New Statesman & Society, 24 November 1995
Labour's love affair with the Australian Labor Party isn't its first infatuation since it lost the 1979 general election. Paul Anderson looks at the other models Labour has admired in recent years
Australia, it seems, is the flavour of the mid-1990s for the British Labour Party. Labour leader Tony Blair is a good mate of Australian Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating. Blair's deputy, John Prescott, has just been on a fact-finding mission Down Under. It is reported that other Labour frontbenchers have been told to make their way there to find out how gov¬erning is done.
And, of course, it makes a certain amount of sense. British Labour's leadership is short on experience of govern¬ment, and Australia is closer to Britain in terms of political culture than anywhere else that currently has a left-of-centre administration. Observing the Australian Labor Party is probably as good a way as any of finding out about what it's like to be in power.
But at least a word of caution is in order. As John Pilger has argued in his New Statesman & Society columns over the years, the ALP is deeply unattractive in many ways. The last thing Labour needs to emulate is the obsequious attitude of the ALP governments to Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Packer and Alan Bond.
There's also a more general point – that Labour has a history of viewing left-of-centre governments abroad through rose-tinted spectacles. Over the past 16 years, Labour has latched on to a string of different models in the hope that they might provide the magic formula for elec¬tion victory – and each has turned out to be less useful than Labour thought in the first flush of enthusiasm. Labour has cer¬tainly got some learning to do – but it's mostly learning from others' mistakes.
THE FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY 1981-83
The British left has always had a soft spot for France – but there was little in the way of electoral politics to inspire Labour between 1945 and 10 May 1981, when Francois Mitterrand won the presidency of the Fifth Republic at his third attempt.
Mitterrand's success and the subsequent landslide victory of his Socialist Party (PS) in June 1981's elections to the National Assembly came as a pleasant diversion for Labour, which at the time was tearing itself apart in the wake of the defection of the Social Democratic Party. Mitterrand's economic programme-widespread nationalisation, vigorous reflation, workers' control of industry and big increases in welfare benefits and pensions-was similar to the Alternative Economic Strategy that Labour had embraced after its 1979 election defeat, and many Labour intellectuals believed that the French socialists would be able to disprove in practice Margaret Thatcher's dictum that "there is no alternative" to monetarist austerity. Almost as important given the concerns of the time, Mitterrand had declared for denuclearisation of central Europe and included four communist ministers in his first government-leading many left-wingers this side of the Channel to expect that France would at least act as a force for disarmament and east-west detente.
In fact, the new French government soon proved as vigorous in its pursuit of the cold war as any other in the west. Almost immediately after his election, Mitterrand gave strong backing to Nato's plans to station Cruise and Pershing II missiles in western Europe, and his government continued to modernise France's own nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear opinion in the Labour Party – in the driving seat in the early 1980s – had turned against Mitterrand long before the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior by French agents in 1985.
On the economic front, British left disillusionment set in in 1982-83, when Mitterrand was forced, by a mixture of inflation and an unsustainable trade deficit, to perform a series of humiliating U-turns. From spring 1983, he presided over a fiscal and monetary regime in many respects more austere than Thatcher's. The failure of the PS's initial economic strategy did much to persuade Labour's policy-makers thata "go-it-alone" Keynesian reflationary programme was no longer feasible for a medium-sized nation state-but the only Labour people who saw the post-austerity PS governments of 1983-86 and 1988-93 as any kind of model for Labour were admirers of their enthusiasm for European economic and monetary union. Now the PS is out of power, with little prospect of returning in the near future, it has few friends left over here.
THE SWEDISH SOCIAL DEMOCRATS 1982-91
The Swedish Social Democrats have been feted by various Labour admirers here since the 1930s, when, having adopted a radical proto-Keynesian economic policy, they began an uninterrupted period in office that lasted until 1976. But it was during the 1980s, from their victory under Olof Palme in the 1982 general election to their defeat under Ingvar Carlsson in 1991, that their popularity with Labour reached its peak.
One reason was British left-wingers' admiration for the Swedes' neutrality – but more important by far was the economy. As Britain was experiencing the ravages of unemployment and theory government's cuts in spending on the welfare state, Sweden under the Social Democrats was enjoying full employment and the most generous welfare provision in the world.
The Swedes seemed to have succeeded in developing a "third road" model of economic management that avoided both the inflationary dangers of traditional Keynesianism and the mass unemployment of deflationary neo-liberalism. Things began to go wrong in the late 1980s, when inflation started to rise and the economy began to experience balance-of-payments difficulties. The Social Democrats responded with an austerity programme, unemployment increased and their popularity slumped. In 1991, they suffered their worst electoral defeat in more than 60 years.
Although they were returned in the next general election in 1994 – free-market conservatism proved anathema to the electorate – by then Labour had decided that it could not afford to place itself in the high-tax, high-spending camp. The Swedish Social Democrats are likely to be important allies for a Labour government in the European Union. But they are just a little too traditionalist for Tony Blair.
BILL CLINTON’S NEW DEMOCRATS 1992-93
Labour's enthusiasm for Bill Clinton before and immediately after his 1992 election campaign knew no bounds. Labour had just lost a fourth general election in a row, and Clinton's success was widely acclaimed in the Labour Party – and not just by the right.
Although it is the enthusiasm of Labour "modernisers" that is best remembered now, Clinton's insistence during the campaign on the priority of his economic policy message – encapsulated in the famous slogan that dominated his campaign war-room, "It's the economy, stupid" – was embraced by many on the left. ItwasBill Morris, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, who declared of Clinton at a big conference on "Clintonomics" organised by his union and the Guardian in January 1993: "To say that we have nothing to learn is just arrogant nonsense."
Nevertheless, it was undoubtedly the Labour right that bought the whole Clinton package. Probably the most significant purchaser wasTony Blair, whose actions and rhetoric ever since have echoed Clinton's in 1992. As shadow home secretary, he emphasised how tough Labour was on crime just as Clinton had emphasised his own anti-crime credentials (although Blair did not go to the lengths of having anyone executed to prove his seriousness). More important, as Labour leader he has wooed middle-class voters by constantly stressing the extent to which Labour has changed into "new Labour", returning to values that it abandoned in the 1960s and 1970s – exactly as Clinton talked about being a "New Democrat". On a more mundane level, the next general election campaign will be fought by Labour very much on the lines Clinton fought in 1992, with a highly centralised command structure and what Labour media adviser Philip Gould called "speed of response and rebuttal" at the heart of the party's efforts. Labour will soon be moving its key election campaigners into a new hi-tech campaign war-room in MillbankTower.
For all this, there are few senior Labour figures these days who are keen to praise the US president in public. Despite the admiration that Labour politicians and advisers had for his campaign, his record in office has been something of an embarrassment, particularly since the Republican landslide in last year's Congressional elections and Clinton's subsequent desperate lurch to the right in preparation for next year's presidential election.
THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY 1995-
The Australian Labor Party has been in power uninterruptedly since 1983 and has won four successive general elections-but it's only really in the past few months that Labour in Britain has started to enthuse in public.
Australian Labor's biggest fan here is Tony Blair. The Blair family lived in Australia briefly when hewasa small child, and he counts many Australians among his closest friends. In 1982, the young Blair visited Australia, and delivered a lecture on the British Labour Party in which he argued thatthe party had to accept the mixed economy: according to John Rentoul, "It is possible to trace the death of Clause Fourto Perth, Western Australia, in 1982."Duringthat visit, Blair also met many senior Australian Labor figures, including Bob Hawke, who was soon to seize the leadership of the party; he met Paul Keating, the current leaderand prime minister, on his next visit (with Gordon Brown) in 1990.
But it is only since Blair's most recent trip to Australia this summer, when he stayed with Keating before addressinga conference of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, that British Labour has really started to makeafuss aboutthe lessons it can learn from its sister-party Down Under. Labour deputy leader John Prescott made a highly publicised fact-finding tripto Australia last month-and Rotherham MP Denis MacShane enthused in the Guardian about the "compelling model” of the Australian Labor government.
As regular readers of NSS will know from John Pilger's recent columns, Labour's admiration for Australian Labor is anything but uncontroversial. Hawke and Keating (who ousted Hawke in 1991) have certainly proved adept at winning elections, and there are undoubtedly elements of their approach from which Labour can learn positive lessons, such as the accords with the trade unions that have kept industrial relations remarkably sweet. But the ALP's record of providing giant tax breaks and other advantages to big business (particularly giant media corporations) is not the sort of thingthat plays well with British Labour-and the ALP's election-winning streak will come to an end in next spring's general election unless the party recovers from its current low popularity ratings.
THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS 1987-92
The German Social Democrats have not won a general election since 1980, and have been out of government since 1983. But that didn't stop Labour from thinking that the SPD was the answer to its dreams between 1987 and 1992.
One reason was foreign policy, at which the SPD was considered, with some justification, to be expert. Labour leader Neil Kinnock had come to the conclusion after his 1987 general election defeat that unilateral nuclear disarmament was a millstone round Labour's neck-and was insistent that the party should adopt a defence policy that would not leave it isolated in Europe. Labour's stance on Europe also needed to be beefed up: although the promise of withdrawal from the EC had been dropped before 1987, ithad not been properly replaced.
The West German Social Democrats appeared to be the ideal partners with whom to develop a new foreign policy. They seemed a good bet to win the next general election in West Germany, due in 1990, which, because of West Germany's economic and political dominance of western Europe, would have made them the most powerful left-of-centre party on the continent. The SPD also had an impressive group of foreign affairs specialists who were more than happy to help Labour sort itself out. The two parties' leaders had a string of high-level meetings at which they coordinated efforts on the future of Europe and defence and disarmament policy.
Relations between the two parties remain good – but they are nothing like as close these days, largely because the SPD has rather turned its back on the outside world since German unification in 1990.The party lost both the 1990 and 1994 general elections, and since then has been locked in internal dissent as its opinion-poll ratings have slumped. All the same, the SPD remains, with Labour, the European centre- left party with the best prospect of winning a national election in a large EU country – which means that Tony Blair will be keen to keep things sweet.
THE NEW ZEALAND LABOUR PARTY 1984-86
The victory of David Lange's New Zealand Labour Party in 1984 was a cause for celebration on the British Labour left, which was still reeling after the party's disastrous 1983 general election result. Lange was committed to a radical anti-nuclear policy, which included a refusal to allow American nuclear-armed ships to use New Zealand ports. Although New Zealand was a minor player in the cold war, with no nuclear weapons stationed permanently on its soil, Labour's victorywasseen by many in its British sister-party as heartening proof that a firm stance against nuclear weapons need not prove electorally damaging.
The problem was that the anti-nuclear policy was just about all that the New Zealand Labour Party stood for that any self-respecting British leftist could possibly stomach. Lange's government, with finance minister Roger Douglas playing a crucial role, set about privatising the country's public sector, dismantling its welfare state and opening the economy to market forces with a gusto that matched Margaret Thatcher's. "Rogernomics" so disillusioned the Labour left that in 1989 it split to form New Labour, the electorate revolted, and in 1990 the conservative National Party was returned to power in a landslide.
The strength of popular support for Labour's anti-nuclear stance was such that the National government kept it – but by then no one in the British Labour Party could give a damn. These days, the only reason anyone on the British left mentions New Zealand is that it is a model for electoral reformers, having decided to abandon first-past-the-post and adopt a mixed-member system of proportional representation in a referendum in 1992.
MINOR INFATUATIONS 1979-95
There are several examples of left-of-centre parties abroad for which Labour has had only brief or intermittent affections. The party has never really felt at ease with the Mediterranean socialists of Spain, ltaly and Greece, all of whom have been in power for most of the past 16years (although the Italian Socialist Party was effectively destroyed by corruption scandals in the early 1990s), largely because their economic liberalism is, even now, out of keeping with mainstream Labour thinking. Nevertheless, the governments of Felipe Gonzalez' Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Andreas Papandreou's Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) both had their admirers in their first years in office, largely because their foreign policy rhetoric was in tune with Labour's at the time.
Relations have been much closer with the social democratic parties of the smaller northern European countries, particularly the Dutch Labour Party and the Norwegian Labour Party, although neither could really be said to have been a model for British Labour.
Far more important was the enthusiasm of many in Britain (particularly among the European Parliamentary Labour Party) for former French finance ministerJacques Delors as President of the European Commission, in which capacity he produced a plan for economic regeneration in late 1993 that many Labour intellectuals hoped would be the first step on the road to a Europe-wide Keynesian programme of job creation. The plan was effectively killed off last year by the British Tories, and little has been heard of the possibilities of Euro-Keynesianism since Delors' retirement.
Outside western Europe, Labour has had few dalliances. Plenty of Labour people thought that Nicaragua under the Sandinistas was a good thing, but very few believed that Labour had very much to learn directly from Managua – and much the same goes for Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union and Nelson Mandela's South Africa. Israel's stock was low in Labour circles until the 1993 Oslo declaration, and even under the current Labour government has nothing like the status that it had in the 1940sand 1950s.
Which leaves nothing apart from a handful of admiring gestures towards the tiger economies of South-East Asia-although so far not even the boldest Labour moderniser says publicly that Britain should emulate them. Perhaps that's what comes after Labour wins an election...
