When John Major’s divided and discredited Conservative Party defied expectations to win the 1992 General Election, Michael Heseltine was asked if he believed that the Labour Party could form a government ever again.
“Labour will win again when it wants to,” he replied.
For Lefties like me, those words carry more meaning now than they ever have.
Whatever happens in this month’s Labour leadership election, the Labour Party is far bigger, far more important, and far more valuable than any single politician.
There will be no split, the Labour Party will endure: it is the best instrument of progressive economic and social change Britain has ever seen, and greater than the sum of its parts.
And, barring some unforeseeable international event that fundamentally and rapidly reshapes social and economic relationships across the western world, the current trajectory of the Labour Party is unlikely to ever secure victory at the ballot box.
https://twitter.com/DonaldMcBride/status/772118390806896640
There is nothing defeatist about recognizing the realities of the country in which the Labour Party was born, and recognizing these realities means acknowledging that different nations do not produce carbon-copy political parties.
To state the obvious: Germany’s SPD is different from France’s PS. Britain’s Conservative Party is different from Norway’s Hoyre.
The political spectrum exists in every country, yet successful political parties emerge not simply from ideology but from the unique conditions, histories and cultures of individual nations.
So it has always been with the Labour Party in Britain; a party owing more to Methodism than Marx. Labour grew from the Liberal Party and the trade union movement; not a revolutionary continental socialism red in tooth and claw.
@marcusbrig I've gone red. (Red Tory red). Thank you x
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 1, 2016
Its DNA is similar to that of its continental cousins, but it is not the same. Keir Hardie’s biographer, Kenneth (now Baron) Morgan described him as “…not only an idealistic crusader, but a pragmatist, anxious to work with radical Liberals whose ideology he largely shared… and supremely flexible in his political philosophy, a very generalized socialism based on a secularized Christianity rather than Marxism…”
Labour’s organizational difficulties and worsening electoral prospects can be linked to a small number of Labour MPs and a large number of new party members who are pursuing a kind of “socialist purity” alien to British social democracy and the most effective traditions of the Labour Party.
@GreggSmith1 @jeremyduns Or Keir Hardie. Blairite red Tory he was…
— Ben (@nottsyossarian) July 24, 2016
How Keir Hardie (pictured above in 1913) would have loved the opportunity to compromise in order to introduce a national minimum wage. How he would have sought to influence the voting intention of people of every political persuasion. Were he alive today, he would undoubtedly be called a “Red Tory”.
Despite the banal and pointless way in which this term is now used as an insult on social media, “Red Toryism” is an actual strain of political thought, first developed in the 1960s by the Canadian political scientist Gad Horowitz.
Jamie Reed is a Red Tory Traitor https://t.co/X3wXotay3N #suspendjamie @jeremycorbyn @johnmcdonnellMP https://t.co/nV0RbDE5wm
— Cool Daddy (@Cool__Daddy) August 30, 2016
Horowitz argued that a particular strand of Tory thought took hold in Canada, partly as a result of the American Revolution and the consequent exodus of Empire Loyalists, from the new republic to Canada (the new-old empire). Horowitz also argued that socialism in Canada grew from this particular brand of Toryism and that its exodus from the United States condemned similar movements in that country to irrelevance.
Those now calling the shots in the Labour Party equate “Red Toryism” to New Labour.
There's only so much we can do in Opposition to stop this and a return to grammar schools … https://t.co/q5ibSOxgql
— Lucy Powell MP (@LucyMPowell) September 5, 2016
It’s a clear mistake, breathtaking in its stupidity. For political activists of any party to equate the name of their principal political opponent to the most successful and effective period in government their own party has ever enjoyed is just… well… it’s not clever.
Because the truth is that “Red Tories” are Labour voters. Or they used to be.
Estimates of the number of voters lost to Labour as a result of the Party’s current direction range between 1 to 2.5 million. These people believe in a strong, publicly funded NHS, excellent state schools, good local government, robust national security policies, better rights at work, more support for the poorest, for pensioners and more. Core Labour values: but these Red Tories wont be voting Labour any time soon.
Red Tories will decide the next general election. And the one after that.
Labour won’t win without them. Labour cannot win without them. Labour will only win again when these people are welcomed back. The “Red Tories” are on the rise, and they’re looking for a political home.
Labour will win again. As soon as we want to.
Jamie Reed is the Labour MP for Copeland
