A stakeholder society

Since well before the election and Brown's decision to stand down, since we've felt defeat in our waters, Labour have been discussing need for a change of direction. Hopefully now that the inevitable has happened the discussion can start in earnest, without it having the appearance of a group of vultures circling over a dying animal...

One theme that has come up in almost every discussion about the future of the Labour Party is that we need to retake the ground of "fairness". We need to recognise that there is a difference — at least in common perception — between fairness and equality.

A recent Populous poll showed that 73% of C2s -- skilled manual workers -- agreed with the statement that "people who play by the rules always get a raw deal". Ok, so most of everybody agreed with that statement, but it seemed particularly resonant for that group.

The lesson we need to learn is that they are not complaining about an unequal society, but about a more immediate kind of unfairness and lack of natural justice in the way that the state and society operates.

The classic examples are of the “Jennie-down-the-road-got-pregnant-and-now-has-a-council-flat-but-I'm-working-and-have-less-money-than-her” kind, together with the distortions of what migrants from Eastern Europe are entitled to on our welfare state.

One route of satisfying this desire for a more immediate kind of fairness is to go down a route that is quite worryingly right-wing. This is the kind of approach Margaret Hodge was touching on when she talked about giving priority for social housing to locally born people. If it’s worth having a Labour Party at all we need to avoid this temptation.

If we want to regain popular support for a progressive (socio-economically equalising) state, we have to give as many people as possible a stake in it. The most enduring, popular and succesful Labour achievements have been universal provisions. Child Benefit, the NHS and Sure Start Centres are both fair (in the most immediate sense) and progressive, and the strength of support for Child Tax Credits derives not from the fact that it allowed hundreds of thousands of children to be brought out of poverty, but from the fact that so many of the population receive and value it.

The only viable kind of political movement is one that makes a larger proportion of the population the kind of person who benefits from its policies. Any other kind of politics will inevitably end, and will end more quickly the more succesful it is. This is why we cannot afford to back towards the politics of equalising above all else — it is an inevitably doomed approach.

This was why the politics of the Conservatives in the 1980's was popular. Its public message was that it was creating the property-owners that the Conservatives generally benefit. The fact that ordinary people were too busy telling Sid about the privatisation of BT to actually buy any shares themselves is not so important. What's important is that there was a harmony in its message: We are on the side of property-owners; we want more people to be property-owners.

Now this trick isn't so easy for the Labour party because we generally want to support the disadvantaged and we can't want more people to be disadvantaged. But unless we work out policies and messages that tap into this approach, we won't regain and keep the support of the people upon whom our electoral success depends.