Is Labour capable of being a One Nation party?
Unite union baron Len McCluskey’s latest declaration of war on ‘Blairites’ in the Labour Party doesn’t exactly promote a vision
of Labour as a ‘One Nation’ institution committed to healing divisions in
society.
That is precisely the point.
The politics of the major unions affiliated to Labour remain
consciously and resolutely antagonistic and divisive, committed to the Marxist-Leninist
model of institutional capture (albeit with compromise).
As McCluskey himself refers to it in the New Statesman
interview though, the practice of centralised capture and control is not restricted
to the big unions: Tony Blair and New Labour practised it ruthlessly to
exercise control over the party.
Peter Watt, the Blairite former general secretary, explained it openly recently: “There was an understanding that controlling process
meant controlling the party. Conferences, policy making and of course
selections were all ruthlessly managed.”
Watt has changed his mind on fixing. But as McCluskey has
it, the unions are just getting their own back with their latest successes in fixing candidate selections for European elections to include their own people
and exclude others.
“Because we're having some success, suddenly these people are crying foul. Well I’m delighted to read it. I’m delighted when Tony Blair and everyone else intervenes because it demonstrates that we are having an impact and an influence and we’ll continue to do so.”
For those of us who like the One Nation idea that Ed Miliband articulated at Labour Party conference last year, these divisions and
the practices they promote offer a depressing viewpoint. The unions and the New
Labour tendency remain locked in internecine warfare: this is the reality of
Labour’s internal power politics, and this is where the real battles are taking
place. It is not so much One Nation Labour as Same Old Labour Divisions.
As Atul Hatwal at Labour Uncut put it, “on one point there is now a rare unity
between the centrists and the left: the one nation rhetoric is meaningless”.
Though I disagree on the idea itself, Hatwal has a
point in addressing the reality, for One Nation remains very much a sideshow
within Labour. The big unions who dominate party funding quite rightly see it
as a threat to their antagonistic, materialistic brand of politics; the New
Labour wing meanwhile remains transfixed (understandably) on the need to assert
economic competence and resist Labour’s natural instincts to spend money.
In the midst of this, Shadow Ministers and other major
party figures articulating One Nation visions and ideas are almost entirely absent
(pumping out press releases strewn randomly with ‘One Nation’ yet promoting the
same old policies and positions does not count). The Party is not going along
with One Nation and for the most part does not get it.
(Lord) Maurice Glasman, Jon Cruddas and now Arnie Graf have
been fighting gamely but can’t do it all on their own. Glasman and Graf in
particular are not really politicians. If and when One Nation goes the way of
the Big Society, the idea and its promoters will be blamed for little fault of their
own.
In reality, they have simply come up against what so many
other left-wing reformers have come up against before: the sclerotic nature of
the Labour Party, dominated as it by the sort of transactional interest group politics
that they argue against.
You may ask, ‘Where is Ed Miliband himself in all of
this?’
The response of Miliband’s spokesperson to McCluskey’s latest clunking intervention was admirably strong:
“Len McCluskey does not speak for the Labour Party. This attempt to divide the Labour Party is reprehensible.”
“It is the kind of politics that lost Labour many elections in the 1980s. It won’t work, it is wrong, it is disloyal to the party he claims to represent.”
This does not change much though. Miliband remains stuck
in the middle of it all, attempting to reconcile the warring parties.
In such a context, any hopes of the Labour Party itself starting
to look like a One Nation institution look distant. Without embodying it
through practices and communications, the idea will become less and
less relevant and will prove puzzling at best to voters – especially with the
likes of McCluskey sounding off every so often.
The chance to change the party in a major way through a
major intervention by the leader (like Tony Blair on Clause IV in 1994-5) is
probably gone now. So we are left with the old ways, whereby factions compete
to secure as much of the Party as they can in order to promote their own people
and sectional interests.
The stitch-up and the fix live on; and with them, One Nation
Labour will likely die.
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