Friday 14 May 1993

COUNCIL DEALS ARE A LOCAL MATTER

Tribune leader, 14 May 1993
  
The Tories suffered humiliating defeats last week in the Newbury by-election and the county council elections. But Labour has precious little to celebrate.

In Newbury, the Labour candidate, Steve Billcliffe, got 1,151 votes, less than 2 per cent of the vote, and lost his deposit. It was the lowest Labour share of the vote in any parliamentary election since 1918 and, con­trary to Labour claims (after the result) that the party had run a deliberately low-key campaign, it happened despite strenu­ous Labour efforts to improve on last year's general election showing.

This cannot simply be dismissed with a casual shrug of the shoulders. Although it is true that, as Peter Mandelson said, the voters of Newbury were essentially voting against the Tories, it is also true that the way they did so was by placing their cross­es next to the name of the Liberal Demo­crat candidate.

Given the scale of Labour's humiliation, it is not treachery to ask whether it is worth going to the expense of fighting by-elections in seats that Labour knows it can­not win. It is ludicrous to claim that by-elections are an opportunity to get the mes­sage out to the nation: in Newbury the me­dia treated Labour as an irrelevant side-show. And the claim that running a candi­date in every by-election is essential if Labour is to maintain its credibility as a national party is more than outweighed if results prove that Labour's claims to be a truly national party are exaggerated.

Of course, there are few seats in the country where Labour starts from quite such a low base of support as in Newbury – and there is always the argument that fighting hopeless seats is good practice for candidates and for the party apparatus. But Labour would be foolish to press on with its present policy without some seri­ous thought about its effectiveness.

Newbury saw a level of anti-Tory tacti­cal voting unlike anything witnessed before in a by-election, and it was not an isolated phenomenon. Throughout the south, voters in the county council elec­tions backed the candidate most likely to keep the Tory out. The result was humilia­tion for the Conservatives as they lost council after council. The main beneficia­ries were the Liberal Democrats – and this has inevitably raised the question of whether Labour should relax its antipathy to Lib-Lab coalitions in local government. In Tribune's view, the answer is simple: the party should allow county Labour groups to make up their own minds without inter­ference from the centre.

The more important issue is the implica­tions of the results for national politics. If the Liberal Democrat surge proves to be a one-off, Labour's refusal to counte­nance talk of pacts and coalition will be vindicated. If, however, it presages a Liber­al Democrat revival that does serious dam­age to Labour's chances in those parts of the south where the party needs to win seats, Labour's line will look dangerously complacent and short-sighted.

Labour can see off the threat from the Liberal Democrats but only if it develops policies and a style of politics that appeal to people who are now tempted to vote Lib­eral Democrat. The problem is that it is still by no means clear that the party has either the will or the imagination to do so.


Desai wrongly sacked to save Smith blushes

Last week, Meghnad Desai was fired from his position as a front-bench Labour economic spokesman in the House of Lords. In his Tribune column last week he had written that, if Labour aban­doned its policy of increasing income tax for high earners, he would "remove zero-rating for VAT on all items" and compen­sate for the regressive impact of such a move by increasing benefits to the poorest.

No one in Gordon Brown’s office had actually read the article, so Mr Brown was caught unawares last Thursday when Norman La­ment, giving the false impression that the article backed Tory policy on tax, quoted it at him in the House of Commons. Subsequently, John Major did the same to John Smith during Prime Minister's Questions on the same day: Mr Smith was made to look a complete fool after claiming that the article had been written while Professor Desai was on the back benches. Hours lat­er, Professor Desai was relieved of his post. The sacking has been treated as some­thing of a joke by most of the media, but it is nothing of the kind. In his Tribune column, Professor Desai was expressing opinions that are in no sense at odds with Labour Party policy – and the reason they are not is simple. Put bluntly, there is no finalised Labour policy on taxation and benefits. At the insistence of none other
than Mr Smith, the party contracted all that out to the Commission on Social Justice, which is supposed to have complete freedom to examine the options on funding the welfare state.

Professor Desai, by suggesting an .option for taxation policy, was playing a wholly le­gitimate part in a necessary debate. That he was sacked for doing so gives the impression not just that Mr Smith is petty and vindictive but, more importantly, that the whole party leadership is deeply intellectually insecure and intolerant of discussion. So much for "open opposition", the buzz-phrase in so many party documents in recent months.