Behind New Labour’s crushing defeat

MAY 1, 2008, was not a good day for the left and for progressive voters in Britain.

In local elections and those for the Mayor and Assembly in London, the Labour government suffered a backlash that pushed its share of the national vote below 25 percent for the first time in 40 years. The policy of "triangulation," of targeting middle-class votes while assuming the working class would back the Labour Party, come what may, imported with such gusto from Bill Clinton's advisers, came crashing to an end as the votes were counted.

Labour lost hundreds of council seats to a newly confident Conservative Party, topped off by a defeat for Ken Livingstone as the mayor of London. Boris Johnson, an Eton-educated, pro-war Tory, replaced Livingstone--identified by millions as left wing, antiwar and pro-multiculturalism. Johnson's carefully cultivated image as a "bit of a buffoon" hides a calculating right-wing agenda. While Livingstone's vote actually increased, it was overshadowed by huge turnout from the outer Tory boroughs.

For 10 years, both Tory and Labour Parties have pandered to racism by making sustained attacks on the most vulnerable in society. Initially, it was asylum seekers and refugees who felt the brunt of their "toughness." More recently, it has been the Muslim community that has suffered a rising level of Islamophobia.

To some extent, these trends have been offset by a strong antiwar sentiment, which celebrated the unity of the peace movement. But 10 years of "dog-whistle politics" was bound to have an effect. This was seen most vividly in London, where the far-right British National Party (BNP) won a seat on the London Assembly for the first time.

New Labour has been thrown into crisis by the election results. It seems hard to remember that, when Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair just 11 months ago, there was talk of snap elections to take advantage of Brown's soaring popularity. It is clear now that this was a temporary blip, based on the fact that he was not Tony Blair. Brown's continuation of Blair's policies since last June has further eroded Labour's base of support among working-class people.

As the economy has stuttered, so Brown's image of economic competence has suffered. "Blairism without the boom" has little attraction for working people fearful about the future.

The final straw for many must have been changes to the tax system that saw Brown raise taxes for some 5.5 million of the poorest workers and pensioners in the country. That this allowed Tory leader David Cameron, also educated at Eton, to pose as a champion of the poor goes some way to explaining how the Conservatives have finally managed to regain the ground they lost in the early 1990s.

Labour has lost some 4.5 million votes since its historic win in 1997. Most of these voters simply stay at home on voting day, or vote for anyone but Labour.

For the left, there was little to celebrate in the elections. There were, however, a few glimmers of light. George Galloway's Respect Party won another council seat in the Birmingham base of Sparkbrook. In east London, in the City and East Constituency, Respect's Hanif Abdulmuhit was able to increase his vote from four years ago and hold back the BNP. Galloway himself polled just under 60,000 votes for the Assembly, but this was not enough to gain a seat.

Elsewhere, there were a few localized successes where left initiatives were able to gain instead of the Tories. But these were, sadly, few and far between.

The left is currently too weak and divided to make a significant impact, especially in the absence of resistance by our trade unions, whose loyalty to New Labour has held back workers' resistance for over a decade.

There will be battles ahead against this shift to the right. Labour's setback at the polls has already begun to open up a debate as to where the left can go from here. This debate includes forces both within and outside of the Labour Party.

The radical left, despite one or two good results, has also suffered a setback. Simply declaring ourselves to be "the" left alternative to New Labour will convince very few. But Respect has some very positive ideas and experience to bring to the table--not least our moderate successes in building support among Britain's Muslim community.

That community has been at the receiving end of years of rising Islamophobia. The danger is that, without Respect, that community could have retreated into quiet isolation. Instead, Respect has been central to an argument about engagement in the political process. That much of our leadership in our strongholds of East London and South Birmingham are drawn from the Muslim community is a fact of which we are immensely proud.

Respect will try to place itself at the heart of the regroupment of the left's forces with a determination that the resistance starts here and now. We have a lot to do in building a new, plural left opposition.

The last few years have seen a move to the right across Europe most recently in Italy. With two years before Britain's next general election, the left have an uphill task to ensure that pattern in not repeated here.