In a recent edition of the London Review of Books, John Lanchester derided New Labour's philosophy as being "to do everything necessary to win power and then, once in office, to do as much as possible of the stuff it wanted to do consistent with not frightening the electorate and losing the next election." But is this really so shaming a thing for a political party to have to admit to? "Trying to do as much as possible of the stuff you want to do consistent with not losing the next election" seems like a pretty neutral summary of democratic politics. And surely it is healthy for the left to try to distinguish itself by "the stuff it wants to do" rather than by a lofty distaste for the mucky business of ensuring it gets a chance to do it.
Lanchester has, ironically, succumbed to the malaise he himself diagnosed in 2003, in which the left is "always quick to denounce a compromise, declare a sellout… [because] in some secret part of ourselves, we would prefer to be uncompromisedly out of office than compromisingly, muddyingly, stainedly in it."
This is an inherent disadvantage for Labour. Tory governments can rely on their supporters to be tolerant—to forgive their party almost anything simply for being in power. For some Labour supporters it is the opposite: when their party is in government, they won't forgive it anything. But all governments have to compromise, and all governments have to be selective with the truth. Neither Wilson nor Callaghan, for example, was any less selective with the truth than Blair. The difference is that the media has made "trust" the story (as it did with Clinton, himself no more selective with the truth, on the issues that mattered, than Kennedy or Johnson). Similarly, Wilson and Callaghan, like Blair, were natural compromisers and realists. It was Denis Healey, their chancellor, who defined Labour's mission by quoting the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski: "eroding by inches the conditions that produce avoidable misery."
Of course, the focus should really be not on hypothetical alternatives from Labour's past, but the actual alternative in the present. Back in 2003, Lanchester was "amazed" by how quickly people forgot "the day-in, day-out ignominy of being ruled by men like… Michael Howard." Yet now he too is saying there is no difference between the parties, that they are both unelectable. This can't be sheer forgetfulness, with Howard on the news every day. Lanchester can't really believe there is no difference between the two parties—or if he does, that belief must be the symptom rather than the cause. For him, this election is not about what the two parties would do if elected, indeed it is not about the future at all, it is about something that happened in the past—it is about Iraq.
This has happened before: in America in 1968, another centre-left government found itself struggling in its campaign for a third term, its domestic achievements overshadowed by Vietnam. Anti-war Democrats felt Johnson had not just betrayed them but implicated them in his crimes. They wanted to punish him, and to atone for their mistake. Johnson himself gave in to the pressure and stood down, but enough of this feeling transferred to his deputy, Humphrey, to give Nixon victory by half of 1 per cent of the popular vote.
If anything, the case for turning the election into a referendum on the war was far stronger in 1968. Not just because the casualties were worse, the atrocities worse, the intelligence mistakes worse, the treatment of congress and the public worse—but more importantly, because all these things were still going on. But even then, turning the election into a referendum on the war only made sense if the opposition was likely to do any different, and it wasn't. Indeed, the anti-war left showed no interest whatsoever in finding out whether it was—which shows that, like today, their motivation was personal rather than altruistic, emotional rather than rational, absolute rather than comparative, and focused on the past rather than the future. In other words, all the things voting shouldn't be, especially for the left.
What the anti-war left got in 1968 was five more years of war, and Watergate. To some, dredging up this kind of example will feel like emotional blackmail. If they give in, a Labour government will know that it can do whatever it wants and still rely on the left's support, because the alternative will always be slightly worse. But there is a difference between being blackmailed and merely being taken for granted. And of course what allows the left to be taken for granted is the British electoral system—the same system which by the same logic ensures that if they protest at being taken for granted, that merely increases the chances of their least preferred outcome. They need to find a different way of expressing how they feel, one more suited to what is an emotional rather than a rational response, and without the same self-defeating repercussions.
