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Campaign Briefing special edition – CLPD’s 40th anniversary |
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Friday, 10 May 2013 |
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CLPD's 40th anniversary Campaign Briefing can be downloaded here Includes articles from: Billy Hayes, Diane Abbott MP, Jim Mortimer, Gavin Strang, Chris Mullin, and others, plus unique material from the archives. Click here to download pdf. |
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CLPD Annual General Meeting 2013 |
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Tuesday, 12 March 2013 |
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CLPD AGM 2013 was held on Saturday 23 February, from 11.30am at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Read the report here |
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Only a centre-left NEC can take Labour forward |
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Friday, 11 May 2012 |
by Andy Newman from Tribune
The forthcoming NEC elections for the Labour Party are critical. The Party is running high in the polls reflected by good local election results. But as George Galloway’s Bradford West by-election result shows, there is an element of fragility in Labour’s support.
The mantra that the Tories are cutting public expenditure “too far and too fast” is a clever soundbite, but it is confusing. Either Labour stands for austerity, or it stands for expansion and growth; the attempt to triangulate towards middle ground in the quest for mythical swing voters in marginal constituencies is being pursued at the expense of developing a credible economic policy.
The comments by Ed Balls and Ed Miliband that they would support public sector pay restraint both gave credibility to the Tory arguments, and also demoralised and disoriented a layer of activists and Ed Miliband’s allies in the unions. It also represented a genuine threat to the prosperity of millions of working people, and would be deflationary, reducing consumer demand.
The inability to articulate a clear alternative to the Tories is because there is a deep belief in parts of the Labour Party that elections are won be competing for the middle ground, and spinning for electoral advantage around minor differences. However, since 2008 the economic paradigm has shifted, and it is necessary to say clearly that there is a fundamental difference between the approach of the Con-Dem government, and the Labour Party.
To understand the problem we need to appreciate how it came about. Back in the 1990s, The bright and shiny clique of New Labour succeeded in winning the party not by becoming a majority, but by developing a convincing coalitional strategy for winning general elections. This involved both the now famous arts of triangulation and spin, but also hollowing out any distinctive ideological content of labourism. In the absence of any other electorally credible strategy they won over the centre right, and support from the traditionalist trade unions. In contrast, the left lost this battle because they seemed to be refusing to budge on a political programme that was increasingly out of tune with the voters, and were unable to convince the party centre that they represented anything but a one way ticket to oblivion.
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