Eunice Goes - The Labour Party Under Ed Miliband: Trying but Failing to Renew Social Democracy

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The Labour Party under Ed Miliband

The Labour Party under Ed Miliband

Trying but failing to renew social democracy

Eunice Goes

Manchester University Press

Copyright Eunice Goes 2016

The right of Eunice Goes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 9070 7 hardback

ISBN 978 1 7849 9423 5 paperback

First published 2016

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

To Ins

and

Philippe

Contents

I have accumulated a great number of debts while writing this book. First, I would like to thank my editor, Tony Mason, for believing in this project and for his encouraging support throughout the process of researching and writing this book.

I am also indebted to people who took time off from their very busy schedules to talk to me about the Labour Party under Ed Miliband. I am particularly grateful to Jon Cruddas, Stewart Wood, Marc Stears, John Denham, Peter Hain, Patrick Diamond, Rafael Behr, Mark Ferguson, and Barry Sheerman, who were extremely generous with their time. Thanks to their insights I gained a better understanding of what Ed Miliband tried to achieve as Labour leader, but also of the obstacles he encountered. Obviously I am fully responsible for any lacunae or mistakes.

I owe a big thanks to Michele Cohen, Judi Atkins, Steven Fielding, Philippe Marlire, and an anonymous reviewer for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of some of the chapters of this book. I would like to thank the librarians at Richmond University who helped me to find relevant material for this book, and the editorial and production teams at Manchester University Press for their work in bringing the book through to publication. I am also grateful for the encouragement and support I received from Luke Martell, James Connelly, Charles Grant, and Anthony Barnett.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my partner Philippe for his loving and practical support and infinite patience, and my daughter Ins, whose sunny disposition helped me to keep things in perspective.

BSA	British Social Attitudes
EC	European Commission
ECB	European Central Bank
EMU	Economic monetary union
EP	European Parliament
EU	European Union
GDP	Gross domestic product
ILP	Independent Labour Party
IMF	International Monetary Fund
IPPR	Institute for Public Policy Research
NF	National Front
NHS	National Health Service
NPM	New Public Management
OECD	Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
PASOK	Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Greece)
PS	Parti socialiste (France)
PSOE	Partido Socialista Obrero Espaol (Spain)
SNP	Scottish National Party
SPD	Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Germany)
TTIP	Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Treaty
UKIP	UK Independence Party

Context and some theoretical considerations

I stand before you, clear in my task: to once again make Labour a force that takes on established thinking, doesnt succumb to it, speaks for the majority and shapes the centre ground of politics.

Ed Miliband1

When Ed Miliband became leader of the Labour Party in the autumn of 2010 he promised to turn a page on New Labour. For him, the global financial and economic crisis had shown the limits of New Labour, in particular the partys nave embrace of lightly regulated capitalism, globalisation, flexible labour markets, and its acceptance of rising social inequalities.2 Milibands epiphany seems to have been inspired by what political scientists call critical junctures or external shocks; that is, periods in history when crises open windows of opportunity for change to occur. When those moments arrive, political actors look for new ideas and solutions to address new policy problems that can no longer be addressed by old recipes.3

The global financial crisis that started in the United States in 2007 as a credit crunch raised fundamental questions about the ideational paradigm neoliberalism that had become the governing economic and political philosophy of centre-right but also of centre-left political parties since the 1980s in Europe and North America. Many of its axioms and assumptions were challenged by the events that unfolded in Wall Street and that soon spread to Europe.

The significance of this crisis which was not just economic, but was also political, social, and ideational cannot be overstated. The neoliberal assumptions about the rationality of economic agents, about the self-regulating attributes of free markets, about the ability of the market to produce economic growth that would trickledown across society, could not explain the bankruptcy of major financial institutions and the near collapse of the global economy. Even the defenders of the system were utterly confused with the sequence of events that led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and to the bailout of financial institutions that were seen as the foundations of financialised capitalism. The former president of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, reflected this mindset when he told the American Congress that the whole intellectual edifice collapsed.4

Greenspan was not the only one to be confused with the events of 200708. Uncertainty was the prevailing sentiment during those turbulent two years. Newspapers like the Financial Times tried to make sense of what happened with a series of articles on the crisis of capitalism. Popular culture also contributed to this debate with theatre productions, films, and novels. David Hares The Power of Yes, Lucy Prebbles Enron, John Lanchesters Capital, Oliver Stones Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and Laura Wades Posh sought to explain the culture that led economic actors to engage in such risky behaviour.

Across the United States and Europe, millions of protesters, inspired by the Occupy movement, debated alternatives to capitalism. On the left, socialists and social democrats felt (to paraphrase President Obamas former chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel) that this crisis of capitalism should not go to waste.5 In other words, the massive bailouts to the banks, coordinated at the international level and with the blessing of institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU), led some social democrats to believe that they had been right all the time about the instability of capitalism and that a social democratic moment was within their grasp. But in the corridors of power, policy-makers acted with the hesitancy of individuals who were not sure about how to respond to events of such magnitude. The easy reflex was to rely on the solutions and policy instruments they knew. And that is roughly what they did.

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