Comment: Labour must repent on civil liberties
The coalition is weak. Unless Labour quickly addresses its authoritarian tendencies, we could soon be back in the bad old days.
By Ian Dunt
The term ‘progressive’ is a pernicious and treacherous thing. It is not a belief system. It doesn’t denote a series of beliefs or policies. It is a sentiment, a vague allusion. It translates as ‘leftish’. Its political usefulness lies in this absence of meaning, allowing right-wingers to attract moderates without actually committing to any specific proposals.
But whatever progressive is, it isn’t locking up innocent children because their parents are illegal immigrants. It isn’t about writing articles in the Daily Mail promoting the incarceration of our young people in overcrowded jails to satisfy the inexplicable needs of the gutter press. It isn’t defending stop-and-search, which has been shown over and over again to be used disproportionately against ethnic minorities. That is the situation Labour now finds itself in.
On the very same day that Ed Miliband told Lib Dem MPs they could no longer call themselves progressives if they supported the VAT rise, his colleague Jack Straw was writing a column in the Daily Mail – evidently his preferred paper – saying that ‘prison does work’. The dogged use of short sentencing is not quite a civil liberties issue, but it reveals the assumptions of Labour, that whatever else happens, it must never appear soft. This tactic was at the heart of New Labour from the beginning, as Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell dedicated themselves to neutralising the Tory attack on the party as the representative of the loony left. Blair calculated that there are no votes to lose by being too tough on crime or terrorism. That sounds sensible. It ended up with Blair pushing for 90-day detention, effectively the end of Habeas Corpus.
And now, a generation later, the sad remnants of the New Labour dream sit on the opposition benches, triangulated into oblivion. They sit stony-faced as Nick Clegg taunts them for allowing child detention, and if you look with the right eyes you can see the contempt they would be held in by the young activists they used to be.
The coalition’s civil liberty recovery plan can correct most of the mistakes made in the last 13 years. The repeal bill would undo the changes to the law, and the British bill of rights would then prevent it happening again. But there is a problem. These projects will take time and the coalition is already weak and vulnerable, just weeks after its creation. At this rate, it will be in an appalling state by the time of the next election in 2015. It could easily become so bad that its various ‘no confidence’ and dissolving measures might actually need to be used before the tabled date of the next election.
The greatest threat the coalition faced was that one partner would do much better than the other. That gives a sense that they can do without them. It could technically have gone either way but currently it appears the Tories are doing very well out of coalition and the Lib Dems are doing badly. Their opinion poll showing drops steadily, almost every week. Radically opposed fortunes will be the engine of collapse in a coalition arrangement. How long will Lib Dem MPs watch their popularity slide before they get too nervous? They have looked miserable on the government benches since they first sat there. When will misery turn to rebellion?
Meanwhile, the Tories are getting increasingly arrogant in their dealings with their coalition partners. Clegg told the Commons Yarl’s Wood would close. Did he slip up or overreach his authority? Either way, the Home Office was quick to disagree. Vince Cable suggested a graduate tax. Within days a ‘senior government minister’ shot the idea down to the BBC. Economically left-wing Lib Dems are increasingly alienated by the savage ideological attack on the public sector which George Osborne has launched under the guise of a deficit reduction plan. Improved GDP figures increasingly vindicate Labour’s approach. If that drops downwards, the opposition attack will be fierce and very effective. The Lib Dems will look on in horror as Labour benefits from being the only opposition and taking all their leftie supporters. This, by the way, was exactly why Labour refused to get into bed with the Lib Dems after the election.
The coalition might just limp to the tabled general election. We must hope it does, not just because of the national interest in stable government, but because the British bill of rights will lay down a base level of legislative restriction in regards to privacy and individual freedom. It will mark out an area where future executives will not be allowed to tread. Once that is secured, Labour’s hands will be tied if it chooses to enthusiastically embark down the authoritarian route again.
That is an adequate but miserable compromise. Labour should not need to be legally ring fenced to behave like the social democratic party it is supposed to be. It should willingly have a debate with itself about the role of the state which is entirely exempt from economic arguments. The binary simplification of anti-state Tories and pro-state Labour in matter of economics and civil liberties is grotesque and misleading. It’s always been more complex than that, with both the right and left having proud traditions of libertarianism.
So far, only Ed Miliband and Diane Abbott have shown any sign of addressing the terrible muddle Labour has got itself into on this issue. Abbott is an exemplary campaigner against the former government’s draconian policies. As MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, those policies disproportionately affected her constituents, and she performed a defence of their interests which was so committed and impressive that it stood as a complete argument against those, like me, who would scrap the constituency link by introducing proportional representation. Nevertheless, she won’t win, partly because she’s a massive political liability and partly because the Labour party has become stiflingly conservative and timid.
Ed Miliband is more complicated. He has mentioned civil liberties and ID cards, but he was also responsible for writing the manifesto the party campaigned on. No-one remembers him being critical in the past. His newfound sense of morality clashes badly with his committed loyalty to the old regime. Perhaps a keynote speech on the issue would have been more convincing, but the lip service he’s paid civil liberties so far is well short of the wholesale revolution in its thinking which the Labour party needs if it is to rid itself – and Britain – of its demons.
For all our sakes, Labour needs to repent. We can only hope one of the leadership contenders has the guts and support to make it happen.
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