The dynamic of politics, as the New Year approaches, is in some ways unexpected. The Coalition remains focused with a clear agenda and policies to give it effect. These policies may not be popular, but there is an aura of firm government and pursuing the national interest, even if there is argument as to what that best interest might be. The Tories are advancing in the polls; The Lib Dems, though battered by having to shoulder political responsibility after decades of saying whatever came to mind, are no longer sinking and their leaders have been able to articulate the restraining roll they play in government.
Labour is flat lining in the doldrums and, save for a brief moment during phone hacking, looks pretty lacklustre. It has a major problem. The current politics of the U.K. and the world are driven by economic issues. The top team in Labour, Milliband, Balls and Cooper were all with Gordon Brown in the treasury for their earlier political careers. During that period, the Treasury made the greatest miscalculations in all its history. The growth proclaimed as everlasting, was an illusion driven by unsustainable borrowing at every level, the gap between rich and poor grew to a chasm and the end of boom and bust turned into the biggest bust ever. Furthermore such was the dominance of the then Chancellor and and so long his feud with his Prime Minister, whose job he coveted, that only one credible figure emerged to take the economic reins as the crisis burst upon the world. He, Alastair Darling, has now retired from front bench politics.
This leaves Labour without a credible shadow chancellor and Balls talking unconvincing nonsense. The inability of this leadership team to capitalise on the extraordinary political opportunities available to the opposition, is directly related to their common apprenticeship and common responsibility for the crisis in the economy. The impact of Labour’s economic mismanagement was global, but every fool knows the epicentre of the crisis was London, even if the initial rupture occurred in New York. It is true that the Tories in power would have done no better and that many of the structural flaws and misguided political verities can be trace back to Thatcher. Nevertheless the Tories and their reluctant partners, the Lib Dems, have learned to do the sums, whilst the Treasury has come to its senses. Only Labour clings to the wild and hallucinatory notion that more government spending would make things come right.
Yet the opportunities for Labour remain. It is a simple menu. It must show it has a convincing plan for economic recovery which adds up and convinces markets from which, in government, it would have to borrow. It must show how it is going to close the gap between rich and poor. It must have a plan to re-balance the economy away from consumption and into production. It must show a route to full employment through wealth creating jobs which contribute to the coffers of the state and not one through employment in quangos which sap those coffers dry. It must bring order and fairness to energy costs, banking, health and education. It must show it has developed a foreign policy which declines to go to some costly and counter productive war every time the Pentagon gets trigger happy.
There is more, but success with that list would be enough. All of it is challenging but possible, some of it is not even difficult. The voters are hungry for evidence that Labour knows what to do. The most extraordinary thing about 2011 was the failure of the Milliband leadership to demonstrate that it did indeed know what to do or to make pronouncements which were credible. This has proved a dreadful disappointment to millions. 2012 has to be the year when Labour got a grip of itself. Only then can it lay claim to getting a grip of the country.
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