So Why Isn’t the Labour Government Listening?

So yesterday I went to former London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s Progressive London 2010 conference – a gathering very similar to last year’s Convention on Modern Liberty, only it was overwhelmingly geared towards the Left. By Left of course I mean the Labour Party, not New Labour or the Labour government, and it was the schism between the party and the government which made the conference interesting. Why isn’t the Labour government listening to progressive voters, activists or party members? It’s a good question, and one which was thrown into sharp relief by Harriet Harman, who refused to answer any direct question posed to her, and instead preferred to Tory bash. Why not slap down the surveillance state? Why not apologise for Iraq (again)? Why not offer a progressive agenda for a fourth term in office? She angrily refused to do any of those things, insisting that change took a long time. Maybe that’s true but it entirely ignores the electoral cycle, and the bitter irony of the challenge posed by David Cameron – they chose to steal the Tories’ clothes in 1997, so what’s to stop Dave doing it back? It worked then, and is appearing to work now – so what if we’re hoodwinked now, we allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked freely by Blair.

Some excellent ideas came from the panels – standing up for the 50% tax bracket, and initiating a green ‘New Deal’ to invest our way out of the recession in a way which would transform the economy as it needs to be, rather than relying on the slash & burn economics which are currently decimating the Irish economy. Ed Miliband (and my tip for next leader), whilst not offering grand gestures which might make his current boss look even weaker than he currently is, did seem to understand that before such a New Deal could be initiated he had to engage personally with voters to explain why it’s even needed. It was the only example to come from the government in acknowledgemen that they needed to reengage with an electorate which knows full well it’s been thoroughly ignored. Ken asked why a council house building programme hasn’t materialised, Mehdi Hasan asked why the financial sector hadn’t been reformed, but even then there were notable absences. What of the surveillance state (let’s not forget Ken Livingstone still stands squarely behind Sir Ian Blair’s defence of Jean Charles de Menezes’ murder)? What of young people in politics – why are younger voters engaging in activist politics but not party politics? These things just never came up.

Ken did his thing and was (perhaps justifiably) campaigning to regain his job at City Hall in two years time, but I’m not sure he heeded the other call which came out from the conference. Progressives have an annoying tendency to talk amongst themselves, to miss the very simple needs and wishes of the majority of voters. Bonnie Greer got it and got a standing ovation in doing so. This government on the other hand remains so craven that it still insists on arguing against right wing talking points rather than forcing the Right to dance to its tune. There are writers and activists out there who appear to know just how to pitch what needs to be done – Joss Garman said we had to get our own green economy in gear before preaching to developing countries how they needed to do the same. Eugenie Harvey realised engagement could come with a very small ‘ask’ of a very large number of people; Britain couldn’t be less broken. Mehdi Hasan saw clearly how people were angry with bankers and corporate finance, and how action needed to be taken to break the system up, rather than resorting to a hollow ‘class war’ electoral strategy.

So why isn’t the government listening? I left the conference with mixed feelings and few answers. Neoliberalism isn’t going anywhere – the banking system is being reinforced to retain the pact John Kampfner refers to in ‘Freedom for Sale’. The Tories and New Labour clique realise full well there’s power to be had through pushing market deregulation and a surveillance agenda. Ed Miliband though, despite his inaction in the Vestas affair last year, appears to be a candidate to push progressive politics through a future Labour opposition and possibly a future government. A green ‘New Deal’ would indeed be a new politics, which the majority of all voters are calling out for, and he knows (thanks to Darren Johnson) that he has to start talking in honest, straightforward terms about simple issues in order to get the mess his party is in corrected. But where does he stand on constitutional reform? I don’t know. Will he and others like him get derailed by the old guard like Harman? I don’t know. Peter Mandelson’s insidious Digital Economy Bill is continuing not to be argued against. There is no clarion call to wipe out the ISA. Noone seems to have noticed ID cards are still being pursued by stealth, and Mehdi Hasan’s call to abandon economic neoliberalism was barely noticed. The Left has the ideas but it’s hardly united. If it coalesced around a green economy, with a rollback of the surveillance state, and promised to tackle bread and butter issues like closing the gap between rich and poor (high pay commission anyone?), whilst working towards fairness in the economy then it might have a chance in May. We can only hope Dave isn’t in power for too long, and that the Kampfner pact reaches its tipping point soon.