The New Statesman is carrying a striking piece on what the sleaze scandal tells us about New Labour by Jon Cruddas and Jon Tricket based on arguments developed by Compass. In effect they are saying that it is a terminal crisis for New Labour and that if the Labour is to recover it must re-establish itself as at the very least a social party with a democratic membership rather than an undemocratic machine putting the economy first. Here is a taste,
The market is contaminating society as inequality grows and anxiety spreads. The credit crunch, falling house prices and the failure of Northern Rock are straws in the wind of an economy on the turn. Nothing exemplifies the UK's snowballing social insecurity more than the march that the Tories stole on inheritance tax. Polling has shown that the political sensitivity of inheritance tax is rooted in our homes being the only source of security we have. Jobs are lost or outsourced; company pensions collapse; long-term care bills loom, as do university tuition fees. Bricks and mortar are all we have to cling to.
So much for new Labour's substance. When it comes to its operating style, decision-making has always had to be controlled. The activists and the unions cannot be trusted: not only do they not understand the nature of the drive to reposition Labour as a party that continues the neoliberal revolution - albeit in a more humane form - but they must not ever be allowed to understand it. Thus, the life of the party has been purposefully sucked from it. The post of general secretary of the party - a once-mighty position - goes to administrators; the NEC is kept permanently in the dark; and the role of conference as a decision-making body has recently been brought to an end. Talk to the members Labour has remaining, and it becomes clear: the notion of an engaged, democratic party looks either dead or on life support. Where is the million-member party that was promised? Where is any notion of pluralism with independent centres of power that provide checks and balances on the parliamentary leadership? In their place, control has been handed to an elite few to force the party to change beyond recognition.
New Labour has left the party without the oxygen of modern social democracy to sustain it, while imposing a political culture that actually serves to leave the new leadership horribly exposed. To use a military analogy, it is the supply lines back to the roots that sustain and feed you. Without them, things always come unstuck. In short, Blairism has stretched the Labour Party to breaking point.
