Every day seems to provide more and more evidence to support my earlier theory that it is time for the Labor Party to pack up and replace it with something completely new.
The latest development is a series of nerve-wracking headlines about how Labor and Liberal Democrat leaders may be plotting to help local elections this week by removing candidates in key areas, allowing the other to run freely in the common enemy: the Conservatives.
A common enemy? Really? Surely in the case of Ed Davey, the more accurate term would be “former cabinet colleagues”?
Tory Party Chairman Oliver Dowden pretends to be appalled by the idea of a broad left-wing alliance seeking to overthrow his own party’s candidates, and that this vile, anti-democratic ploy will “deny voters the right democratic choice” in Thursday.
In fact, as Dowden has no doubt realized so far, talks on a Labor and Liberal Democrat alliance are a sure sign of weakness among opposition parties. It is a public acknowledgment that the Labor Party alone cannot hope to defeat its main rival and needs the help of a former Conservative friend to do so.
Now, on the one hand, this is nothing more than political realism. Given how many times Labor and Conservatives, respectively, have won clear victories in the general election since the end of the war, it is clear that the People’s Party is playing at a disadvantage and needs outside help more than the Tories. Instead of thinking about why this is the case and dealing with the structural problems that Labor faces in their quest to win, some people on the left are simply putting this problem on a list of tasks that never opens up and pursuing much more. the easy task of uniting alliances against the Tories.
Will voters notice that even when an informal pact is established, the Labor Party continues to buy online advertising, attacking the Liberal Democrats for their efforts to legalize drugs and discard Britain’s nuclear weapons? Will those Labor voters who supported Leave in 2016 and who have since felt abandoned by their traditional party think that it has turned back to them, even when it is cooperating, albeit informally, with the most pro-European party in the country?
For Labor tactics, such assessments are less important than the fact that LibDems is not the Conservative Party, and that is enough for them. Keir Starmer is not the first Labor leader to hope for an alliance with the Central Party. But those hopes were dashed, not by the reactionaries in his own party, but by the voters themselves, who gave Blair a 180-seat majority 25 years ago.
It must then be remembered that the Liberal Democrats, apart from a handful of constitutional and legal reforms, could be counted on to oppose the Labor government as often and as enthusiastically as the formal opposition. Thirteen years later, this staunch opposition from Labor was rewarded with cabinet seats in the next Conservative government.
In many parts of the country, a more open alliance with the Liberal Democrats would make Labor more difficult, not less. Starmer is already trying to turn more records than he can, trying to win back those disgruntled former Labor voters in the Red Wall, while supporting a call for what is now Labor’s main constituency: ultraliberal, awakened voters. London and the southeast. It’s not an easy square in the best of times, and Starmer must do so, knowing that his Scottish hearts – which could once be relied on to secure 40 Labor seats even in the worst of times – are gone.
So, back to the central question: why do Labor need the help of another party to win anyway? Why aren’t conservatives the ones who have to turn to alliances with anti-Labor forces?
For some voters, the prospect of an anti-conservative alliance may seem attractive, provided too little attention is paid to the recent results of the Liberal Democrats in government and the identities of the people sitting around the cabinet table with them. Their hope is that from this little acorn, this informal, informal, unwritten agreement between Democrats and Labor, can grow into something bigger and deeper: a full-fledged coalition government in Westminster.
And again the question arises: why do the parties of the left need such urgent treatment in order to make any progress? More importantly, how did Blair do it without outside help a quarter of a century ago and twice since?
The traditional answer is that conservatives enjoy certain structural advantages that left-wing parties do not have. But this is simply not true, unless more popular now is considered an unfair political advantage.
And if, as I expect it to be, the answer of the left is “But look at the (latest) polls – the Tories are not more popular!”, Then where is the need for a union?
Add Comment