. The war, trust,
accountability and dishonesty, were all cited as criticisms of
what Labour had come to represent. If the alternatives had not
been so unconvincing we would have been in real trouble. The
Lib-Dems, in particular, must know they missed a lifetime
opportunity to pitch for the progressive, secular vote in
society. It wasn't their policies so much as their leadership
that failed to convince. As one woman voter told me, "Kennedy?
Nice guy, but you wouldn't trust him to stay awake as a
babysitter, would you?"

On the other hand Michael Howard, managed to make the Tories
slightly more credible, but no less odious than their record
deserved. In the end, the slanging match between leaders just
turned people off. It became an election of the least disliked
and the avoidance of the most distrusted.

The big policy issues that will face the coming parliament were
largely overlooked. What cannot be ignored, though, is that the
public killed off Britain's flirtation with an American
presidency; and with it went the illusionary dreams of New
Labour.

When Labour won in 1997, the New Labour machine spun this as a
personal triumph of Blair 'the man'. They talked openly of the
end of representative democracy and the dawn of an era of direct
democracy; a time in which the Prime Minister would talk directly
to the people, unencumbered by the constraints of party or
parliament. The assumption was that only the leader mattered;
that we had moved seamlessly from a parliamentary democracy to a
presidency.

The size of Labour's majority allowed this assumption to be
bolstered by enormous patronage and to run on into contempt for
parliamentary accountability itself. A legion of political
wannabes ensured that there was always a majority to push through
the most regressive or ill-though-out ideas cooked up by the
Downing Street cabal. Now, at least, we have a return to normal
political times, with more normal political majorities. What the
press describe as the parliamentary rebels, are no more than the
normal process of parliament holding government to account.

Alan Simpson MP Much of the immediate, post-election, interest
has focussed on whether there will be/should be a leadership
challenge. My own belief is that it is more important to look at
policy change than leadership change. I am as profoundly
disinterested in Blair, the person, as I am in Brown, the
knee-jerk reaction. It is the demise of the New Labour project
that we need to address rather than a blame contest between those
equally caught up in it.



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