A strange dream
The Observer carried a strange piece today:
A powerful coalition of mainstream Labour MPs and leaders of Britain’s biggest unions is backing a right-left ‘dream ticket’ of Alan Johnson and Jon Cruddas to lead the party into the next general election, having given up on Gordon Brown’s premiership.
The plan to install Johnson, the centre-right Health Secretary, and Cruddas, a centre-left moderniser who came third in last year’s deputy leadership contest, is gaining support as the way to thwart the ambitions of David Miliband, the arch-Blairite Foreign Secretary.
The depth of union dismay at Brown and the New Labour agenda is revealed today in outspoken comments from Tony Woodley, the joint leader of Britain’s biggest union, Unite, which will have a crucial role in any leadership contest.
Those MPs who back the partnership miss something rather crucial; it’s the policies, not the people, which make a difference here. Union activists and discontent left-wing voters don’t necessarily care who leads Labour and whether they make a particularly attractive marriage of party factions. They care what those candidates actually want to do, and whether they’ll enact union policies. The left didn’t abandon Blair in disgust because of who he was - they abandoned him because he consistently failed to cater to their demands.
That may seem an obvious point to make; but it needs made. The article doesn’t explicitly mention a change in policy, merely a potential leadership duo. Perhaps it’s implied, as Cruddas is, in their words, “centre left,” and so different to New Labour. But even if that’s the case, this surely won’t bring every - or possibly not even most - anguished shop steward or voter on side. Johnson (there really, really need to be less people in politics with that name, by the way; BoJo, Darren Johnson, Alan Johnson…) remains fully signed up to Brown’s policy agenda for the moment; and so we can presume that, for every ounce of social democracy Cruddas brings, Johnson will bring a policy to please the party right. An unhappy compromise then, and possibly one that could jeopordise the duo’s unity before long. Hardly the dream ticket the Observer claims.
(Hat-tip, as I read some blogs before the paper today: Stroppyblog)
Oh and of course that will be the Cruddas that is so independently-minded he voted for 42 days
I think you are right that many on the centre-left who are not in the Labour party are reeling from Blair et al because of the policies but from what I have seen, most in the Labour party could not give a shit about the policies, they just want to keep power.