You would think that with a double digit lead in the opinion polls for most of the last two years, all would be well in the Labour camp at the moment - or at least, you might have thought it until Tony Blair's article in last week's New Statesman. The former Prime Minister expressed concern that under Ed Miliband, his party was turning its back on the "New Labour" project, warning him not to "tack left on tax and spending" in order to please Labour's traditional voters.
Of course, with the death of Lady Thatcher and the debate about her legacy very much to the fore during the past week, this in-fighting has not registered on many people's radar, even though other Blairites including Alan Milburn and Peter Mandelson have joined in expressing their concerns about the direction of the party. It seems, say Ed Miliband's detractors, that everyone knows what Labour is against, but not what it stands for.
Quite what has provoked this sudden flurry of criticism is hard to fathom. Labour fielded a pretty horrible candidate at Eastleigh and came a very poor fourth, but that was several weeks ago, and a by-election in which they never expected to do well. Perhaps the departure of Ed's brother David for the USA has brought a realisation that the obvious "heir to Blair" will no longer waiting in the wings to put the party back on a Blarite path when the anticipated poor opinion poll ratings make Ed's position untenable.
And herein lies the dichotomy for the Labour Party. Its traditional white working class supporters have never been keen on wind farms, political correctness or multiculturalism. Some leading figures in the trade unon movement like Bob Crow of the RMT are still unreconstructed Marxists who believe in public ownership of the means of production. These people never trusted Blair, but tolerated him because he won elections. On the other hand, the metropolitan middle classes who embraced the New Labour agenda are not terribly sympathetic to the social conservatism of many white working class people and aren't particuarly excited about returning the industries privatised in the Thatcher years back to state control.
it wold be simplistic to equate these two camps to the "Blairites" and "Brownites" who were allegedly at each other's throats for the latter years of Labour's period in office, but the uneasy coexistence of such divergent opinions within the Labour ranks suggests that it won't take much to trigger some pretty serious in-fighting. In spite of Labour's substantial lead in the opinion polls, there are some senior figures in the party who fear that some of Labour's support could prove rather soft. Miliband and Balls have consistently scored lower personal approval ratings than Cameron and Osborne, and the rise of UKIP, while normally viewed as a threat to the Tories, could start to eat into the Labour vote too, for dislike of the EU is by no means confimed to the middle classes of the shire counties..
Furthermore, while tribalism is still a force in politics, it is less potent than it was. It would be a brave (or foolhardy) man to predict anything other than a Labour victory in the South Shields by-election two weeks tomorrow, even though the Labour candidate is a social worker - a typical "New Labour" non-job (whoops, occupation). However, disillusion with the entire political class is starting to loosen traditional party loyalties, and Labour may find it less and less able to take the white working class vote for granted. We can be thankful that the BNP has somewhat lost its way in the last couple of years, but the distance that separates left-wing intelleectuals like Harriet Harman, Peter Mandeslon or the Milibands from their traditional supporters means that there is a golden opportunity for another party to make serious inroads into Labour's core vote if they can address th.
For once, I hope that the Blairites are right - that the return to "Old Labour" will mean a return to the same unelectability that charactierised the Foot and Kinnock years. However, I also hope that Ed Miliband is right in saying that New Labour belongs to the past. Socialism, whether in its old or new variants, has delivered nothing but misery and debt to the people of this country. It is time to give it a decent burial.
Of course, with the death of Lady Thatcher and the debate about her legacy very much to the fore during the past week, this in-fighting has not registered on many people's radar, even though other Blairites including Alan Milburn and Peter Mandelson have joined in expressing their concerns about the direction of the party. It seems, say Ed Miliband's detractors, that everyone knows what Labour is against, but not what it stands for.
Quite what has provoked this sudden flurry of criticism is hard to fathom. Labour fielded a pretty horrible candidate at Eastleigh and came a very poor fourth, but that was several weeks ago, and a by-election in which they never expected to do well. Perhaps the departure of Ed's brother David for the USA has brought a realisation that the obvious "heir to Blair" will no longer waiting in the wings to put the party back on a Blarite path when the anticipated poor opinion poll ratings make Ed's position untenable.
And herein lies the dichotomy for the Labour Party. Its traditional white working class supporters have never been keen on wind farms, political correctness or multiculturalism. Some leading figures in the trade unon movement like Bob Crow of the RMT are still unreconstructed Marxists who believe in public ownership of the means of production. These people never trusted Blair, but tolerated him because he won elections. On the other hand, the metropolitan middle classes who embraced the New Labour agenda are not terribly sympathetic to the social conservatism of many white working class people and aren't particuarly excited about returning the industries privatised in the Thatcher years back to state control.
it wold be simplistic to equate these two camps to the "Blairites" and "Brownites" who were allegedly at each other's throats for the latter years of Labour's period in office, but the uneasy coexistence of such divergent opinions within the Labour ranks suggests that it won't take much to trigger some pretty serious in-fighting. In spite of Labour's substantial lead in the opinion polls, there are some senior figures in the party who fear that some of Labour's support could prove rather soft. Miliband and Balls have consistently scored lower personal approval ratings than Cameron and Osborne, and the rise of UKIP, while normally viewed as a threat to the Tories, could start to eat into the Labour vote too, for dislike of the EU is by no means confimed to the middle classes of the shire counties..
Furthermore, while tribalism is still a force in politics, it is less potent than it was. It would be a brave (or foolhardy) man to predict anything other than a Labour victory in the South Shields by-election two weeks tomorrow, even though the Labour candidate is a social worker - a typical "New Labour" non-job (whoops, occupation). However, disillusion with the entire political class is starting to loosen traditional party loyalties, and Labour may find it less and less able to take the white working class vote for granted. We can be thankful that the BNP has somewhat lost its way in the last couple of years, but the distance that separates left-wing intelleectuals like Harriet Harman, Peter Mandeslon or the Milibands from their traditional supporters means that there is a golden opportunity for another party to make serious inroads into Labour's core vote if they can address th.
For once, I hope that the Blairites are right - that the return to "Old Labour" will mean a return to the same unelectability that charactierised the Foot and Kinnock years. However, I also hope that Ed Miliband is right in saying that New Labour belongs to the past. Socialism, whether in its old or new variants, has delivered nothing but misery and debt to the people of this country. It is time to give it a decent burial.