Tony Blair has been prominent in the voices of those seeking to divine the meaning of the 2019 election, dismissing Labour’s current incarnation as “a brand of quasi-revolutionary socialism [that] never has appealed to traditional Labour voters….The takeover of the Labour Party  by the far left turned it into a glorified protest movement with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible government.” [1]

Whilst in general, this analysis has been received with uncritical alacrity by the media, I do notice some pushback in the Guardian letter pages under the heading: Tony Blair needs a further period of reflection. A series of correspondents point out in some detail that the vagaries of our electoral system disguise the strength of Labour’s performance and that across the UK as a whole, in this election, the Tories have one seat for around every 38,000 votes, Labour have one seat for more than 50,000 votes, and the Lib Dems one seat for about 330,000.”[2] 

I would add to this complex picture the fact that Scotland was largely lost to Labour in the 2015 election [3] when the SNP managed to successfully portray Ed Miliband’s Labour Party as “Red Tories.”  The Corbyn Labour Party actually pulled some of this back in the 2017 election [4] but clearly, the split in the Labour vote between leave and remain and the consequent difficulty Labour have had with Brexit policy, was something that Nicola Sturgeon has been able to exploit from her stronghold of a remain supporting Scotland, where, by the way, it required a mere 25,882 votes to return each newly elected member of the SNP to Parliament.[5]

I was a supporter of Blair as he led New Labour into its 1997 landslide.  The Labour Party has always encompassed a struggle between those who tend to define themselves by principle and those who focus on that old adage: politics, the art of the possible. It is clear that Jeremy Corbyn’s tendencies are towards the principled end of this spectrum and he stolidly resists any temptation to be jingoistic or bellicose, even where this might enhance his popularity, at no obvious cost to his actual project.  Blair, by contrast, continues to believe that his more realistic grasp of the social and economic conservatism of the potential Labour vote is an unarguable and pragmatic case against the unrestrained, socially liberal and economically radical agenda of the Corbyn left. 

There is much to be said in favour of both the principled and pragmatic tendencies but, equally, both tendencies have their failings.  Those who stand on principle are apt to be inflexible and ideological in their thinking and sanctimonious in their rhetoric. Pragmatists, on the other hand, get drawn into their own project and lose sight of the bigger picture. I am reminded of the film, The Bridge over the River Kwai, where Alex Guinness, playing Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, sees the survival value of cooperating with his Japanese captors, and so leads his men to engage positively with the construction of the bridge. In the denouement, we see him resisting the attack mounted by British soldiers on the bridge and it is only when he is mortally wounded in this action, that he understands his own folly and collapses on the detonator to blow up the bridge himself.

The bigger picture in the present moment is climate change, a looming threat which demands immediate and dramatic action.  It was this, above all, which justified the ambition of the Labour manifesto. Perhaps, as Keir Starmer has said, the manifesto contained “policy overload”. Starmer, however, goes on to qualify this criticism:  “The case for a bold and radical Labour government is as strong now as it was last Thursday. We need to anchor ourselves in that.”[6] 

In mitigation of the failure of Labour to win power, it should also be remembered, that despite his purge of moderates, Boris Johnson has committed the Conservative Party to a programme of spending which right wing idealogues must surely be boggling at. Even in electoral defeat, one can see Labour’s contribution to the redefinition of the ground on which politics is contested, a fact which gives some substance to Corbyn’s contention that “Labour won the argument.” 

 Almost everything about Brexit and the election of a Conservative majority has been understood in hindsight, and yet there are still many intent on obscuring the reality of what has happened, Tony Blair amongst them.  He should certainly, for a start, reflect on why electoral reform did not form part of the New Labour project and why Blair and Brown proved, ultimately, so ineffective in the regeneration of Labour heartlands.

He is wrong to speak contemptuously of the way in which Labour has moved to occupy the key battlegrounds of the present moment and to develop policies which are on a scale that are equal to the challenges: climate change; extremes of inequality; the way in which the most recent iteration of capitalism has so conspicuously failed to renew itself and spread wealth and prosperity to all.    

Blair  was one of the stronger advocates of a second referendum, and though clearly in favour of remain, presented his case with due deference to those who sought a hard Brexit and showed an admirable willingness  to accept such an outcome.[7] Why then can he not acknowledge that Corbyn’s advocacy of a second referendum, in which he would remain neutral, was a credible positioning, given the difficult hand which Labour had been dealt? Had Corbyn taken this stance at an earlier stage and presented it with greater authority, its impact could have been significant. Blair is correct, however, in saying that Labour failed to convince the electorate either of its positioning on Brexit or of its competence to deliver on the scale of its manifesto offer.   

With respect to the competence of UK Governments in general, Dominic Cummings, in a lecture to the IPPC [8] in 2014, points to a generally overlooked aspect of the problem: the civil service.The average citizen, I imagine, like myself, has not given much thought to the civil service as a brake, or even the principal obstacle to governments achieving their objectives. Cummings, however, makes an informed case that the Whitehall establishment is profoundly dysfunctional and resistant to change and that our antiquated and bureaucratic system of government is totally ill-equipped for the challenges of the modern era. His proposed revolution would ensure relevant expertise was engaged at the highest level of policy development and that effective management would drive implementation. In addition, Cummings observes that the typical MP skillset is ill-fitted to their responsibilities of oversight, when in office, and holding to account, when in opposition: he suggests MP training in such matters as statistics and science. Well, who could disagree with that? Whatever misgivings we may have about his wider objectives, Cummings is now at the heart of the current administration, and it will be interesting to see if this rogue individual can deliver on his agenda, the implications of which may be significant for all those who seek power in the future. 

Those who have been keeping a wary eye on Cummings may have been amused to see that he has topped GQ’s list of worst dressed men of 2019.  The photo they feature [9] is a particularly wonderful example of how he has stolidly refused the dress code of those in high office.  It is interesting to compare this outfit with his appearance in the aforementioned lecture to the IPCC in 2014, when he was less in the public eye and where he is rather smartly turned out in a dark suit and tie.  Whilst his slightly funereal look might not have catapulted him into the GQ’s list of best dressed men of 2014, it would certainly have kept him well clear of the worst dressed list.
It is fairly obvious that Dominic Cummings is not in search of popularity, and his sartorial choices in recent times are undoubtedly part of his anti-establishment message.  His riposte to journalists at one point during the election campaign: “You guys should get outside London and go to talk to people who are not rich Remainers” [10] is further evidence that he is an alien presence at the heart of the Conservative Party. Of course at least some Labour candidates were doing just what Cummings was advocating:  Caroline Flint and Sarah Champion, to name but two, but it was Cummings who has capitalised on working class leave disaffection and who has delivered a prize to the Conservative party.  We can now only hope that his subversive instincts will make something of this opportunity, from which we may all benefit.

Oh, and by the way Dom: have you noticed those election statistics?