In an article in the Telegraph, Lord Bilimoria raised concerns about the incoherent and unambitious vision promoted by Ed Miliband and the Labour party in the run up to the 2015 General Election. In the piece he hit out at Ed Miliband’s anti-business message and asked the Labour party to put forth a genuine, and economically credible, alternative to Britain’s future.
Labour is going backwards
“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry … upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. So read Clause IV of the constitution of the Labour Party until Tony Blair replaced it in 1995.
The phrase is a stark reminder of how far British politics has come over the past twenty years. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the central question that we were called upon to answer on Election Day was not an appraisal of policy but rather ‘whose side are you on? The workers, or the bosses?’
The truth, of course, is that good governance must be about serving both. Businesses cannot create wealth without the dedication and graft of their workforces and that contribution must be acknowledged, but without entrepreneurs and business-owners there would be no workforce at all.
Shifting Britain’s political dialogue from one of class and division to one in which the primary debate was how to make a modern economy work for everyone is one of the greatest contributions of the New Labour movement. Thanks to Ed Miliband, it seems unlikely to be its most lasting.
The opening weeks of the General Election campaign have made clear that Labour’s leader has little interest in presenting a vision that includes British business. Instead he has exhibited a startling lack of understanding as to how wealth and employment are created in our country — a fact that has hamstrung his party’s ability to offer a genuinely inclusive vision for the country’s future.
To be absolutely clear, this is not a question of party politics. New Labour’s record in government is one of which it should, in many respects, be proud. The problem is that the Party’s current leadership is failing to present the kind of inclusive economic message that was put forward so successfully by Tony Blair.
The suggestion that Britain is suffering an “epidemic” of zero-hours contracts is a case-in-point. Exploitative contracts are, of course, deplorable and the stories of employees having to travel long distances only to be told there is no work are cause for concern. The fact is, however, that fewer than 1 in 40 workers is subject to a zero-hours contract and, of those, 66% say they don’t wish to work more hours than they currently do.
That is not to say that government should not aim to help the remaining 34% of zero-hours workers to find contracts that better suit their needs, but to make the issue as central to his campaign as Miliband has done speaks of an agenda focused on stirring up hostility to businesses rather than working alongside them to create inclusive growth that leaves no one behind.
Labour’s recent attack on ‘non-dom’ tax status tells a similarly regressive story. While there are legitimate arguments to say that the legislation is in need of modernisation, Ed Balls himself told journalists earlier this year that the prospect of such measures raising money were dubious at best.
The great irony is that, in trying to stir up animosity between employees and employers by blowing issues like zero-hours contracts and ‘non-dom’ tax status out of proportion, the current Labour leadership is allowing some of the coalition government’s greatest failures go unchallenged.
The announcement from the Conservatives that they will commit to a four-submarine Trident system is grounds for praise, but that Labour has persistently abstained from condemning David Cameron’s failure to commit to keeping military spending at the 2% of GDP stipulated by NATO is deeply disappointing. Particularly given that it was a Labour government that demonstrated the value of our military in pushing NATO and the United States to take action in Kosovo, averting possible genocide.
On immigration too, another issue crucial for any government seeking to present a genuinely national vision, Labour has been dismally silent. The damage caused by Theresa May’s economically illiterate crusade against migrants — not least her, now thankfully kyboshed, plans to sent foreign students home as soon as they graduate — has been huge.
Yet, so busy has Ed Miliband been in trying to resurrect the social divisions of the 1970s, he has neglected to offer the electorate any kind of alternative to the alienation of British allies, from Delhi to Warsaw, which this coalition government has engaged in.
Labour’s leader is fond of saying that he plans to create an economy that works for everyone. If that is truly his goal he must leave behind the overblown platitudes of class-warfare and put forward a genuinely comprehensive vision of the country he wants to create. That would give Britain the choice it deserves.