In his opening few pages Tony Wright's denounces the privatisation of rail, water and the London Underground, of income tax cuts in the last budget, and the internal market in the NHS. He believes that these measures are all part of the same story: "A country that is becoming a different place from what it once thought it was, its values and institutions converted not from without but from within, and its people gloomily uncertain about their own future and the future of their country."
Then we are off into a grandiose account of what he calls "New Labour, old values." We should have "massive investment in education." We need "a modern integrated transport system." The NHS has suffered from "budget constraints." Why offer income tax cuts, he asks, when the voters prefer to safeguard public services? Wright, with whom I have been debating happily over the past few weeks, is an impeccable New Labour Blairite. He is not some obscure trade union official who has emerged through Buggin's turn to represent a Labour fastness in the north of England. Nor is he a leftover from the Benn/Livingstone years who has been lost in the political jungle unaware that the war is over-and lost. He goes out of his way to praise the changes which Tony Blair has brought to the Labour party. He describes it as a "party reborn." But no one reading this authentic account of New Labour could possibly believe Gordon Brown's absurd claims that he will hold down public expenditure or even bring down income tax rates. The book is quite open about its assumption that there is more for the state to do-and that means more for the state to spend.
The Blair-led Labour party has got about as far as Willy Brandt's Social Democrats but it certainly does not get anywhere close to what, for example, Roger Douglas did by way of transforming the Labour party in New Zealand.
What are the underlying principles which drive New Labour? The belief in a "stakeholder" economy and admiration for the European social model come over loud and clear. I am criticised by Wright for arguing in my pamphlet, Blair's Gurus, that Blair's Labour party is driven by an admiration for continental social democracy. But Wright's own book offers further evidence for this. We get several pages of quasi-Huttonite arguments about City short-termism, the inequities of the takeover culture, the problem of excess dividends, the advantages of protective cross-holdings of shares of the sort they have in France and Germany and the need for "a new kind of partnership in business." Where have we heard all this before? Was it Harold Wilson's national plan of 1965? In The State We're In? In Tony Blair's new manifesto for business? Or has it perhaps come out of some computer at Millbank Tower where the clich?s of stakeholder economics are generated without any human intervention at all?
There has recently been some backtracking from the most enthusiastic plans to mimic the continental model. But Wright remains quite explicit that there is a continental model and something which the critics call Anglo-American capitalism, and that the former is superior. This is not a figment of my imagination nor of the Conservative party's. There is an interesting version of this argument from a French perspective in Michel Albert's book, Capitalism Against Capitalism, which argues that with the collapse of old-style command economy socialism the new ideological battle is between these two forms of capitalism. Albert personally favours the continental brand as Labour does, and Wright explicitly acknowl-edges that policies such as the minimum wage and signing up for the European social chapter are designed to bring us closer to the continental model.
So I think it is reasonable to warn that these continental economies suffer from much higher levels of unemployment than we do (our unemployment would have to rise by about 1.5m if it were to reach the continental average). They also have much higher levels of public expenditure (approximately 50 per cent of GDP on the continent whereas it is down to almost 40 per cent of GDP here). Increasingly those economies suffer from a crisis of competitiveness as global investment in Europe shifts to Britain as its preferred location. New Labour's vision of a social democratic future for Britain would paradoxically mean copying the continental model just when its failure is becoming obvious.
Wright is a decent man and is entirely sincere when he says he favours social inclusion. I do too. The disagreement between us is about which set of policies would best deliver that in practice. I believe that many of the stakeholder arguments deployed in Wright's book would have the consequence of increasing social exclusion. Again the evidence of intensifying social division on the continent is devastating. His policies would favour the standard worker in the standard job as against all those groups-young people, women, self-employed, small businesses-who have done particularly well out of our labour market reforms of the past 15 years. And if Wright is to argue his corner he needs facts and figures and serious evidence. But this is where his book becomes frustrating. We have anecdotes-lots of them-"one evening last week a friend... I shall never forget the day that Littleton pit closed... I was invited to open an extension to a small factory on a new industrial estate..." These are all material for a Labour party political broadcast but they do not add up to a serious argu-ment. The book is rich in personal anecdotes and full of moral den-unciations of conservatism. But what it lacks is anything in between the anecdote and the grand moral vision.
His moral denunciation is at its most intense when it comes to the constitution. When the Labour party were busy fighting off the industrial militants in the 1980s they were, almost unawares, being taken over instead by the constitutional militants of Charter 88. Many Labour MPs and candidates still do not quite know what has happened. They have not worked out why, if a Labour government were elected on 1st May, it would devote most of its political energies over five years to messing around with the constitution. Many of them are really rather uncomfortable with the agenda that has been foisted upon them. But Wright is not one of these. He genuinely believes in this constitutional agenda and argues for it better than most. If Labour were elected and they were desperately trying to find some new ministers who actually believed all this constitutional stuff, they could do a lot worse than turn to Wright. But what an uncomfortable position he would find himself in. There he would be taking a high moral tone as he argued for all these constitutional changes, yet what do we know already from the fascinating debate between John Major and Tony Blair in the House of Commons last month? We know that in order to get their legislation through, Labour would contemplate ending the long established principle that constitutional matters are debated on the floor of the House. In the cause of strengthening our constitutional protections the first thing they would do is remove one of the most important parliamentary conventions aimed at protecting our constitution from wilful and ill-thought out change. It would be excruciating to watch Wright, so proud of his old Labour values, explaining why Clement Attlee was wrong when he set out this constitutional principle.
Labour would get rid of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Nobody would create a hereditary chamber now and getting rid of the hereditary element is the easy bit. The question is what you put in its place. Labour has not worked out how any sort of democratic second chamber would relate to the House of Commons. What we would get is a massive increase in patronage peers appointed by the government of the day. Again it would be interesting to watch Wright, the great constitutional reformer, explaining that his bold vision of a newly democratised British constitution meant a government appointed second chamber. Didn't he ever, back in his idealistic youth, think it should be the other way around?
Wright goes through the standard criticisms of supposed centralisation since 1979. He believes in regionalism. He offers the resounding statement that "the strong regional emphasis in Labour's approach to business is designed to tackle this [centralism], not least in the crucial matter of ensuring that a strengthened science base connects with technology transfer routes much more effectively than in the past." But the regional government which he favours would take its powers not from the centre but from elected local government. Labour will first appoint the members of the regional government and then have a referendum on whether or not they should be directly elected. Again it would be fascinating to hear these would-be reformers explain why powers have to be taken from directly elected local government to be given to a non-elected regional government in the name of greater democracy.
Wright ends with what he calls a "civic vision." He wants to claim this, and the language of community, for the Labour party. But again these rhetorical claims can only be judged against the reality of the particular policies Labour advocate. In practice Labour are opposed to everything we are doing to create a richer framework of more diverse institutions. They do not like GP fundholders or grant maintained schools. Wright believes in what he calls an intelligent state; but from there it is a short route to an arrogant state which obstructs local communities and weakens local institutions. The true civic vision is civic conservatism.
Why vote labour?
Tony Wright
Penguin 1997, ?3.99
