Why is Labour still not standing up to the Tories?

Labour has plenty of ammunition but is distracted by in-fighting

 

As the Conservatives unleash more years of austerity, the country is crying out for an effective opposition. What we have instead is a mess.

The leadership election was supposed to be a period of profound soul searching for the Labour party, one that reached out, not just to the rank and file of party members, but to voters that have been deserting Labour since 1997.

Whatever some candidates might suggest, we no longer have a ‘core’ vote that is large enough to propel Labour back to power. The blunt truth is that no party can ever win an election without reaching out to parts of the country that might not seem like ‘traditional’ terrain for it. One last push or a slightly more glitzy version of what the party offered voters in May will not suffice.

But over the past few weeks we have not given candidates the opportunity to do the soul searching that is necessary. They have not been tested hard enough, and the topics that have been raised have been woefully thin on the ground.

Let’s take the tax credits debate as an example. The question Labour should be asking is not about tactics over one policy or another, but the more fundamental question of how a Labour welfare state should look. At its heart should be a system that rewards and encourages work wherever possible.

When the chancellor praised the work of Sir George Bain for the Resolution Foundation as the basis of his living wage policy, why did Labour not relentlessly point out that the very same Resolution Foundation concluded shortly after the Budget that:

“The National Minimum Wage (and Living Wage) and tax-credits complement each other. The current Living Wage would have to rise to a significantly higher level in the absence of in-work support.

“For instance, the London Living Wage would jump from £9.15 to £12.65 without any in-work support. Even without taking account of today’s cuts to in-work support, RF estimates that the current national Living Wage would rise to £10 by 2020.”

Yes, many of the leadership candidates have made this point, but instead of taking the case to the public, their arguments have been lost in an internal party debate on positioning.

All the while, as the party turns in on itself, the government’s rigging of the political system continues unabated with trade union reforms designed to choke off funding for the Labour Party; granting votes for life to Brits abroad who are most likely to vote Conservative; and cutting the number of MPs in an attempt to consolidate their own position in the Commons.

And what about the Office for Budget Responsibility arguing that 14,000 fewer homes will be built as a result of the Budget; or the 13 million families that the Institute for Fiscal Studies argues will be squeezed by the Budget; or the government’s shameful decision to delay from 2016 to 2020 the decision to cap care costs at £72,000?

The ammunition for Labour to use against the government is there, and there is a wide open space for a robust, progressive alternative to be articulated. What we are getting, however, is a damp squib of a leadership contest that raises the very real prospect of Labour remaining unelectable for a generation.

As a party we can huff and puff all we like but the Conservatives were not elected because Labour was not left-wing enough.

We need to speak to people’s aspirations, their hopes, and their ambitions for themselves and their children as they are and not as we might want them to be.

Labour is best when it is prepared to adapt to a changing world and society. At present, the party finds itself in the sidings and heading nowhere fast.

Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter

15 Responses to “Why is Labour still not standing up to the Tories?”

  1. David Lindsay

    I state this simply as a fact: if Andy Burnham does not vote against the Welfare Bill, then Jeremy Corbyn will win the Labour Leadership.

  2. Michael Docherty

    With respect, it is quite literally impossible for the result of something that won’t happen until September 12th to be, as of July 20th, a ‘fact’ in any sense of the word.

  3. David Lindsay

    If every sense except a purely scientific one it is, yes.

    Think back five years, and try to imagine any mainstream figure’s proposing that the child poverty targets be abolished, that ESA be downgraded to JSA, and that child tax credits be unavailable from the third child onwards.

    Yet that was after the Crash, but before George Osborne had supposedly put it right.

    This is not “the centre ground”, and the acquiescence to the idea that it is on the part of three out of four Labour Leadership candidates will antagonise not merely the Far Left (most of whom were never in the Labour Party, while most of the rest left it a dozen years ago), but the great mass of that party’s rank and file.

  4. Torybushhug

    The thing is lots of people say life prior to the mass endemic welfare culture was perfectly decent and in fact people were more prone to being fully autonomous, engaged and dignified.
    Endemic welfarism was an experiment that produced horrendous outcomes for a generation enslaved in toxic welfare dependency. Above all else it dims horizons. The left is akin to the flat earth society, so conditioned to the handout culture that debate is almost impossible.
    In time you will come to understand our moral crusade to reduce dependency was vital.

  5. stevep

    YOU – WILL – BE – EXTERMINATED. – THE – DALEKS – ARE – IN – CONTROL!!!!!

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