The utter depression of the 2015 election results will stay
with those of us on the left for a long time.
The thick grey cloud of Conservative Britain depressed us all in 1987 as
well as in 1992. It looks like
enveloping us all again. A lot of soul
searching will follow, with fingers being pointed and much vitriol being
poured. At the time of writing, Labour
has yet to decide when it wants to
elect its new leader, let alone who
it wants to elect. Post-mortems are
being carried out on the campaign, on leadership and on the manifesto. They will not come up with an agreed
position. The Labour Party rarely
does. It was once said about Yorkshire
County Cricket Club that you couldn’t ask them who the Queen was without them
holding a special conference, hiring Leeds Civic Hall and everyone falling
out. The Labour Party is not dissimilar.
Ed Miliband deserves some credit for keeping the show
together after the 2010 defeat. The
bitter arguments were, on the whole, avoided and the finger pointing kept to a
minimum. That is not to say that we, as
a party, didn’t indulge. We did. A seemingly interminable leadership contest
led us to look inwards and allowed the Conservatives to set the narrative, one
which stuck remorselessly throughout the five years of the Parliament. Labour profligacy, rather than banking
irresponsibility, caused the crash; Labour ‘maxed out’ the nation’s credit
card. Public spending had to be reined
in. This narrative continued right the
way up to the close of the polls.
Michael Gove was still parroting it at gone ten o’clock. By refusing to engage properly with the past
we put our immediate future at risk. Now
it’s time to wrestle with the present in order to prevent us perishing in the
future.
Britain is a more politically divided nation than ever. London and the north of England voted
Labour. Scotland voted SNP. The south and midlands of England voted
Conservative. Wales is still
predominantly Labour, but, as Scotland shows, should not be taken for
granted. There will be a great deal of
talk about how Britain is ‘broken’ or ‘fragmented’. Few people will see the new political make up
as an opportunity, but if we look hard enough, there is one there.
There is a great assumption that political parties need to
be as one. One policy, one ‘hymn sheet’,
one voice across the UK. However, if the
UK is no longer a homogeneous unit, why should its political parties be? Labour should devolve. At the 2015 election it’s clear that we were
too left wing for England but not left wing enough for Scotland. Let that change. Let the different wings of the party in
different parts of the UK have true autonomy.
Let Carwyn Jones and Welsh Labour differ on tax and spend in Wales if
they want to. Let the Scottish party
take on the SNP in the best way possible for them. Don’t saddle campaigners with the kind of
message they know will be unpopular in their area. As long as our basic values remain the same,
we should have the courage to adapt them to specific areas. After all, the Tories have barely had
representation in Scotland for two decade but that has not stopped them from
imposing the bedroom tax, public spending cuts and other austerity measures
there. The reverse can also be
true. If the south of England wants a
low tax, low spend Government, let them have it. Labour, however, can now lead the charge to
keep it away from the rest of us.
