and still has proportions sufficient to terrify those who understand the proportions. The most favourable option for the Labour


Party at the moment would be if it could just disappear from sight for at least two years. The Coalition Government could get on with handling the economy and all the devastating political fallout from that. Labour could lick its wounds in private. Instead, they are obliged to hold a public conference against a backcloth of declining popular support and rehearse all the most difficult issues at enormous length on the Today programme. I read somewhere that one of the contestants for the Ig Nobel awards, presented for whacky scientific find- ings, has been measuring the difference between swimming in water and in treacle, and could not resist the idea that the party’s two last leaders have bequeathed the vicious viscosity of treacle to Ed Miliband. So the luckless Mr Miliband and his party


find themselves in a position of almost unprecedented political impotence. There were no policy announcements in his speech (it was even announced beforehand that there would be none) and there was no policy of any import made by the delegates. Some things have not changed and the conference arrangements committee managed to make the debates as grindingly dull as only they could organise. Controversy there was not. Such votes as took place all seemed to go


according to plan and platform advice, and as the block trade-union vote remains they were still meaningless in their quantities. One that I heard announced was carried by 2,459,269 to 11,822 votes, which was proudly reported as being 99.5 per cent in favour – and, no, I didn’t catch the subject matter as it didn’t seem an issue of much contention. But given that there is a political vacuum


in Labour’s politics, has Ed Miliband produced anything that might fill it? Was his empty speech strong enough to sustain his leader- ship? Is there a “fresh idea” that might inform their “new politics”? Well, there was one phrase knocking around in Liverpool that seemed to have a resonance that might work, and it wasn’t fulfilling the promise of Britain. It was first used by Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander, but then bounced around everywhere: it was “the something for some- thing society”. Now that is an idea which connects with Labour’s historic purpose. The Labour Party came into existence with a mission to improve the lot of the working man and woman and, despite many difficulties and much infighting, it achieved much of that ambition as a result of the governments after the Second World War. What the party neg- lected, however, was political education. They offered their supporters an improved way of life: free education, free healthcare, pensions and social services, but they failed to suggest that in exchange for all of this there was a


concomitant obligation inherent in socialism which required a payback. So the party’s historic, working-class sup-


porters voted Labour, secured the election of Labour governments and such improvements in lifestyle as enabled their children to regard themselves as middle class, but then saw no requirement to continue voting Labour. Why should they ? In 1979, when you have at last secured a carport, why should you be bothered about, say, Rhodesia as was ? Was it not much more appealing to hear what Margaret Thatcher had to say about “society” and “community”, and apply to buy your council house and vote Conservative? Tony Blair played catch-up with


Thatcherism, but infused the idea of “New” Labour with an enthusiasm and a promise that won all those elections, only to disappoint so many hopes and dreams. What he did not do, nor Gordon Brown either, was to win the British electorate’s support for any of Labour’s socialist ideals, and the truth was that they were so much more absorbed with winning elections at any cost that the very word “social- ist” was put down the memory hole. Ed Miliband now has the task, according


to the current jargon, of re-connecting with the electorate. It is just possible that he could do so by selling the idea of a “something for something society”. It’s a much better slogan.


■Julia Langdon is a political journalist.


Harvest Fast Day Appeal


What do you see?


Some people only see a child orphaned by AIDS


Kelvin’s mum died because of AIDS so he often faces rejection and is


too busy worrying about paying school fees and getting enough food to even consider having fun.


We only see a child


We see Kelvin, the energetic 11 year old full of hope and potential who loves to play carefree at a CAFOD funded club.


This Harvest please make a donation to help change the lives of children like Kelvin around the world. This is your opportunity to give the gift of childhood.


“Anyone who welcomes one lit le child like this in my name welcomes me.” Mat hew 18:5.


1 October 2011 | THE TABLET | 13 R35521


PLEASE COMPLETE AND POST THE COUPON TO THE ADDRESS BELOW.


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