Progressive McCarthyism and the fear of ACL Soze

by Dan Hodges

The terror. The stomach-churning, sheet-drenching, palpitation-inducing fear that gnaws at the heart of the people’s party.

At night it infiltrates our dreams. During the day it invades our subconscious.

He could come back. They could come back. We could lose our party once again.

Tony Blair. New Labour. Once they were a leader and political program; successful ones at that.

Now they are bogeyman. Tales to scare the children. Anthony Charles Lynton Blair – our very own  Keyser Soze.

The Labour party has been seized by a form of progressive McCarthyism. Beneath every bed lieTory traitors. Within every closet lurk Blairite counter-revolutionaries. In every basement there are secret cabals yearning for a return for the lost leader, David Miliband.

The local elections were a great result, say the true believers. We have a mountain to climb,  but we have at least reached base camp. Ed has only been in post eight months. Give it a rest, and him time.

Then the terror finds a voice. The Blairites are agitating. They are plotting. Keyser Soze is coming for us again.

Last week I spoke to a friend who’s a well connected Conservative;  in the current mood, it was itself a risky act. He lay out calmly and succinctly the Tory view of the political landscape. The local elections were a clear  success. They had expected to suffer significant losses, though not on the scale predicted by many pundits. But they had not expected gains. The results in Wales, the Midlands, parts of Yorkshire and the South exceeded their internal predictions. There were some concerns over their lack of progress in some of the northern cities. They would be closely watching the result in London next year. But the issue for them was no longer whether they faced a significant threat from Labour, but whether they will be in position to secure an outright majority at the next election, and by what margin. Their private polling indicated Ed Miliband is demonstrably failing to connect with the electorate. “The fact is that in an election campaign he just won’t be able to hold his own against Cameron”, was the verdict.

I also spoke to a Labour supporting political journalist. His view was that “the local election results were much worse than I was expecting”. He added, “I’ve been approached by at least two or three MPs, people who haven’t spoken up before. They’re very down. They think things are headed in the wrong direction”.

I then spoke to a shadow cabinet source. “Look”, he said, “don’t believe what anyone tells you. However it looks on the surface, it’s always worse behind the scenes. Things are bad in here. Very bad”.

But we don’t want to hear any of this. Instead, we are alert to a different sound. The creak on the staircase. The rattle of the window frame. The tell-tale signs that the Blairite ultras are once more on the prowl.

On Friday, another journalist and I discussed the state of the party. “The shadow cabinet is basically falling into three camps”, he said. “The people who are not willing to do anything about the lack of direction, the people who can’t be bothered to do anything and the people who want to do something but haven’t got a clue what it should be”. Collectively we identified seven shadow cabinet members who fitted one of those three categories. Their analysis of Labour’s predicament sat somewhere between disillusion and despair. But all of them recognised that the party was headed in the wrong direction. In fact, the consensus was that the party wasn’t heading anywhere at all. “Look”, said one shadow cabinet source, “I didn’t vote for Ed, but he’s still leader. I want to try and get behind him. But what am I supposed to be getting behind? There’s no vision, no strategy, nothing. It’s just a vacuum”.

No vision maybe. But we have our nightmare. The lurch to the right.  A fire-sale of our values. Keyser Soze and his disciples are again stalking our soul.

Labour is no longer a party on a mission. Instead we are a party whistling past the graveyard. The opinion polls aren’t that bad. Ed’s ratings aren’t that bad. The election results were quite good.

And as we tiptoe through the darkness, so we seize on every chink of light amid the gloom. We parse every speech, seizing upon a phrase here, or a sentence there. “The squeezed middle”, “the jilted generation”, “a new generation for change”, “the promise of Britain”. All around us people are asleep. Oblivious. But we cling to these empty words, our comforters, as we continue our fearful, lonely  journey.

And the terror marches with us. It would be stupid, we say, to set out a detailed policy program so far out from a general election. OK, comes the response, so why do we need to stick with our commitment to retain a 50% tax rate. Dear God, ditch the 50% tax rate? Why don’t you just throw open all the doors and windows? Invite Keyser Soze back into the room?

Shouldn’t we be a bit worried about our leader’s poor approval ratings? Worried? For goodness sake. Ed’s only been leader 8 months. No one has good approval rating after 8 months. Except for Him. He had good ratings. Do you want Him back as your leader?

Appealing to the Lib Dems is all well and good. But what about Tories. Don’t we need to attract southern Tories if we’re to win again? Tories? Reach out to Tories? Have you forgotten? Is your memory so short? That’s what He did. Remember. For pity’s sake, don’t your remember?

Ed Miliband isn’t Labour’s problem. The irresolution, timidity and inconsistency currently characterising his leadership are mere reflections of the phobia gripping his party. He was not elected because he represented the future. He was elected because he represented a bulwark against the past. Ed might not help us win. But he may just help us forget.

Except that he can’t. We can’t. We are suffering the political equivalent of post traumatic stress disorder. Say we must stand firm in Libya and we are transported to the deserts of Iraq. Say we must adopt a pragmatic response to the cuts and we see an exodus of our heartlands.

We are blinded by the terror. There are people within the Labour party, some of them around the leader, who would prefer to see David Cameron remain in Downing Street than have Ed Miliband, or anyone else,  oust him via a “New Labour” prospectus. Keyser Soze taking his seat at the cabinet table. The final apocalypse.

This is what we have become. A party scared of its own shadow. Haunted  by its own past.

We could face our demons. But we choose not to. Instead, we pull up the bed sheet, and bury our face beneath the pillow. If we lay still, very, very still, perhaps he will pass on by.

Meanwhile, out in the darkness, Kesyer Soze laughs his mocking laugh. His legacy cemented; by our fear.

Dan Hodges is contributing editor of Labour Uncut.


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16 Responses to “Progressive McCarthyism and the fear of ACL Soze”

  1. WHS says:

    The fact is that the likes of Ed Miliband is more likely to listen to Liberal Conspiracy – where they are busy debating how wonderful it is for the two Toronto parents to call their kid “Storm”, not tell anyone if it’s a boy or a girl, and “release” it of stultifying transphobic gender stereotypes – than he is to read this. He’s the new Mike Foot, Dan, and you may as well bang your head on a brick wall.

  2. donpaskini says:

    “The fact is that the likes of Ed Miliband is more likely to listen to Liberal Conspiracy”

    If only 🙂

    Good to know that the excuses are getting lined up. “The reason why we lost was because Ed listened too much to the librulses and not enough to the brains trust who have been slagging him off since day 1 of his leadership, whinging and moaning to journalists and coming up with policy winners like “let’s concede that the Tories are correct about the economy”.

    “There are people within the Labour party, some of them around the leader, who would prefer to see David Cameron remain in Downing Street than have Ed Miliband, or anyone else, oust him via a “New Labour” prospectus.”

    You have got carried away with your rhetoric. Can you name, say, five people within the Labour Party (let alone any around the leader) who believe this?

  3. CS Clark says:

    Much as I enjoy your stream-of-consciousness rants, any irony in ‘The Labour party has been seized by a form of progressive McCarthyism. Beneath every bed lie Tory traitors. Within every closet lurk Blairite counter-revolutionaries. In every basement there are secret cabals yearning for a return for the lost leader, David Miliband’ is undercut somehwhat by quoting an anonymous shadow cabinet member predicting doom. (I assume it’s the same one as usual. And really, can you not even name the journalists who you discussed the state of the party with?)

    I offer this not as a criticism of your political diagnosis, which remains admirably consistent – don’t be frightened of that bogeyman, be frightened of this bogeyman – but to point out that the enjoyment this reader can get in seeing how long you can torture an analogy is lessened when such contradictions occur in the same article.

    Unless it’s not irony, of course. Unless ‘Then the terror finds a voice. The Blairites are agitating. They are plotting. Keyser Soze is coming for us again.’ is meant to be a simple statement of fact. In which case, I apologise.

  4. Don Gately says:

    good article – and you could add to that the fact that the only political philosophy really emerging is the deeply conservative Blue Labour (not that it’s an especially coherent or cogent philosophy) with its belief we should wind back the clock and retreat to a working class golden age which never existed

  5. BenM says:

    Whatever the Party needs to face the challenges of the future, it won’t get any thanks or praise for turning itself into Tory Lite (Blair and Brown did that. Result? Infamy, distrust and derision is massive quantities).

    Hopefully the Party will ignore the shrill why-oh-why-ing on this site (no wonder it gets quoted so approvingly by Conservative sympathisers).

  6. AnneJGP says:

    Labour party members need to decide what the Labour party is for. Once they’ve decided that, they can see what the non-tribal voters think of it.

    Last time round the loop, Mr Kinnock went to enormous trouble to defeat the people the non-tribal voters found most off-putting. And lost the election.

    Mr Blair then started from the opposite end, establishing what the voters wanted to see and shaping the Labour party to offer what was acceptable.

    Now we’re back in the “Mr Kinnock” phase again, Mr Blair is being reviled by his own party exactly because he offered voters what they found acceptable. (Remarkably, Mr Kinnock himself was the first person I heard uttering the phrase “we’ve got our party back”.)

    From this, it would appear that Labour’s best way forward is to change the electorate.

  7. Not a Blairite says:

    I am not a Blairite but I have no confidence in the current leader. The Tories and Liberals don’t put up with dud leaders they elect winners. While the Labour party sits there letting this guy drift on we are heading for a MASSIVE defeat in the London elections next year and certainly at the 2015 election. Those of us working on the ground amongst normal people and not in the Westminster bubble are seeing the first effects of what the Tory-led government is doing to destroy local communities again. If the Labour party do not put aside their beloved ideological purity and change leaders to an election WINNER way before 2015 you will be betraying a whole new jobless, mentally stressed generation. Why do Labour supporters love to wallow in opposition? Wake up!

  8. Edward Carlsson Browne says:

    Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

    Conversely, sometimes you’re just paranoid.

  9. Dan Hodges says:

    Donpaskini,

    “Can you name, say, five people within the Labour Party (let alone any around the leader) who believe this?”

    Yep…

  10. Dan Hodges says:

    CSClark

    “And really, can you not even name the journalists who you discussed the state of the party with?”

    Nope…

  11. paul barker says:

    And I thought Libdems were good at self-pity, we have nothing on you lot.
    Unfortunately none of you have progressed to the point of taking any responsibility for Labours problems. No-one forced Labour to run up huge debts for example & almost no-one objected at the time.

  12. Alan L says:

    As a Blair voter and Cameron voter, I am intrigued by the behavioural differences between left and right.

    Why is it that the Tories revere their three-time election winning PM, carefully ignoring her faults (all PMs go bonkers at the end it seems).

    Whereas Labour seem ashamed that they had the same success in Blair? Possibly a bigger success, as he does not divide the country the way that Thatcher does.

    I am genuinely puzzled.

  13. donpaskini says:

    ““Can you name, say, five people within the Labour Party (let alone any around the leader) who believe this?”

    Yep…”

    Go on then – name names…

  14. Dan Hodges says:

    donpaskini,

    That’s not how it works with off-the record sources Don. They stay off the record:

    a: So people feel able to speak freely
    b: So people like you can cling to the hope that non of it’s true, and a united Labour movement is striding purposefully towards victory

  15. CS Clark says:

    “Why is it that the Tories revere their three-time election winning PM, carefully ignoring her faults (all PMs go bonkers at the end it seems).

    Whereas Labour seem ashamed that they had the same success in Blair? ”

    Good question. Possibly because Blair was never the sole figure at the top of the tree, possibly because he defined himself against his party more, possibly because Thatcher had better external enemies, possibly because seeing electoral success as down to one man isn’t actually in the DNA of lefties, possibly because Conservatives are better at airbrushing out the niggles as long as it leads to winning. Possibly because the constant drip-drip of loss of voters and members was recognised as leading to a disaster before the end, much as football supporters can see relegation coming when the manager spends millions on a bunch of numpties.

    Personally I don’t think he went bonkers at the end.

    Now answer the related supplementary questions for extra credit.

    1. Would the electoral fortunes of the Conservative Party have been better or worse if they had emulated the thoughts and policies of their heroine even more than they did in elections from 1997-2010?
    2. Discuss why, despite all their other differences, both Labour and Conservative parties are advised that the surest way to win elections is to beat up those to their left.

    Candidates are advised not to answer with tedentious references to films from the early- to mid-90s.

  16. Edward Carlsson Browne says:

    c. Because without reliance on anonymous sources, the doom and gloom brigade would have to work a little bit harder to make the claim that Labour will never win another election unless we do exactly what they say.
    d. Because without reliance on anonymous sources, said brigade might also have to drop the hysteria and realise that the soft left are just not that scary.

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