Considering the turnaround in fortunes during and after the 2017 general election, why didn’t Labour win? The answer is to be found both in the Labour party’s governance, and in the whole system of British government, explains Ed Straw

Straw, Ed

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7/7/2017 How weak governance stopped Labour winning the general election | British Politics and Policy at LSEhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-weak-governance-stopped-labour-winning/ 1/4How weak governance stopped Labour winning the general electionConsidering the turnaround in fortunes during and after the 2017 general election,why didn’t Labour win? The answer is to be found both in the Labour party’sgovernance, and in the whole system of British government, explains Ed Straw. Given the dire display of their government opponents, some have asked thelegitimate question: why did Labour not win? Let’s start with New Labour, a body thatboth connected with the real world and failed to grasp the big levers for change. This government,busy attempting renewal on all fronts, failed to renew itself. Stuck with those answers it first thought ofin public sector reform, the old guard of dominant ministers and advisers hung on for far too long.Fresh blood, and with it fresh thinking and fresh faces, was needed and never happened.The New Labour government also suffered from the absence of serious competition – a consequenceof First Past the Post (FPTP). Representative democracy is competition, but when one major party isout of action – as the Conservatives were for most of this period – then standards drop. New Labourhad little to challenge it, until David Cameron appeared. Even then, it took some doing to lose to anOld Etonian ex-PR executive.Of course, even with an effective choice of only two parties, standards will never be that high. Anyself-regarding competition authority in the world would rule FPTP illegal. But it is a challenge to getacross to the average party politico, eyeing all that apparent power, that he or she would do a farbetter job under Proportional Representation. But they would. Theresa May could even get round tounderstanding that, when she comes to write her memoirs. But, few of them get it before, alas fewerstill with power in their hands.That absence of a credible alternative allowed the remarkably self-indulgent Blair-Brown feud to fillthe void. Its continual strife sucked energy, purpose, and votes. New Labour had demanded disciplinefrom its members as the price of election, yet tolerated the most self-centred and ill-disciplinedleadership. Both should have read the Riot Act through the party’s governance.Another great irony here is that every government in the world would improve – and its politicians bemore successful – with comprehensive, independent, and balanced feedback. None has this. This isone of the several large reasons for global discontent with government performance – local, national,regional, and global. If you don’t know the score, how do you know if you’re winning? You don’t. If youdon’t know where you are, how will you know how to get to your destination? You don’t.So, vast resources are spent on trying to convince themselves and the electorate that policies areworking – or not, if you’re the opposition. Self-scoring and news spinning is the vapourware thatoccupies the space that real feedback should. We are all getting monumentally disgruntled with it. Butuntil we grasp that feedback of results has to be institutionalized and put somewhere where thepoliticians can’t tamper with it, spin is what we’ll get.New Labour went into the 2010 election pretty exhausted, splintering, with little idea of what it woulddo next, and with the baggage of another leader who was not going to win. The legacies of the failedIraq war and of the banking crash did not help. A refreshed Labour would not have lost.Refreshments came in the form of Ed Miliband. Labour embarked on a muted why-are-we-herequest, but a stale New Labour vs Old Labour vs Only-Used-Once Labour, conducted with lashings of7/7/2017 How weak governance stopped Labour winning the general election | British Politics and Policy at LSEhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-weak-governance-stopped-labour-winning/ 2/4labellism, judgementalism, and moral superiority, unaware of the major shifts in circumstanceswrought by neoliberal economics and in values.Underlying these five confused years in opposition, Labour knew not why it was here. After all, itshistoric mission to take the masses out of poverty, disadvantage, and inequality had succeeded. Tocompare their lot today with even when I was growing up, let alone to the conditions when Labourwas founded, is to rejoice. But the old mantras continued to be chanted by a party unable to come toterms with the modern world. It needed a trip to the political psychotherapist but instead sat on itshands.It was quickly evident that no matter his various qualities, Miliband was not going to win. Thisrepeated Labour’s most enduring failure of party governance – to enter elections with a leader withoutsufficient electoral credibility. The party’s unwritten policy is to replace the CEO only once thecompany has gone bust.The Conservatives don’t self-handicap like this. Why? Their ‘1922 committee’ is composed solely ofbackbenchers and thus has far more freedom to discuss difficult issues than if overseen by themanagement. Its role is to take soundings and suggest changes, and to tell leaders, whose shelf lifehas expired, to move on. Their process for challenging sitting prime ministers works too, as Labour’sdid not for Blair and Brown. The Conservatives would have replaced Kinnock with John Smith, Brownone year before the 2010 election, and Miliband after two years as leader. The party is far moreimportant than the person.Onwards to the Corbyn era – an essential disruptor for a drifting party. The Parliamentary LabourParty of all its MPs continued to behave as a failed state. It should have shut up, backed Corbyn fortwo years, given him a good run (and enough rope if you like) and then taken stock. Instead, theruling faction threw its toys out of the pram and embarked on continuous strife.Image credit: The Labour PartyPost the referendum, one year in, spooked by a quick election rumour, it repeated the mistake bymounting a hopeless challenge, and continued its tantrum. It showed a remarkable detachment frompeople and their genuine disadvantages, unable to comprehend their role in Brexit through preaching,ignoring, and fixating on its own semi-ideology.7/7/2017 How weak governance stopped Labour winning the general election | British Politics and Policy at LSEhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-weak-governance-stopped-labour-winning/ 3/4Apparently struck by a vision on a two mile walk in the woods around that Victorian watering hole ofthe English in Dolgellau, May announced the latest election. I have wondered what would havehappened if, instead, she had climbed the adjacent majestic mountain of Cader Idris.Jeremy Corbyn played a blinder, Theresa May the opposite. In an unusual way, he was aided byMurdoch and the Mail and the rest of the fundamentalist Tory press. Such was the extreme picturepainted of this threat to the security, stability, and anything else held dear that could be concocted, thecomparison – once we were actually allowed to see and hear him – was far greater than if the newsmedia had left him alone. Blimey, he’s not a monster. Goodness gracious me, he’s even saying thingsI agree with.But he did have some real negatives from his first year as leader. At first he could only find reversegear as he came up with mostly very old Labour policies. Second, the organization of the leader’soffice and output was not competent. Third, his performance in parliament was limited. But bear inmind that he had become leader not after years of planning alongside a slick team of advisers, butsuddenly on a wave of grassroots enthusiasm for something very different. It would always take timeto learn these complicated and sometimes bizarre ropes.Whilst absolute levels of prosperity are light years from those on Labour’s founding, massdisadvantage, inequality, and disempowerment have returned. No-one is starving but the basis for aNew New New Labour mission is there. Whether Corbyn recognized this or whether what he thoughthappened to be right for the time, I don’t know. Either way, his essential message resonated.But did not win. That would have taken not a different leader this time, but a party that had left itsproud history in the history books, that grasped where many people were, that had thrown away theold recipes and thought long and hard about new and workable solutions, that really got behind theirleader and their leader behind them, and shouted with one voice.That it did not is down to years of decline in every wing, faction and tendency, itself the product of theweak governance of the Labour party and of the broken system of government and democracy. It stillhas no backbench governance. I propose a committee identical in membership and role to theConservatives.I further propose that Jeremy Corbyn, the MPs, the members, and actually all of us, get some seriousthinking caps on as to how to reform the system of government – feedback, competitive democracy,policy by design, powerful check and balance. Until the system is redesigned and fixed good andproper, government and us will muddle on, not a lot will actually change for the better nor lives madeeasier, political parties will keep their bad name, and every government – including your or my choice– will disappoint._____About the AuthorEd Straw is a writer and campaigner for the reform of government, and a visitingfellow in Applied Systems Thinking in Practice at the Open University.  7/7/2017 How weak governance stopped Labour winning the general election | British Politics and Policy at LSEhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-weak-governance-stopped-labour-winning/ 4/4June 27th, 2017 | British and Irish Politics and Policy, Ed Straw, Featured, GE2017, Party politics andelections | 8 CommentsThis work by British Politics and Policy at LSE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.

How weak governance stopped Labour winning the general election

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