We Must Learn The Lessons

Below is an article I've written for the Guardian's Comment Is Free website on Thursday's local elections:

We must learn the lessons

John McDonnell

May 4, 2007 5:40 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_mcdonnell/2007/05/we_must_learn_the_lessons.html

The trend in recent years has been for Labour to dip at local elections, but to bounce back at general elections. However this cycle is unsustainable: at each election that dip is getting deeper, and our recovery less. On the basis of last night, the best we could hope for is a hung parliament at the next election.

Having canvassed with Labour candidates in Scotland, Wales and in several English local authority areas, I was not surprised that our vote held up better than was touted. However, we should not believe our own propaganda - playing up fears of a wipeout in the media may soften the blow of these results but, make no mistake, these results are certainly not good.

A share of the vote of just 27% is deeply worrying. The swing against Labour averaged between 5-7% across Britain. Although it is a crude analysis, if this was replicated at a general election the Tories would either be the largest party in a hung parliament or might just scrape an outright majority.

To learn the lessons of last night, we must understand and address what has increasingly turned off our voters, and what has demoralised and weakened our activist base.

By the time all the counts are completed, hundreds of Labour councillors will have been voted out not for their own personal or collective failures, but because of the way New Labour has alienated so many voters and and our own activists - on whom elections are won and lost. One positive is the lack of a breakthrough for the BNP, who fielded more candidates than they have for a generation.

In Wales, Labour remains the biggest party and voters have certainly recognised the "clear red water" between Welsh Labour and New Labour. Even so, if the results of last night were replicated in a General Election, we would lose eight Labour MPs.

In Scotland, the SNP ran a basically negative campaign with little to say about how they would improve Scotland. The fact that they have polled so well is testament to the strength of latent anti-Labour sentiment upon which they have capitalised.

If we as a party are serious about devolution, then we must respect councils and nations enough to determine their own agenda. When I was a GLC councillor, we won and held London as Labour was imploding nationally - running popular campaigns against the Thatcher Government and fighting on our own agenda.

As part of my leadership campaign, which has won the support of a number of local councillors, I am advocating strengthened local government so that councils have the power and resources to address the needs of their communities. In key areas such as regeneration, housing, and education, local councils have lost considerable powers to respond to their communities' needs.

The significance of yesterday's election is to reinforce the message that there is a need for a thorough and objective debate about how our party can re-inspire the broad coalition of support that brought us to power in 1997. Many will have felt relief that this was no wipeout, but it was only a reprieve. We must not repeat what happened to the Tories in the 90s, when they never took that opportunity and eventually went down to cataclysmic defeat.

Parties don't lose overnight, there is a gradual erosion of their base and electoral machine, which leads to sometimes cataclysmic defeat.

Our supporters need re-inspiring and our coalition rebuilding. What better method could there be than a democratic debate for the leadership involving all our members and affiliates?

Good Luck to All our Candidates in Today's Elections

I haven't had the chance to blog this week until now because I have been campaigning in the elections. After canvassing on a visit to Crewe on Friday, I was in Leicester on Saturday and on Monday took a campaign team to canvass for Sue Lent's campaign in Cardiff central for the Welsh Assembly elections. On Tuesday I was in Liverpool at the front of the May Day march.

I was born in Liverpool and my Dad was a Liverpool docker so it was good to be in the city meeting some of the retired dockers. I actually met a few people who lived down our street.

I am always impressed by the hard work our candidates put in on the ground. It is often frustrating that local candidates are not judged on their performance locally but on people's reaction to national politics. The same can apply to the Scottish and Welsh elections.

I wish all our candidates success in today's elections. It is absolutely critical that we especially halt any rise in support for the BNP. Retaining control in Scotland and Wales is essential if we are maintain the momentum of progressive politics. It is the same in local government. Last year the Tories took majority control in my local council of Hillingdon even though we held virtually all of the seats in my own constituency. The best example of what Tory control means in practice is that this month the Tory leader awarded himself a rise in his allowance to £66,000 pa and at the same time announced the closure of our outward bound youth centre on costs grounds.

So good luck to all our candidates in today's elections.

Return of the broad church

Below is a piece I've written in today's Guardian.


As the prime minister leaves office, what could be more natural than Labour party supporters wanting a say in where the party should go next, especially after 10 years in power? Why then do Gordon Brown's supporters appear intent on avoiding a leadership election in which party members and trade unionists can participate? Perhaps it isn't the fear of losing that worries them but anxiety about what a leadership election could bring forth.

Labour leaders up to and including John Smith largely respected the broad church within the party. However, for more than a decade the Blair-Brown New Labour faction has discouraged the voicing of any alternative views. If, in a leadership election, there was a sizeable vote for an alternative vision for the future, Labour's broad church tradition would have been reasserted. Any leader wanting to unite and mobilise the party in the runup to the next general election would have to respect this re-emergence, both in policy formulation and in the construction of government.

In recent weeks I have been canvassing in Wales, Scotland and many local authority areas in England. There is a widespread expectation that the efforts of Labour Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly members and councillors will be overshadowed as voters cast their ballot on the basis of Westminster politics. Yet a vote for Labour on Thursday is a vote against the worst excesses of New Labour in Westminster.

Without even having revenue-raising powers, the Welsh assembly has forged ahead with policies on education and health, resisting the marketisation seen in England: league tables and Sats have been abolished, and there are no city academies or trust schools; there are no foundation hospitals, and prescription charges have been abolished. In Scotland, care charges for the elderly have been abolished and there are no student top-up fees. Many Labour councils have similarly proud achievements. These are policies backed by most Labour members - and on which I am standing.

If we are to prevent the Tories returning to power we need to understand not only how New Labour has failed to live up to the hopes of the country in 1997, but also why. The leadership debate is as much a challenge for the Labour left as it is for New Labour. It provides an opportunity not just to demonstrate that the left has an understanding of the 21st-century globalised economy but also that it has the imagination to excite and mobilise our communities around an alternative vision and set of policies.

New Labour's leaders have adapted enthusiastically to the changes corporate-driven globalisation has effected, bringing the ideas and practices of the market into everyday life. All too often socialists and progressives have ceded ground to New Labour by being too defensive, even backward-looking. We cannot turn the clock back, but that does not mean we should accept the global market economy as the last word.

We need a new approach that deepens the quality of democracy throughout society, while establishing social rights to affordable housing, a citizen's income, free education, childcare and healthcare, as well as care in older age - in essence a new constitutional settlement for the 21st century. Such a debate would re-engage all those who since 1997 have not voted, and many young people.

In deciding not only the next Labour leader but also the next prime minister, the forthcoming contest is an opportunity to re-engage the British public in genuine political debate. That can only happen if there is a contest - and that can only be good for democracy.

YouGov poll puts me in 2nd place behind Brown

I was pleased to see that a YouGov poll of Labour party members published today in The Sunday Times placed me in second place behind Gordon Brown in the upcoming leadership election. Before I'm accused of spinning, here are the figures: Gordon Brown - 80%; John McDonnell - 9%; Michael Meacher - 6%; and Charles Clarke - 5%.

However, bear in mind that this result has been achieved despite the fact that, unlike the other candidates, I was a virtually unknown backbencher when I launched - and despite the fact that this campaign has received very little media coverage. I strongly believe that the reason I've been placed second at this stage is because of the hard work everyone has put into building a real grassroots campaign. I've always made it clear that this campaign was about engaging with Labour party members, supporters and trade unionists - in contrast with the usual approach, which is to confine the campaign to the Westminster Bubble with no consultation with grassroots activists. I think that it is a real achievement to be ahead of two former ministers and second place behind Brown at this stage in the campaign.

This poll shows what could be achieved during the main campaign. The media will have no choice but to start giving us coverage. Labour party members and trade unionists will finally be given the opportunity to hear exactly where I'm coming from. I will be given a platform to advocate Real Labour policies which are supported by the mainstream of our party and millions of ordinary people - whether that be direct investment in council housing, an end to the war in Iraq, publicly owned public services, a green energy policy based on renewable power sources, the restoration of trade union rights and civil liberties, a Real Living Wage of at least £7 an hour, renationalisation of our railways, an all-out war against inequality and child poverty, the restoration of free university education, support for universal comprehensive education, or the immediate restoration of the pensions-earnings link.

The main campaign will put us in a position to advocate socialism that is relevant to the 21st century, put the Left back on the map and reconnect the Labour party with its members and supporters.