Labour needs to stop being the bossing and interfering party

by Peter Watt

Last week’s decision to end the so called bin-taxes was clever politics by the government.  And as there hasn’t been an awful lot of clever politics recently by the government, I thought that it was significant. What was particularly clever was that the weekend “announcement” was actually an announcement that the ending of bin taxes would be announced in about a month’s time.

But the government knows that the local elections and AV referendum (whatever the result) are going to be pretty challenging for them. They know that there is not a lot that they can do to alter that. So they have decided to keep reminding people of what they think the public see as Labour weakness. So they might lose the battle in the next month, but they will keep sowing the seeds of an election victory in 2015. These reminders obviously include playing the blame game on the deficit and attacking Labour’s economic competence. But it also involves something else. Something more personally emotional for many voters. A perceived tendency by the last Labour government to overly interfere in people’s lives.

Tony Blair always used to say that if we fought the Tories on the basis of our big government v their small government, then we would lose. This government knows that he was right. In government we became obsessed with regulations, rules and laws as a way of pursuing laudable public policy goals.  Chips in bins to measure rubbish; the smoking ban; health and safety regulations; child protection checks and rules on the contents of school dinners. If we thought something was bad or undesirable, then we banned it, taxed it or wrote very long policies that told people what to do and not to do.

Each case was no doubt worthy of governmental attention but our only solution seemed to be a big governmental solution. We started with a desire to tackle problems like obesity in children and low levels of household recycling and we ended up as being seen as overly interfering. Public policy objectives that ultimately needed the consent of those affected in order to succeed were being undermined by our perceived top-down approach.

So over the coming months and years as we begin to shape our policy for the general election, it will be vital that we re-define our attitude to the role and extent of the state. We have to make it clear with the policy choices that we make that we trust people to make the right decisions for themselves and their families. That the state will only interfere when there is no other option. And that while a smaller state may not be an explicit policy objective – neither will a bigger one be.

How can we do this?  Well, for starters we should accept that people are perfectly entitled to make choices that we don’t like. I’m not talking about choices that are obviously criminal, but lifestyle choices. People can, and should be allowed to, choose to eat unhealthily, take holidays abroad using planes or drive polluting cars. They might choose to take up a sport – but they might not. These are all their individual choices to make. Our job is not to tell them that they can’t, but to persuade them that the alternative is better or easier. We should remember that “telling people” that they should not do something is likely to be counter-productive.

This will be difficult for Labour as we instinctively tend to feel that the state has a responsibility to try and deal with every societal ill. We will need to learn that many problems are in fact best tackled by individuals and families themselves. We need to cut the umbilical cord – we can’t live people’s lives for them. Actually, not just “cant”; we shouldn’t live people’s lives for them. This doesn’t mean that we don’t care about these problems and issues anymore; it does though mean that we have a clear understanding of what government can and should be able to influence.

Come the next election, we will not just be judged just on the perceptions of our political platform at the time. Our platform will be judged on how we have been perceived to have responded to events over the intervening years. So how we respond now to the big society, welfare reform, free schools and NHS reform will also count. Why? Because, if our response is essentially one of defending existing state producers and solutions, then we will be on the wrong side of the argument. If, however we respond with a more balanced critique that clearly recognises both the strength and weakness of the state as an agent of change, then we will be in a strong position to carry the future.

Our aim should be less big brother and more trusted cousin. The alternative is to play into our opponents’ hands and continue be seen as the party that is less interested in change and more in interfering in people’s lives. The party, indeed, that at allowed the introduction of the bin tax.

Peter Watt was general secretary of the Labour party.


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19 Responses to “Labour needs to stop being the bossing and interfering party”

  1. iain ker says:

    Ah immediately something like scales fell from Peter’s eyes.

    Big whup – you’ve finally realised that there’s not a lot of votes in microchips in wheelie bins, and that outside the TUCLabour Party and The Client State no-one is interested in big government.

    Unfortunately for you (and fortunately for the country) it will take a lot, lot more that that before TUCLabour is seen ever again as fit to run this country.

    The Tories have introduced a nasty policy (over the heads of the LibDems who of course only do ‘nice’ policies) of testing all 2.3 million IB claimants over the next 3 years to see whether they’re actually quite as I’d as they claim to be. This is a very necessary policy – and one that a TUCLabour government would not have done in a hundred years. I have read a TUCLabour MP – A TUCLABOUR MP !!! – (pace Neil Kinnock) describing the IB problem as ‘intractable’ and (of course) blaming it on Fatcha.

    Point being if you’re not prepared to at least try and run the country properly, then don’t bother aiming for power.

    You weren’t fit to govern, all the statistics tell us that; you *aren’t* fit to govern because too many of ‘The New Generation’ are actually The Old Generation that fouled up.

    You need rather more insight than seeing (eventually) the folly of chips in bins.

    And on the subject of Kinnock ; who can forget his great election-losing speech in Sheffield –

    ‘A finger of fudge is just enough to give yooah kids a treat. Nut my kids, nut his kids, nut anyone else’s kids but YOOAH KIDS !!!!’

    When you bring Prescott back, can you bring Kinnock back too – in these austere times we all need a good laugh.

  2. Henrik says:

    The problem here, of course, is that the core Labour electorate is precisely those people whose livings depend upon interfering with others’ lives and creating and running a large State sector.

    Somehow, the Party created by the trades unions for the benefit – and self-improvement – of the working man and woman has become the party of the Spad, the safely-pensioned, comfortably-paid State employee and the coterie of media darlings which supports it.

  3. Simon says:

    “This will be difficult for Labour as we instinctively tend to feel that the state has a responsibility to try and deal with every societal ill.”

    Not necessarily, but in the case of the examples you give, each of the decisions creates negative externalities which impose a cost on the state or society as a whole. E.g. bad diets impose a burden on the NHS; traffic congestion has costs for the wider economy; excessive household waste increases the costs of waste collection and management. So either the state takes action to curb certain behaviours, or it has to pay for the consequences of these behaviours, which ultimately means higher taxes anyway. The decision is not between a “state solution” and a “non-state solution” it’s about which state solution you prefer.

    As for the government “persuading people” that the alternative is “better or easier”, in the case of issues (like public health, waste or pollution) where it is not apparent to people that the alternative is better or easier (because it usually isn’t)I’m not sure how much difference the government can make without threat of sanction.

  4. One problem for Labour however is that if they say that a ‘smaller’ state is better than a ‘bigger’ state, even if their ‘smaller’ state is bigger than the Conservative’s ‘small’ state, then voters will find it even harder to differentiate between the two parties.

    The lines between the parties are already blurred enough.

    In the end, once all parties have very similar policies, the only choice voters will have will be whether they think one bunch of people would be more competant at running the country than the other bunch of people.

  5. Chris says:

    @Peter

    Are you building up a portfolio for a job interview at the Mail or something?

    The announcement wasn’t “clever”, it was a cheap headline that has either been forgotten or was never known about by 99% of the population. The announcement could also blow up in their face if recycling rates drop or fly tipping increases. And what happens if they actually introduce the carrot approach of rewards for recycling using the very same RFID technology as pay-as-you-throw.

    You’re the one playing into our opponents hands by agreeing with their attack lines, we could pledge to limit the size of government to 20% of gdp and they’d still attack us as big government statists. You go and read Times leaders from the 19th century and reformers arguing for Bazalgette’s sewer system are denounced as nanny statists wanting to deprive “John Bull” of his natural right to drink putrid water, live in his own excrement and die of cholera.

    We should be screaming that we aren’t big government, that we want lean efficient public services. That the NHS is actually rated the most efficient healthcare system in the world. That no nutritional standards for schools dinners leads immediately to turkey twizzlers.

  6. Note to Peter: the right-wing press isn’t public opinion

  7. iain ker says:

    We should be screaming that we aren’t big government, that we want lean efficient public services.

    ***************************************************

    But that would be a lie.

  8. paul barker says:

    Another good article but I keep wondering – are you sure you are in the right Party ? Your views would fit much better in The Libdems.

  9. Tokyo Nambu says:

    “. bad diets impose a burden on the NHS”

    They do, but so does horse-riding and playing rugby and having sex. Once the argument becomes common that such-and-such should be punished because it costs the NHS money, it’s an incredibly slippery slope. Being pregnant costs the NHS more than abortion, especially if the foetus is carrying a genetic handicap — should AFP testing be compulsory? It’s precisely this argument that leads to Palin-esque wittering about death panels, and it’s a slippery slope best avoided: if the consequence of bad life choices is a burden on the NHS, then we need to take that cost into the NHS as being the least worst of the alternatives.

  10. taffarel says:

    ‘Note to Peter: the right-wing press isn’t public opinion’

    No but its the view of the majority.

    Get used to it.

  11. Chris says:

    “But that would be a lie.”

    Yawn, no it wouldn’t.

  12. Morel'sGhost says:

    Sorry, but anyone who can write an article about the electoral disadvantages of Labour’s statism (and there was nothing “perceived” about it) without mentioning the National Identity Register, ID cards, the extension of surveillance under RIPA and ContactPoint is a blithering fool. Labour didn’t just attempt to interfere with people’s lives on the margins and on petty irritants like bin taxes; they attempted to fundamentally alter the relationship between state and citizen and destroyed the basis progressive politics in the UK in the process. Every time the Tories or the LibDems play the petty technocracy card from the bottom of the deck, remember whose collective fault it is. There are plenty of people (like me) who hate coalition policies, but I’d vote for them three terms in a row rather than allow the restoration of an abomination like the NIR.

  13. iain ker says:

    we want lean efficient public services.

    **************************************

    You had thirteen years to create these lean efficient public services – where are they?

    Oi, Chris, mate – if you’re tired, go to bed earlier.

  14. Rob Marchant says:

    By and large completely agree, Peter. Just one point: think it’s important to distinguish between, on the one hand, things which negatively affect others (high-polluting cars) and those which largely only affect ourselves (obesity). The first, what economists call an “externality”, are some of the few things which really do require state action. The second are where we should think very carefully about involving the state.

    The emphasis for state action should in these cases neither prohibition, nor moralising, both of which are counter-productive, as you say, but incentives: positive where possible but with the option of negative if not. For example, high-polluting cars will eventually kill us all if the state doesn’t remove the externality, i.e. incentivise us not to use them. So we should.

  15. iain ker says:

    I’d vote for them three terms in a row rather than allow the restoration of an abomination like the NIR.

    *********************************

    Well said Morel’s ghost.

    The thinking that paying £36 x 15,000,000 (+ the same again in bureaucracy) for CRB’ing a quarter of the country on the basis that ‘if it only saves one child’s life it’s worth it’ is another example of an administration that was completely and utterly out to lunch, (dinner, breakfast, and lunch again)

  16. Simon says:

    Tokyo Nambu – I’m quite happy to agree with you there, but that’s my point: either we incentivise people to have better diets, or we accept the public cost of poorer diets and tax people more to subsidise it. The latter is still a state solution, though not such an obvious one.

  17. AmberStar says:

    @ Peter Watt

    Last week’s decision to end the so called bin-taxes was clever politics by the government.
    ————————————————————
    Really? I am more interested in politics than the average person & I haven’t read or heard anything about bin-taxes.
    😎

  18. Richard says:

    “The Tories have introduced a nasty policy (over the heads of the LibDems who of course only do ‘nice’ policies) of testing all 2.3 million IB claimants over the next 3 years to see whether they’re actually quite as I’d as they claim to be. This is a very necessary policy – and one that a TUCLabour government would not have done in a hundred years.”

    Iain Ker, what a monumental ignoramus you truly are. The policy was introduced by the last Labour governent.

    If you’re going to rant on a politics blog, at least do yourself the decency of not letting your ignorance make an utter fool of you.

  19. Richard says:

    ‘Note to Peter: the right-wing press isn’t public opinion’

    “No but its the view of the majority.”

    According to which poll? The meagre 36% that the Tories garnered in May 2010?

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