Though no one could blame you for missing it, the government had a relaunch
last week with the publication of a 126-page prospectus called Building
Britain’s Future. The Titanic has been raised from the bottom of the sea,
although Captain Brown still has a fatal attraction to icebergs.
The importance of this extended election manifesto, however, does not lie in
its boasts of past achievements and promises of future entitlements. Instead
it finally settles the fact that No 10’s political vision of the future is
blurred.
As usual with the prime minister, the document is all tactics, no strategy. Of
course inside the report there are the usual traps for the Tories. Is David
Cameron going to deny patients their entitlement to see a cancer specialist
within a fortnight? Does he think your child shouldn’t have one-to-one
tuition – never mind how it is all going to be paid for – as Ed Balls, the
schools secretary, proposes? But otherwise this blueprint for Britain is
themeless. Is Gordon Brown new Labour or old Labour? He won’t tell us.
Perhaps he’s middle-aged Labour.
One Labour politician who really does have a Blu-ray, high-definition vision
is Alan Milburn, the former health secretary. Give him only five blank pages
of government stationery and you will get a political philosophy and an
election fighting strategy rolled into one. Alas, last week he announced his
retirement from the Commons.
In 1997, 38 Labour MPs retired before the election. Milburn is one of about
170 who will not defend their seats this time, nearly half the parliamentary
party. You can understand why. As Progress, the new Labour magazine, put it:
“This week around Westminster it felt like the changing rooms after an 8-nil
defeat.” U-turns on important planks of government policy such as identity
cards and Royal Mail privatisation were followed by another stumbling
performance by the prime minister in his weekly gladiatorial duel with
Cameron.
Milburn was crushed by Brown years ago – as is the way with prime ministers
his friend Tony Blair offered him all help short of actual assistance.
However, he still puts a robust case for the radical centre. In doing so
Milburn challenges both the leadership of his party and the Tories. Simply
put, he asks why should the rich alone have choice in schools, health
treatment and the provision of public services? And why shouldn’t private
companies or charities provide those services rather than the state as long
as the government pays?
The prime minister and Ed Balls seem to believe that because we simple folk
know less than doctors or education bureaucrats about what constitutes a
good service, we must be shepherded in the right direction. Of course, even
if we found our way to good schools and hospitals on our own there are not
enough for us all. What if the government increased the supply of excellent
ones, you ask? In a final twist of perverse logic, our masters say the state
would be forced to put out of business the bad ones or allow them to run
half empty: a drain on public resources. So that rules out the case for
competition. It’s the case for complacency.
One middle-of-the-road minister boiled down this view for me last week in a
brief, unkind sentence: “Ed Balls is the only man in politics I have ever
met who believes that local authorities can get their schools right.” Brown
is uncomfortable with sounding like some old Labour dinosaur from the 1970s
so he does make a few stabs at public service reform, but he can’t make up
his mind how far he should go.
Milburn’s is not the only alternative to the Brown/Balls curate’s egg of
policy making. The growing new left Compass group is in the process of
setting out its own stall. Jon Cruddas, its parliamentary leader, and Neal
Lawson, its chairman, have inveighed against new Labour’s unhappy love
affair with turbo-capitalism and consumerism. They propose cooperative style
banking and the decentralisation of state power.
Compass is celebrating a victory over Lord Mandelson, the business secretary
or “the Supreme Leader”, as he is referred to affectionately by friends.
Mandelson has had to abandon his plan for partial privatisation of Royal
Mail, once thought essential to prove to the world that “new Labour is alive
and kicking”.
Cruddas has long been aware that the white working class has been disaffected
by mass immigration and, unless its concerns are addressed, will flirt with
the far right. The message has got through to government too late. A former
trade unionist, Cruddas refuses to serve in cabinet, although he insists he
is not running for the leadership.
Milburn’s post-Blair agenda – unlike Compass’s – is aimed squarely at the
centre ground and floating voters. As a proud Geordie from humble origins,
but without a John Prescott-style chip on his shoulder, he is in the right
place to ask the Tories whether they are really in favour of social mobility
or do they just like the soundbites? On health, he charges the Tories with
being defenders of the status quo. As health minister, he allowed private
companies to perform operations to reduce National Health Service waiting
lists. He advocates further patient choice and competition.
On education, he trumps Tory policy: he would offer poor parents a credit of
150% of the cost of educating their children, giving an incentive for good
schools to take them. Nor would he object to a private company making
profits by running a better school – the Tories are far too timid to go that
far.
Labour is out of joint with the times. Despite the doomsayers, the so-called
crisis of capitalism has not produced a great lurch to the left. Voters in
the European elections last month opted for centre-right parties who
promised to spend taxpayers’ money carefully. Milburn would be honest with
the voters about the black hole in the government’s finances and would map
out Labour’s spending priorities. Doing so would force the Tories to reveal
their own core commitments.
The prime minister and the schools minister prefer another conversation. They
would rather argue the case for Labour “investment” against Tory cuts. Much
good has it done them. No one believes it, not even their cabinet. Last week
Cameron gleefully corrected the prime minister’s arithmetic, sum by sum. It
is not often that proud Brown is forced to take a lecture in political
economy from his enemies, but if he continues to dig himself into this false
position he will get a volume of Economics For Beginners hurled at his head
on a weekly basis.
The voters as well as the economic experts believe that, whatever the result
of the next general election, there will be cuts. They also know that
Brown’s unprecedented spending boom has led to enormous waste. They are
right. Only last week an Audit Commission report found that schools were
wasting more than £1 billion of taxpayers’ money or merely sitting on it. In
most areas of government it’s the same story.
Of course, market fundamentalism, like any fundamentalism, goes too far.
Professor Michael Sandel of Harvard University has mounted a charming
defence of the public sector ethos against capitalist values in his recent
series of BBC Reith lectures. He once provided intellectual ammunition for
Brown in his war against Milburn. But our services are below par by European
standards and the sums are in any case unaffordable. Something has to give.
When Milburn moves on who will take up the baton? Young James Purnell, who
recently resigned as work and pensions secretary in protest against Brown’s
leadership, comes from the same wing of the party and has been enjoying his
new freedom. Over the summer he will decide whether to offer an alternative
programme from the backbenches. I hope he does.
Yes, there is thinking going on in the Labour party all right. There’s just
precious little of it in government.
