Monday, April 11, 2005
Prolier Than Thou posted by Richard Seymour
As the election fever heats up ( for fewer and fewer people ), a workmate draws my attention to the Observer's fabulous front-page yesterday. In particular, he was ranting about Peter Hain's quoted remarks, which I excerpt:'There's now a kind of dinner party critics who quaff shiraz or chardonnay and just sneeringly say, "You are no different from the Tories",' he said. 'Most of the people in this category are pretty comfortably off: it's not going to be the end of the world if they get a Tory government. In a working-class constituency like mine, this is a lifeline. It's not a luxury.'
The only interesting thing about this is that this tired, wearisome hackneyed line is being repeated with greater urgency and frequency at every election, local or national. Peter Hain, the 'left' face of New Labour, is wheeled out to gee up the wilting activists and the inevitable result is some bilge like this. The irony is that the only kinds of people among whom Hain's 'argument' has any currency is among the well to do dinner party critics. They can be fobbed off with liberal guilt - vote for us even if you disagree with us, otherwise the poor get it. That shit won't wash in a working class constituency like Bethnal Green, I fear.
What Hain goes on to do is try to rescue a leftist gloss for Labour:
He promised a third Labour term would be 'redistributionist' in approach, with pledges to boost social mobility expected in the manifesto, but quashed speculation of tax rises.
'I do not think that a progressive party, and certainly the Labour Party, can win an election on a platform of higher taxation.' Using tax revenues to create half a million more public service jobs 'is a form of redistribution', he said.
Hain was infuriated by calls in last week's New Statesman, owned by Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson, for voters to oust more than 40 Labour MPs to teach Blair a lesson. Accusing it of 'levelling a political machine-gun', he said that many of those singled out were precisely those whom progressives should support, including gay and female candidates.
Candidates who progressives should support because they are gay and female? On that logic, votes for Ann Widdecombe or the late and unlamented Pim Fortuyn are 'progressive' votes. Noticeably, the article is full off horrible contradictions. On the one hand, Hain claims that Labour is being secretly progressive (perhaps with an idea that Brown is a secret socialist, treading softly round attentive Daily Mail ears). On the other, Labour cannot increase tax on the rich to help the poor and hope to win an election. Yet, when it comes to discussing how New Labour has changed Britain, the article notes with sadness that views on immigration and civil liberties have gone to the right under Blair - but happily notes that people are "surprisingly liberal" on tax, with 59% supporting higher tax to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Precisely the problem for new Labour. Their argument has always been that they have to be so far right precisely because they can't win an election on an agenda for change - yet 59% in any election would give any government a stonking majority in a first past the post system. Noticeable, when Hain is called on to acclaim the achievements of Labour, he cites very few of the substantial policies - the ones that Blair has made his centrepieces. PFI? Never heard of it, guv. War? Don't mention the fucking war!
Hain adds:
[I]mmigration is the issue that dare not speak its name. I think the left ignores the way the Tories are exploiting these issues at their peril.'
Quite right. But as I can learn, there is little humane or just in New Labour's policies toward asylum, and more than a little exploitation of such issues when the (former) Home Secretary accuses gypsies of shitting in shop doorways.
So, there is New Labour's quandary, its present swamp. Unable to defend its record to its natural supporters, its representatives are obliged to attack imaginary enemies as 'middle class', as if ministers and MPs are salt of the earth common folk. Pretty desperate stuff.