I NEVER quite understood exactly what Tony Blair’s ‘project’ was, except as a spurious dressing for whatever his government was up to at any particular point.
If it was about anything, it seemed to be enriching lawyers and cementing permanent Labour rule in Scotland, Wales and, if possible, new devolved regions in northern England.
The last bit didn’t work out so well, did it? But, underneath the obvious, there has been a change in the nature of the Labour Party which is coming to completion under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, and it looks likely to become a long-term fixture.
For its first 100 years or so Labour was an alliance between middle-class intellectuals – think Beatrice and Sidney Webb – and working-class voters, enfranchised and unionised in the closing decades of the 19th century. This operated pretty well, and reached a peak of power and success in the years after World War ll, with upper-middle-class Clement Attlee as Prime Minister and union leader Ernest Bevin as the highest-achieving Foreign Secretary of the 20th century.
It began to break apart in the 1960s, when Harold Wilson’s government began to lose patience with the selfishness and indifference to economic destruction of the trade union leadership. Successive attempts to bring the unions into line ended with the 1978 Winter of Discontent and the arrival of Margaret Thatcher.
At the end of the 1960s the unions could have had mild new laws on strike ballots under Barbara Castle’s ‘In Place of Strife’ programme, which was dropped by Wilson in the face of union intransigence. Wilson was succeeded by James Callaghan, a politician who rose through a public-sector trade union, and a face of the future in a way no one expected at the time.
Mrs Thatcher’s new union laws were not only tougher: they were strongly enforced by ministers, judiciary and police. The flying pickets disappeared, the mass pickets proved ineffective, and the old bully-boy tactics failed to win key strikes by the most entrenched unions representing the miners and the print workers. The union movement split: right-leaning unions in industry began a new era of co-operation with managers, while the public sector unions continued to dominate the bosses in local government, the NHS and transport.
The Blair government after 1997 didn’t worry too much about the unions or voters from the old and much-changed working class. It wanted Sierra Man and Worcester Woman, the kind of unattached new middle-class voters that David Cameron’s Tories also thought were the ones to chase.
Working-class voters, the Blairites thought, had nowhere but Labour to go. Working class interests were represented by the laughable figure of John Prescott. In 50 years Labour had moved from Ernest Bevin, creator of Nato, to John Prescott, mastermind of the M4 Bus Lane.
But Sierra Man and Worcester Woman turned out to be unreliable supporters. And the old working class did look for somewhere else to go, starting with Boris Johnson. As did the anti-EU conservatives dismissed as reactionary ‘fruitcakes’ by David Cameron. Welcome, Nigel Farage.
Which leaves Labour where? Who does it represent and who does Keir Starmer look after first?
The answer is anyone who depends on the state. Shorn of the old working class, and unable to rely on the wide-but-shallow modern vote, Labour’s new core comprises employees in the public sector, in local and national officialdom, the NHS, education and academia, and transport. Add to that the legal profession, which is highly dependent on public subsidy through the legal aid system; charities, also reliant on state subsidy; quangos, and publicly subsidised media starting with but not limited to the BBC.
And, of course, that section of the old working class that failed to join the rush to middle-class Worcester status and instead became the benefit-dependent underclass. Every time a Labour MP says he or she didn’t join the party to cut benefits, it’s a powerful signal to benefit claimants who prefer idleness to working.
There is an attitude to economics and state spending commonly found among public-sector workers, especially those of higher status. It considers that the real economy is what the state does, which is of unquestioned benefit. Those outside the state fold are either exploited low-wage employees in need of state help, or billionaire exploiters who need to be made to pay more for the state’s good works.
This is an opinion that appears to unite the majority of Labour MPs.
The state vs private divide is, I think, a new thing in British politics, but the distinctions are now in full view everywhere. Just compare the pension rights of a teacher or a local government worker with those of anyone in the private sector.
As Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg observed this week, after hearing evidence that benefit claimants get their phone calls answered around six times more quickly than taxpayers: ‘The Government supports those who are paid by the state rather than those who pay for it.‘
