It is inevitable and necessary that following 13 years of New Labour government, which succeeded in both alienating its working class base and strangling internal democracy in the party, the first year in the wilderness after electoral defeat in 2010 would produce an identity crisis in the leadership of the Labour Party. New Labour ideology, with its disappointment and failings, weighs heavily on the new leadership of the Labour Party. They are cut from the same cloth, they grew up under Blairism, and they accepted it under the illusion that it was the basis on which their careers would be built. But at the same time there is a gnawing awareness at the top that something is deeply wrong, that they do not understand what has happened and where Britain is going. For that reason, the leadership appears confused, vacillating and unconfident. This confusion is expressing itself through various advisors displaying deep doubts as to where Labour is going. They acknowledge that there is some sort of crisis of social democracy, but do not know why or what to do about it. The reason for this crisis is that the Labour Party has tried to manage capitalism in an epoch of enormous capitalist crisis.

Currently the theorist ‘in vogue’ is Maurice Glasman with his ‘Blue Labour’ project. There is a lot of hubbub about this “exciting new theory” which can apparently explain why New Labour failed and how to move on.. Glasman speaks a lot about the need to regain the confidence of the working class and how New Labour abandoned ‘traditional’ workers to the ravages of the free market. The ‘Blue’ is a reference to conservatism, being the colour of the Conservative Party, because Glasman harks back to a time when the Labour Party was able to give the working class reforms, rather than attack them. Through this attempt at rebranding we can see the unmistakable mark of the pressure that exists to move the party to the left to gain support. But it is only a hint of what will come in the future – Blue Labour is in reality an attempt to appeal to workers on a reactionary basis. As Lisa Ansell says in the Guardian “Blue Labour is the only way "New" Labour can continue after a global financial crisis.”

Glasman writes about the need to recapture a broad base, an alliance of ordinary people suffering from the capitalist crisis.

“Labour needs to recall its vocation as the democratic driver of the politics of the common good, a Labour politics that brings together immigrants and locals, Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and atheists, middle and working classes.

[...]

This always generates a rich and complex politics that is as much about cherishing what you know and love as about the pursuit of progressive ends. That is why Labour politics has always been radical and conservative, wishing to democratise ancient institutions such as parliament and the city councils.”

Glasman is forced to speak in hopelessly abstract and nebulous terms about ‘communities’, ‘bringing people together’ (as if someone were proposing that we deliberately alienate people from each other) and the all-embracing value of institutions like parliament. The reason for this is clear – he wants to move away from unabashed pro-capitalism but is scared of appealing directly to the working class and its organisations. He wants to find a middle way, one that is not ‘neoliberal’ but does not admit the working class any leading role. On what programme these disparate communities will be brought together is never stated.  So everything is blurred, amorphous and indistinct.

Glasman has discovered that, beneath the superficial differences, there is something that unites ordinary Muslims, Christians, atheists etc. This is their common experience of exploitation,

“unless there were effective organisations, immigration led to a double exploitation, of the immigrants and of the locals. We ran a campaign called Strangers into Citizens so that illegal immigrants could build alliances and a common life with their new neighbours and colleagues. We ran the Living Wage Campaign to assert a common human status for all who worked in an enterprise or institution.

It was driven primarily by faith communities who asserted the dignity of labour and the importance of association. It was a resistance to the commodification of labour. The Catholics, Methodists, Pentecostals and Muslims I worked with did not talk to me about changing divorce laws or prohibiting civil partnerships, about abortion or the hijab. We spoke about a living wage, about establishing an interest rate ceiling of 20%, about affordable family housing and community land trusts and about achieving a common status as a citizen of the country. We spoke about matters of common concern where we had common interests.”

But unfortunately he never manages to ascend from these isolated examples, and so he stops short of giving any sort of political programme for the Labour Party to fight on and a banner to unite these people. Rather than say what the content of such a programme would be, he just speaks in the abstract about the need for a ‘conversation’,

“The centrality of one-to-one conversations, of relationship building, of establishing trust between what were seen as incompatible communities and interests transformed my understanding of what a politics of the common good could be, and of what Labour should be about. A political party that is a democratically organised force for the common good. In order to do this, Labour must establish those conversations that broker a common good...and build a common programme.”

The closest we get to a political programme from Blue Labour is a statement of general opposition to big banks, “the control of the City of London in regional investment must be broken and local banks established that could enable people to have meaningful jobs and live closer to their parents.” But how is that to be done? Challenging the power of multinational banking conglomerates is a serious business with serious consequences. Not only would this task meet with incredibly powerful opposition, but breaking up the banks is not the solution. The banks should be nationalised and put under workers control so that they can serve society rather than have society serve them. To do that and to overcome the bankers’ resistance, the working class must be won over to this position (which would not be so hard in this period!) and mobilised to carry it out.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to seriously entertain the idea that if Blue Labourites came to power on this vague programme, this general complaint about the power of finance capital, a serious issue to which he never does justice by proposing anything clear, that they would do anything other than what New Labour did – attempt to manage capitalism on behalf of the ruling class. Glasman’s main Blue Labour adherent inside the Parliamentary Labour Party is James Purnell – the Blairite minister who tried to ram through reactionary welfare cuts and demonised the working class in the process.

In their attempt to find a base of support in the working class without actually offering them a fighting, anti-cuts programme, the Blue Labourites resort to the familiar tactic of demagogically fanning the flames of racism. This also completely contradicts the other statements about building a dialogue between different communities, and exposes their false and patronising perception of the working class as riddled with racist and religious prejudices. Glasman has even called for Labour to establish links with English Defence League supporters! What sort of effect would that have on Labour’s large support base amongst minorities?!

What is clear is that only the working class itself can transform and renew the Labour Party. Theorists such as the Blue Labour clique cannot do that on their behalf, since they cannot even appeal to the working class as they are not prepared to break with capitalism in any way even for an instant. They have nothing positive to offer workers and so must try to appeal to racism. Glasman ends his Blue Labour article on suitably vague terms, “the price of victory is a constructive alternative and it will be crafted by all elements of the tradition.” Inspiring stuff.

But whereas Glasman tries to maintain New Labour after the crisis with reactionary demagogy, Patrick Diamond, who drew up New Labour manifestos and worked closely with our friend Peter Mandelson, has responded to the crisis by drawing the conclusion that the working class does not exist or has swung permanently and violently to the right. He has given Ed Miliband the morbid warning that he is straying dangerously to the left by participating in the ‘politics of protest’ and is risking its very ability to win power. Presumably the ‘politics of protest’ remark is a reference to Ed Miliband’s participation on the 26th March demonstration, which happened to be the biggest trade union led demonstration ever in the UK. So much for the ‘dangers’ of chronic irrelevance and unpopularity that this represents! In reality, Diamond is worried about control of the Labour Party slipping from the fingers of Blairite elites such as himself and into the hands of the organised working class. God forbid!

What is the evidence for this danger of isolation?

“The Policy Network, founded by Lord Mandelson, is to publish the findings of a YouGov opinion poll that shows a public lack of confidence in the ability of the European centre-left to govern for the mainstream. The poll was conducted in the US and in Britain, Germany and Sweden. It found the following:

• A lack of faith in the ability of governments to stand up to vested interests – just 16% believed they could in the UK, 21% in Germany and 27% in Sweden. This leads to scepticism about the ability of government-led action to improve societies, with 29% in the UK and 27% in Germany questioning whether governments can be an effective force. [This proves precisely that the working class has only lost faith in reformism’s ability to fight capitalism, a belief that is pretty well founded!]
• A strong belief among centre-right voters that centre-left governments tax too much, with not enough public benefit. Over two-thirds of Tory voters (68%) and 30% of Liberal Democrats believe this. [What exactly is polling Tory voters and finding out that they disagree with Labour supposed to prove?]
• Pessimism about the benefits of a university degree. Scepticism is highest in Britain (79%), with the deepest reservations among the 18- to 24-year-olds (83%) and the over-60s (88%). [Again, this belief is pretty well founded and only further proves a lack of faith in reformism and capitalism]”

These theorists, falling over themselves to find excuses to keep the party on a Tory agenda, have falsely drawn the conclusion from this poll that, since faith in traditional social democracy has declined, it must be replaced with something more like Toryism. They display their theoretical superficiality by not analysing the reasons for this lack of faith – that social democracy or reformism enters into decline and crisis as capitalism does. Since capitalism can no longer offer reforms for the working class but cuts instead, it would make sense that reformism would lose credibility. Statistics also consistently show that faith in all major political parties is at an all time low. The brutality of Thatcherism towards the working class has done long term damage to the electability of the Tories, who could still only muster about 35% at best after 13 years out of power. The phenomenon of apathy or cynicism towards politics expresses dissatisfaction with what capitalism has to offer. That high powered and unelected advisors should always draw the conclusion from such findings that we need to move even further to the right, only proves their blind commitment to the capitalist system which has served them so well.

But we agree with Diamond when he says the following,

“There is little sense of a coherent ideological programme through which social democrats might govern in the future in a world transformed irrevocably by the global financial crisis. It is not simply that social democrats have failed to win elections at the national level. Rather, it is the lack of public confidence that social democrats have a clear idea of what to do with power when they win."

The global crisis of capitalism and the increasing polarisation of British society do pose serious questions for the leadership of the Labour Party. On 16th May 2011 we read in the Guardian that,

 “a new ICM poll shows that 72% of the public think high pay makes Britain a grossly unequal place to live, while 73% say they have no faith in government or business to tackle excessive pay...the top 0.1% of UK earners will see their pay rise from 5% to an estimated 14% of national income by 2030, a level not previously seen in the UK since the start of the 20th century.

"Average pay growth was slowing before the recession, wages took a real hit during the recession and we're now seeing very slow wage growth coupled with high consumer inflation. There are real issues of fairness at a point when workers are facing the greatest squeeze in living standards for decades."

Much of this polarisation took place under and was officially sanctioned by the New Labour government. That is the reason for the discrediting of ‘social democracy’.

We do not share this doom and gloom about the working class. The social basis for the Labour Party has not disappeared or abandoned the idea of socialism. We have just witnessed the largest trade union led demonstration in British history. There is a mass movement developing against the Tory agenda. The Liberals have been shattered and the Tories’ support will be next. The majority of those marching on 26th March were Labour supporters. Whereas the demonstrations for the cuts can muster 300 people, the organised working class who still support Labour come out in hundreds of thousands. And as they struggle against this government and move to reclaim the Labour Party for themselves, the working class will teach Messrs. Diamond and Glasman a lesson in how to really renew the Labour Party.