Labour's Future

There may have been many grand predictions over the last week or so forecasting the demise of the Labour Party. The Conservative Party was already doing well before last week, but since the brilliant Local Election and London Mayoral results, it seems that we must now prepare for government with altogether more realism and purpose. It seems apt, then, to see what ideological grounds there are for the continuation of the Labour Party as a viable force in British politics.

I would argue that New Labour, as a political entity, is ideologically bankrupt. When Labour won in 1997, it had a clear mandate and yet was not remotely prepared for power. After keeping to Conservative spending plans for a while, the Chancellor went on a biblical binge of public spending. Their mantra appears to count them in as both Conservatives and Social Democrats - 'Tough on crime; tough on the causes of crime', 'economic stability and fiscal prudence'; but also - 'education, education, education' and '24 hours to save the NHS'. New Labour chose what it liked from the left and right and slung them together into a melting pot of bare-faced opportunism, commonly known as the 'Third Way', a theory also espoused in times past by Bill Clinton and Gerhard Schroeder. New Labour has had considerable difficulty marrying the market economy with its so-called 'social justice' - I consider its approach to be electorally unsustainable, and ultimately, a failure.

The reality is, New Labour despises the populism of tax cuts and is fundamentally wedded to the expansion of the public sector, come what may. It is, hence, still dedicated to providing full employment. This fundamentally Keynesian principle is incompatible with the market economy. Full employment cannot be provided by any body but the government - it cannot exist as an objective in the private sector. New Labour has created thousands of new public sector jobs, many of which, I'll wager, are completely extraneous to the needs of struggling public entities, such as the NHS.

The failure of Labour to provide sufficient improvement to the NHS should, in theory, put the nail in the coffin of increased and unchecked increases in public spending. The NHS is a bloated and financially ravenous state monolith, the third biggest employer in the world, and completely unsuited to 21st century Britain. Labour have failed to convert it into a modern health service because they have relied solely on investment to achieve this - torrents of money have been buried in a bottomless pit of bureaucracy. Management structures were not reformed in time, leading to confusion, further layers of pen-pushers and, above all, monumental WASTE.

My point is, the Conservative Party cannot allow the issue of increased public spending to become an unspoken consensus between the political parties. We have to fight for lower taxes and radical reform of public services. If we can beat Labour on this issue, there is no longer the need for it, and there is no further reason for the electorate to vote for it. Its only plan in government was to maintain 'economic stability' at all costs - the famed 'stability' that Gordon Brown still crows about to this very day, even as it is unravelling before his eyes.

I do not expect Cameron and Osborne to conform to these ideas straight away once the Conservatives are returned to power. In fact, I'm glad that they're aren't doing. Even if the public are convinced that this approach is the right one, the Labour Party may still be able to use its age-old accusations of 'cuts' to hurt the Party, and jeopardize the outcome of an election. As New Labour did in 1997, the Conservatives must not rock the electoral boat to start with. However, if the mandate is as clear as I hope it will be, we must adopt a gradually more radical economic policy if we are to banish Labour to electoral oblivion. We must provide REAL improvements. Labour have failed to do that, and will never succeed with their current policies.

Unless something truly miraculous happens in the next two years, Labour will lose power in a 2010 general election. If Brown is still PM at that stage (which I hope for our sake he is), he will be forced to go - after which, the fun will really begin. Labour, I predict, will deal very badly with opposition. It is possible that the remaining socialists in Party (many of whom hold very safe seats) will break away to form a separate Party. Those on the right and in the centre of the Labour Party may join the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and/or form a pseudo-New Labour 'social democratic' Party. The trouble is, will any new centre-left bloc realistically have a chance of regaining power if the Conservatives are successful? Unless they establish a more substantially left-wing position (trade union power, abolition of private education, nationalisation of railways, etc), I doubt it. It is also worth considering that in the First Past the Post electoral system, that if Labour does split, it offers the Conservative Party the real possibility of long-term political hegemony.

With economic consistency comes political survival. New Labour's contradictory economic approach is irreconcilable. New Labour (not, necessarily, the Labour Party) cannot survive. Conservative notions of lower taxation, public sector restraint, economic freedom, fairness and entrepreneurialism will, and must, win the day. If we can prove that these values can be the basis for a public service revolution, Labour need never return to power.