Reform Amidst Austerity 2 - Opportunities for Opposition

Why kick them when they are down when you can instead claim to be in their corner?

Because there is a sense of credibility at stake, and starting from a negative score on that front, as the former Brown Cabinet ministers did last year – and especially in the light of last week’s revelations of in-fighting – realism must be at the heart of whatever policy strategy is to be embarked upon (after all, we’re still waiting for one).

Instead Miliband once again fell for a classic Labour trick at PMQs today, rejecting intelligent debate about fundamental restructuring of state funding for the millions who find themselves out of work, in favour of a petty argument about a reduction in funding for a few thousand recovering cancer sufferers.

Meanwhile, three of his colleagues demanded yet more state protection from rising energy bills, dismissing the existing measures – many of which were introduced under Gordon Brown – as insufficient.

An austerity Opposition should be flying high; this one is floundering.

But there is an alternative vision, a persuasive rejection not of individual policies but of the coalition’s whole strategy for deficit reduction. It is one that Miliband remembers for a few days, makes a nice speech about, wins a few polls with, but then forgets as soon as he picks up another tabloid newspaper.

The argument goes, simply, that the coalition partners have been too bold in their ambition. These decentralising and modernising reforms are also posing as economising reforms – seeking to do more with the same, or the same with less. But they require an investment of both time and money that doesn’t suit the current ‘climate’.

Perhaps, then, the “too far, too fast” theory isn’t such a bad one. But it needs a credible and realistic alternative; and it needs not to look like a hankering after tired old ways that have been abandoned and discredited.

Labour should look forward, of course, but it must also quietly learn the lessons of the past. It must celebrate the successes of its time in office – they provide an invaluable rationale for being returned to power – but it must not pretend that the failures never happened, as appeared to be the case in interviews with the Shadow Chancellor at the weekend.

And although demonstrating an understanding of voters’ experience of austerity Britain is essential, it must not share in the overwhelming despondency of the moment but rise above it and generate excitement – rather than wariness – about the future.

After all, what hope can ever come from maintaining the status quo? Blair answered that question in the negative; Cameron agreed. Both have faced stubborn anti-reform resistance, albeit in very different circumstances. One was cornered; the other is fighting his corner.

Both, it seems, will be left to rue their missed opportunities.

Reform Amidst Austerity 1 - Opportunities for Government

“If it is a system that is keeping people back, the system should change. Not to change it is to say we care more about the system than the people. That is totally unacceptable. And, of course, the reforms must be the right ones, the changes able to achieve their purpose. But far too often people claim the change is a breach of principle whereas in reality, they’re not protecting a principle but a practice and often an outdated one at that.”

So said Tony Blair to Labour’s National Policy Forum in the summer of 2005 (the quote is taken from his engrossing autobiography, which tells the story of a stubbornly determined prime minister, aware his days were numbered, finally embarking on reforms he had long aspired to, in full face of his obstructionist successor-in-waiting and a media circus obsessed with the prospect of imminent revolution).

It makes interesting food for thought for the one in five public-sector union members who have voted for what is likely to be the first of a series of strikes later this month, not to mention the thousands of ‘anti-cuts’ protestors who staged that futile (and now largely forgotten) demonstration in London in March.

…And onto whose bandwagon the Leader of the Opposition gleefully leapt.

Who or what exactly is it that they seek to defend? A system that – by the next election – 18 successive years of governments* representing all three major parties will have sought to change fundamentally and in basically similar ways?

* (Barring the 3-year interlude of grinding indecision that was finally ended last year)

A classic case is the drive to create ‘free schools’, a policy founded under Labour and kick-started by the Conservative-led coalition. Blair goes on to argue that free schools represent the introduction of grammar-school characteristics into the comprehensive-school sphere – independence, strong leadership from within, flexibility that spurs innovation and the accountability for failure that drives the ambition to succeed.

A similar case could be made for the government’s NHS reforms – again an extension of, not a diversion from, Blair’s (ultimately clouded) vision; an adaptation of the once-new Labour ideology that has since been fragmented and seemingly forgotten.

Decentralisation – the political-science name for the ‘Big Society’ – is nothing new; neither in the last 30 years nor in the past ten.

The charging of tuition fees, introduced by the previous government, ‘topped up’ and refined by the same government, and now extended (haltingly) by its successor, is another example. The subjects of this week’s populist controversies, welfare reform and public pension provision – crises foreseen by Blair, brushed under the carpet by Brown and now finally acted upon by Cameron – are others.

But although the policies have much in common, what has changed is the landscape – political, economic and social. So who can blame the Eds and co for their steady, opportunistic approach? Many thousands of people “up and down the country” (to use a favourite Miliband refrain) are having to view their future with a similarly short horizon.

Why kick them when they are down when you can instead claim to be in their corner?