At the May ERIS meeting, Rob Martin, GMB and ERIS Board member, led a discussion on What the 2015 General Election Result Means for Labour, the Unions and Europe.
The election result surprised voters, the parties, pollsters and the media, yet clearly the polls themselves and how they were reported by the media influenced the result hugely by concentrating voters’ minds on the likelihood of a hung parliament and the possible formation of a Labour-SNP coalition. This benefitted the Tories and obliterated consideration of the policies of the various parties and their manifestos. So the election followed the Tory agenda of negative campaigning, lies, fears, the demonising of individuals, (especially Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon), and, worst of all, stoked up division, xenophobia and nationalism on both sides of the Scottish border. This also resonated well with the Eurosceptic line of the Tory Right and UKIP, of who rules, or who should rule, the UK. Obviously no one but the English should!
The result was a disaster for Labour and the unions and has far reaching implications for them and for Europe. It also raises fundamental questions about the democratic deficit in the UK.
Anyone interested in democracy should be alarmed that the first past the post system is unfit for purpose and delivered a result wildly at odds with the wishes of the electorate. The Tories got 11.3 million votes (36.9%) and with 331 MPs won 51% of the seats. Labour got 9.3 million votes (30.4%) and with 232 MPs won 35% of the seats. UKIP got 3.9 million votes (12.6%) and just one MP, the Greens 1.1 million votes (3.8%) and one MP, whilst the SNP polled 1.4 million votes (4.7%) and with 56 MPs won 8.6% of the seats! Now we have a majority Tory Government that over 63% of voters rejected and which received only 24% of the votes of the whole electorate.
However, had we had full proportional representation, whilst the result would have more fairly represented the wishes of the electorate, it would have been even worse for the Left. It would have given a Tory-UKIP coalition with a massive majority over Labour, the SNP, Plaid and the Greens combined. Caroline Lucas, as the results came in, called for a new voting system or a progressive alliance against the Tories in future elections but, if achievable, on the 2015 figures even this may not have delivered a centre Left coalition.
As well as an unfair voting system the Left in the UK has a mammoth task in overcoming the democratic deficit of an overwhelmingly Right wing press and media, massive and secret financial backing for the Tories from big business, and recent legal changes that benefit the Tory Party. Even before the new Government pushes through its proposed boundary changes that will reduce the number of MPs to 600 but will give the Tories an additional 20 or so extra seats, recent changes to voter registration have removed over a million voters from the electoral role, most of them likely Labour supporters. Additionally, deliberately leaving big business lobbyists alone to shape Government policy in private, the Transparency of Lobbying, Non Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act of 2014 has drastically reduced the ability of charities, voluntary groups and trade unions to campaign on single issues and worked to the great advantage of the Tories in this election.
The record of the previous Tory-Lib Dem Government was shameful. We went into the 2015 election campaign as a nation divided nation into an asset rich south of England, a post-industrial north and a positive, nationally conscious Scotland where neo-liberal economics were rejected. The Coalition set nation against nation, region against region, class against class, generation against generation, race against race. They drove deeper wedges between town and country, old and young, rich and poor, “deserving and undeserving”, Left and Right. They said “We are all in it together” but as Ministers demonised the poor and turned public opinion against those in need their actions ensured that the weakest bore the brunt of deficit reduction. Unemployment fell but because many were stopped from claiming jobseekers’ allowance, full time jobs became part time and we followed the US road of deregulated labour markets, with highly flexible workers on zero hours contracts and a soaring self employed workforce, two thirds of whom earn less than £10,000 a year. As earnings stagnated for most they leapt ahead for those at the top, increasing inequality greatly so that now the top 20% in Britain hold 105 times more capital than the lowest 20%, the top 10% own as much as the lowest 33% of the population and the top 1% take 13% of all available income.
The 2010-2015 Conservative-Lib Dem Government was characterised by an underlying and deep rooted anti-state dogmatism that saw massive cuts in public spending, over one million public sector jobs go, the costly and unnecessary reorganisation, then creeping privatisation of the NHS, the sale of the Post Office and other state institutions at knock down prices and a false recovery based on an uncontrolled property boom, with millions of families unable to get on the housing ladder and paying extortionate private rents. There were riots in the major cities, half a million people using food banks every week and constant attacks on the benefit system and those unfortunate enough to rely upon it, as if they were responsible for the deficit rather than greedy bankers and a corrupt capitalist system.
Now, with a Tory Government for another five years, our members face an even bleaker future as we know there are to be additional spending cuts of £30 billion in the next two years, £12 billion of unspecified benefit cuts that were trailed by the Tories during the campaign, further selling off of state assets and Housing Association properties with massive discounts, all at a time when the Tories are going to reduce Inheritance Tax and the top rate of income tax to benefit the wealthy!
Crucially, and as a priority within their first hundred days in power, the new Government is pledged to abolish the Human Rights Act and withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights. Using excuses such as the European Court in Strasbourg has given judgements allowing UK prisoners the right to vote and freedom to convicted terrorists to roam the streets of Britain, also deliberately confusing the European Convention and this court with the EU and EU institutions, the Tories plan to remove fundamental human rights from citizens purely for dogmatic reasons. They have been very vague with detail on what may be contained in their proposed British Bill of Rights but there is speculation that there could be a tiered scale of rights with full rights for UK citizens, fewer rights for EU nationals living here and fewer rights still for “foreigners” resident in the UK!
What is certain is that their plan to abolish the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention is closely linked to their attacks upon the legal redress ordinary people have against employers, the state and corporate bodies. Without the Convention underpinning individual rights and with no redress to the European Court British citizens will have no appeal above our Supreme Court to the arbitrary decisions of Government or inhuman treatment by others.
During the last five years our Government has introduced court charges for criminal cases, effectively removed legal aid from hundreds of thousands of claimants, reformed Judicial Review procedures to protect the powerful from the weak and introduced Employment Tribunal charges that have seen a 70% reduction in cases! With their plans for employment law changes a declared priority the removal of the Human Rights Act, withdrawing from the European Charter and removing access to a higher court which could overturn British court decisions is obviously essential for this Government’s anti-union and anti-worker strategy.
The Tories’ known trade union and employment law changes come at a time when industrial action is at an all-time low, so the new legislation curbing strikes is clearly nothing but ideological, a point underlined by the fact that all the Ministers appointed to the Employment law team under the new Business Secretary, Savid Javid, are extreme Right wingers and Thatcherites, all avowedly anti-union.
The Tory manifesto said “Strikes should only ever be the result of a clear, positive decision based on a ballot in which at least half the workforce has voted. This turnout threshold will be an important and fair step to rebalance the interests of employers, employees, the public and the rights of trade unions”. New laws will also “tackle the disproportionate impact of strikes in essential public services by introducing a tougher threshold in health, education, fire and transport.” Industrial action would require the support of at least 40% of those entitled to vote. (This from a Government elected with support from only 37% of those who voted and 24% of those entitled to vote!).
Additionally, the Tories are going to ban the current and long established restrictions which stop employers hiring in agency staff to provide cover during a strike. This is basically a scabs’ charter to allow strike breaking and we will see a proliferation of organisations offering scab labour to employers, with full legal backing.
The TUC says these plans are so draconian they would make legal strikes, already difficult, close to impossible. Existing laws make unlawful strikes grounds for the seizure of union assets, so our ability to take action to defend jobs, pay and our members’ livelihoods will diminish alarmingly at the very time it is most needed.
The TUC also expects attacks on trade union facilities, time off for trade union duties, on the Union Learning Fund and the deduction of union subscriptions from wages, especially in the well organised public sector. Following on so soon after the introduction of Employment Tribunal charges and the subsequent massive fall in legal cases challenging breaches in employment law the argument for union membership, at a time when job losses amongst current members will increase, is going to be a major challenge for the unions in the next five years.
Bad as the election result is for the unions for Labour it is an appalling defeat, with a massacre in Scotland, a swing to the Tories in Wales and only a very tiny advance overall in England, where we had a net gain of just two seats. Although there was a tiny increase in the percentage of the vote from 2010 there was a steady decline in the actual number of people voting Labour across the UK as a whole, a trend that has been in motion since 2001.
Labour did advance across cosmopolitan London and did very well everywhere in seats the Lib Dems were defending against them but this seems to be as a punishment for the Lib Dems supporting the Tories in coalition as much as an endorsement of Labour. Elsewhere in England and Wales, especially outside the major conurbations, Labour struggled and fell back in many seats it should have won. It clearly lost votes to the Greens on the Left and to a massive UKIP advance on the Right, particularly amongst the “left behind”, white, working class voters who think Labour has deserted them. UKIP came second in 111 seats, 44 of these Labour held seats, especially in the north. Many of these traditional Labour strongholds like Hartlepool and the Sunderland seats could be vulnerable in the future if Labour does not hold off the UKIP surge.
Before the election pundits said UKIP would damage the Tories but Labour was harmed more, failing to take target seats from the Tories where some Labour voters deserted to UKIP and losing some marginal ones, like Southampton Itchen and Morley and Outwood, where Labour disaffections to a large UKIP vote let in the Tories. Looking across England and Wales, and noting the trend in the local election results too, it is clear Labour was seriously wounded in its heartlands by the UKIP advance. UKIP is sure of this too and is confident of further growth, especially at Labour’s expense in the Midlands and the north. “The next phase of UKIP’s development will be in the north and the Midlands, from Birmingham to Hadrian’s Wall, targeting Labour voters and no voters. That’s a big area for us,” Nigel Farage has now said, committing himself to stand in the first by-election in a Labour held seat.
The tragedy for Labour is as much to do with its own failings as it is to do with the success of its rivals. It was always a wildly optimistic strategy to think Labour could become the largest party in the Commons solely by appealing to its core vote, estimated at about 30% of the electorate, topping this up with disgruntled Lib Dem voters and being helped to some extra MPs due to the current Labour bias in the distribution of seats.
Blairites are now in full voice blaming Labour’s defeat on an alleged drift to the Left, “Red Ed reverting to Old Labour”, arguing voters deserted Labour because it had moved from the middle ground. This is a simplistic and false accusation and Miliband must at least be praised for taking on the UK’s powerful vested interests like the Murdoch Empire, tax evaders and the energy cartels. He is obviously a brave and decent man but to paint him as a wild man of the Left is ludicrous. If he alienated voters personally, on top off the massive and constant vilification he received from the Right wing media, it was for appearing as one of the Westminster and metropolitan elite, being one of the privileged political class who lacked the real work and life experience that ordinary voters have. This was not just his failing but that of the party he led, seeming irrelevant to many of its natural supporters across the land.
In Scotland, where the turnout was much higher than in the rest of the UK, the result was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for Labour, far worse than anything it expected. Certainly after the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections Labour was due for a drubbing in 2015 but the scale of the defeat was far greater than anticipated. Labour was caught between a rampant SNP buoyed up by the independence referendum and its own pro UK union, establishment image, reinforced by its joint campaign with the Tories against Scottish independence. That referendum energised the Scottish political culture and left Labour behind. There was a massive turnout in the referendum after the whole exercise had caught the imagination of the Scots and had engaged them in political discussion and activity. The No vote in the end was saved after a lazy and complacent campaign by Gordon Brown’s late and spirited intervention and all three main Party leaders in Westminster panicking at the last minute and offering sudden and ill thought out additional devolutionary powers. All this did was win the referendum No vote in the short term and push even more Scots voters into the nationalist camp.
For years Labour in Scotland has been seen by many as taking its voters for granted. It has had healthy majorities in its heartlands but a shrinking party membership and a deep seated sense of lethargy. There was a feeling it had no ability to solve the problems facing post-industrial Scotland, even though it regularly sent large numbers of MPs to Westminster, including Cabinet Ministers and Gordon Brown, a Prime Minister highly popular in Scotland to the end. However, as Labour’s membership in Scotland declined the SNP’s shot up, 75,000 people joining them in the last eight months! To many Scots voters, including thousands of its traditional supporters, Labour has come to be seen through the referendum campaign and after as no different from the Tories. The SNP has cleverly stolen Labour’s most popular policies and repackaged itself as a genuine alternative for socialists and progressives. Most of all, it was able to point to Labour as a party of austerity, anathema to the Scots, so that the more Miliband attacked the SNP’s spending plans during the campaign the more unpopular Labour became north of the border, especially under its new Blairite leader, Jim Murphy.
Finally, just as the Tories hoped, the more vociferous Miliband was that he would not entertain a coalition or any deal with the SNP after the election (to shore up his vote in England) the more he pushed former Scottish supporters into the SNP camp. This also backfired in England where the nationalist card trumped Labour as some voters clearly took fright at the thought of what they perceived as constitutional chaos or a left wing Labour-SNP coalition.
Not only in Scotland was austerity crucial in Labour’s defeat. It was an albatross around the party’s neck as it betrayed its lack of a credible economic policy and gifted the election to the Tories. U.S President Harry Truman once said if you offer the voters two conservative parties they will choose the real one. Equally, if you offer them two parties preaching austerity they will prefer the one that really is committed to it.
Labour lost the 2015 election soon after the 2010 one. It has paid the penalty for five years of refusing to argue the case against austerity and to promote growth, forever haunted by Liam Byrne’s infamous note to the incoming Financial Secretary to the Treasury that “There is no money left!” Instead of killing the Tory myth that Labour’s overspending had created the deficit when it was caused by the worldwide recession following the collapse of the American sub-prime mortgage market Labour allowed their opponents to set the economic argument and convinced the electorate and maybe even themselves, that Labour was unsafe and too incompetent to run the economy. It was far too late when challenged during the campaign for Miliband to say Labour had not overspent when in office, the argument should have been made consistently for the last five years.
Equally, Labour had no credible economic policy to offer and saying it would make fewer cuts slower than the Tories was hardly a compelling reason to vote for them. Fearful that offering popular policies like renationalising energy supply and the railways would lay it open to charges of having moved to the Left Labour settled instead for a modest manifesto attempting to offer no hostages to fortune. They tried to shore up the core vote with promises to control rents in the private sector, peg fuel and rail prices, and to increase the minimum wage but relied too heavily on a defence of the NHS which voters were dubious of because the Tories offered the same and the electorate were unconvinced Labour would be able economically to deliver on their promises at all.
Immigration was another issue Labour had run away from for years and this helped cost it the election. From the day in 2010 when Gordon Brown called that Rochdale Labour voter a bigot the party had taken fright at confronting this matter head on and had opted to mirror its opponents in demonising migrants, though with less enthusiasm than the Tories and UKIP. Its abject failure to take on the xenophobic arguments about migrants taking jobs, housing and benefits only allowed Labour to fall between two stalls and appear one day as anti-immigrant and the next as soft on migration, confusing the electorate and failing to point out the benefits that migrants bring to the country and the economy. They bring much needed skills, often fill job vacancies in the service industries that would otherwise be vacant, especially in the NHS, and are net contributors to the economy overall, paying more in taxes than they take out of in services. Labour rarely put these positive arguments forward, again allowing the Right to set the agenda and win the battle of ideas. Not surprisingly therefore, at this election because of this issue Labour lost to UKIP many of its white working class voters, traditionally loyal to it and still very anti Tory. It will not win them back by aping the racists and pandering to the Right but only by arguing a positive case for immigration and changing people’s minds.
Labour’s dilemma now is how to regain support amongst the electorate as a whole and particularly from those who have deserted it in the last decade. Peter Mandelson infamously argued that by creating New Labour and triangulating into the middle ground traditional Labour voters had nowhere to go and would remain with Labour. The paucity of this view is now laid bare. Labour voters in their millions have moved left to the Greens and the SNP or to the right to UKIP, or have abstained out of disillusionment and despair. The Leadership election now gives Labour the opportunity to debate the way forward but it must not be diverted, as was the case in 2010 when the party looked inward and the Tories used our failure to provide immediate and constant opposition to them and their arguments as their chance to frame the political debate for the future. This must not be repeated now; Labour must oppose the Government from the outset and not allow the Tories and the media to set Labour’s agenda for the next five years, or the SNP to make the running as the radical alternative to the Tories.
The party must square the circle of winning back SNP voters in Scotland who want investment in the economy and a rejection of the neo liberal agenda, with an appeal both to middle England voters and the traditional working class supporters they have lost who are crying out for a voice to listen to and are hearing only UKIP.
Europe and the forthcoming In-Out Referendum will be a challenge for Labour too, as it will be for the unions, the country as a whole and not least for the Tory Party itself.
The Queen’s Speech will include a Bill for the referendum to be held before the end of 2017. It may well be earlier to avoid the French and German Presidential elections in 2017 and the fact that in the second half of that year Britain occupies the Presidency of the EU itself! This referendum will be a mighty risk for all of us who want to engage with Europe, especially those of us who are critical of much within the EU but who want to see a social Europe and value what the EU has given us, particularly in matters of employment law protection and health and safety.
Currently, if opinion polls can be believed, there is a majority of 45%-33% in favour of staying in the European Union, especially amongst young people. Pro-European members of the House of Lords are pushing for 16 and 17 year olds to be given the vote in this referendum as in the one on Scottish Independence and wish to ensure the Eurosceptic wing of the Tory Party and the anti-EU press do not set the agenda for the referendum. They are pressing for the Electoral Commission to set the question and they highlight the fact that irrespective of its Commons majority the Government does not have one in the Lords. It needs to listen to others outside of its own Right wing and UKIP if it wants to get the Referendum Bill through Parliament.
These early exchanges are typical of the problems facing Cameron on Europe now that he surprisingly has a majority and must deliver on his pledge for an In-Out referendum. One great difficulty he has is his majority may be big over Labour but overall it is small, much smaller than the one Major had in the days of the Maastricht Treaty and Cameron has a much larger group of potential rebels to pacify without the luxury of Lid Dem allies to help him win Parliamentary votes. Also he could soon face possible by-election defeats and will have very little room for movement. He may well regret ever promising this vote to pacify his Right wing and keep his party united. Already Eurosceptics like Redwood and Tebbit are making waves and the SNP are saying a No vote in England would be problematic if Scotland voted Yes at the same time. The SNP would then call for another vote there for independence, very likely leading to the breakup of the UK.
Cameron says he will re-negotiate the terms for UK membership but most of the other EU states are very lukewarm about this, even though some have accepted in the last few days that his election victory has given him a mandate to open up discussion and they must listen to him. However, he needs an agreement that is acceptable to the other 27 EU states, unites his party and carries the referendum too. A difficult task.
On his mission to free Britain from ever closer political union he needs to win over other countries to agreeing this without treaty changes being necessary, otherwise this will trigger referenda in their countries, just like the Lisbon Treaty did. As they must all then secure a positive vote before treaty change can go ahead this is very unlikely! So, Cameron may have to settle for, if he can achieve it, support for “interpretive protocols” which would be legally binding and still allow Britain to say it was no longer committed to an ever closer union. This could encourage moves to a “two speed” Europe, as some in the EU, like the ex Prime Minister of Italy, have hinted at as a solution, though this may be unlikely given the current problems with Greece.
On the Tory obsession of removing the free movement of labour Cameron is already in deep trouble as Eastern European countries are strongly opposed to his proposals. Hungary’s EU Minister has said freedom of movement is a red line for them, adding it is one of the EU’s greatest achievements. He said “We don’t like it when Hungarian workers are called migrants, they are EU citizens with the freedom to work in other countries”. Poland’s Europe Minister said “We are ready to sit at a table and talk about what needs to be reformed….but when it comes to immigration, our red lines are known”. The reality is the free movement of labour is now the cornerstone of the EU and the single market and Cameron is going to have serious problems changing it. Even in Britain he will face strong opposition from the many business leaders, including Tory Party funders, who want it to remain.
Since the election we have already had a major row over the UK being asked to take a quota of non EU migrants fleeing North Africa and Syria. Britain’s negative response has upset other countries and could harm Cameron’s chances of re-negotiating special powers for the UK. He and Theresa May have blocked the proposals so far and been very critical of the Commission, calling it high handed for suggesting the quota and ignoring the fact that weeks ago the Council of Ministers, including our own Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, actually agreed the whole thing in principle! This two-faced attitude is typical of Britain in Europe and is one reason some of our EU colleagues despise us so much and are reluctant to give ground to Cameron. (Our response is shameful, in any event, given the deaths of over 5,000 people in the last year or so and our previous intervention in Libya, together with our political meddling, and near military intervention in Syria, where many of these migrants are from.)
On the repatriation of powers to the UK and Tory pressure to stop more EU laws applying in the UK, our Government may have more success in agreeing opt outs with the EU, again as long as treaty changes are accepted as unnecessary. Then we may see protocols adopted that exempt the UK from various matters, such as the Working Time Directive. This has serious implications for our members in relation to working hours, paid holidays and in other areas.
Europe could well be the defining issue of this Government and it is fraught with problems for the Tories. Similarly, the plan to abolish the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights may well see big revolts in the Tory Party as common sense dawns on those in its ranks truly interested in civil liberties. The Human Rights Act is constitutionally inextricably linked with the devolved arrangements with Scotland and Wales, and with the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland Peace Initiative. To think it could be dismantled in the first hundred days of this Parliament was always a fanciful idea and the Government is opening a Pandora’s Box by trying to. Should the Government not get its way and the UK remains party to the Convention and under the jurisdiction of the European Court then some of its employment legislation and other laws could be challenged as breaches of human rights, a remedy the Tories are desperate to avoid.
So, for Labour and the unions the next five years are bleak and Europe faces an immediate hiatus with the UK’s In-Out referendum. But the Tory majority is small and the future is full of problems for them, so all is not lost.
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