The Clause are out

The current UK general election campaign has exposed something of an identity crisis within the Labour Party: is it, or is it not, a socialist party?

On the campaign trail recently the leader of the party, Sir Keir Starmer, unequivocally described himself as a socialist. His shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, on the other hand, said she was a social democrat and on the Politics Live Election 2024 programme on BBC2 today Labour Peeress, Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, stated that Labour is a social democratic party. So who's right.

The terms democratic socialism and social democracy are not interchangeable and should not be used as such. The strands carry different emphases within the 'broad church' of socialism, mainly around their willingness (or otherwise) to embrace, or at least tolerate, capitalism. The high-profile breakaway from Labour to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981, which in turn led to the formation of the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) in 1988, demonstrates how these ideologies can diverge. 

Presumably for the elimination of any doubt, Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution is quite clear on the matter, stating concisely: "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party" [itals mine]. So why does this appear to stick in the craw of some senior Labour politicians?

Perhaps, in his lawyerly way, by defining himself simply as a 'socialist', without specifying his particular brand of socialism, Starmer seeks to leave himself some wriggle room. Despite his ambivalence, though, it is abundantly clear that he is on the Blairite rather than Corbynite wing of his party. As such, he is a pragmatist when it comes to his willingness to cooperate with capitalism, hence his enthusiasm, along with his shadow chancellor and shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, not just for placating but actively wooing the private sector.

From the perspective of the Labour leadership, especially after the spectacular electoral rejection of the Corbyn manifesto in 2019, the sine qua non is to form a government. In other words, the imperative is to win power or they can achieve nothing. One understands the degree of caution this imposes on them, which some commentators have likened to carrying a Ming vase over a polished floor. But there is also danger in appearing to have no principles at all, or infinitely fluid ones. As Groucho Marx (perhaps the only Marx Starmer's Labour can now tolerate) said: "those are my principles and, well...if you don't like them, I have others".

The reductio ad absurdum of this situation is that supporters of far-right ideologies could legitimately describe themselves as being socialist on the grounds that nazism was a form of socialism. It is clearly intolerable that any political party could embrace such a wide divergence of views. To quote Lord Kinnock on the issue of Labour's being a 'broad church', "churches have walls". And for good reason.

But, to pursue the ecclesiastical analogy, churches can also suffer schisms within their walls. This is what I fear will happen with the Labour Party, particularly when, as the opinion polls consistently predict, it wins an overwhelming Parliamentary majority. Without a robust official opposition in the Commons the opposition is likely to arise internally and this could prove very divisive and difficult to manage at a time when all efforts will need to be focused (laser-focused as the current political cliché has it) on rebuilding a broken country.

In this regard, the post-War Labour goverment of Clement Attlee is often held up as the model for regenerating Britain after an existential cataclysm but, despite having won by a landslide in 1945, the 1950 general election left Attlee with a Commons majority of only five seats. He called a snap election in 1951 in the hope of increasing his majority and lost decisively to the Conservatives under Winston Churchill. If (let's be frank, when) Labour wins on 4 July. with the expected huge majority, they will need to keep an eagle eye on the next general alection in 2029. 

However grim the outlook may be now, in five years' time Labour may have been successful in turning the economy round and, in that scenario, the lesson from history is that the outcome of the next election cannot be taken for granted. Starmer may talk about needing at least a decade in power to restore the fortunes of the UK but the gift of that lies in the hands of an electorate which tends to be both small and large 'c' conservative. 1951 shows that the British electorate does not feel bound to Labour by any sense of gratitude.

Not only that, history also shows it has a short memory.


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