Comfort zone or centre ground?

The Labour leadership contest got a bit more personal today when David Miliband appeared to launch a veiled attack on his brother Ed's campaign platform. In an article for today's Times, David has decided to deploy that old New Labour warning - no retreat to the comfort zone.

The legacy of New Labour is just how far the definition of the 'comfort zone' has changed. Labour's modernisation - a process that started with the expulsion of the militant tendency in the 1980s - seems to have led to criticism of anyone openly professing social democratic views.

David Miliband's comments about his brother's leadership campaign appear to be doing just that. Ed's platform is perfectly coherent: in seeking to reach out to the centre ground, Labour ignored many sensible - and potentially electorally popular - policy suggestions from its own grassroots.

Unreasonable? David seems to think so: "I want to look at the circumstances outside our tent, and how we should respond ... Opposition is necessary but insufficient. At worse it can take us back into our comfort zone – and our pantomime role in politics."

This is the result of a wider campaign from some within Labour to try to restore the reputation of Blair's 'centre ground' strategy at the crucial moment where pursuing such an agenda would be electoral suicide.

In last Saturday's Observer, Nick Cohen wrote an astonishingly audacious comment piece which appeared to label the entire body of Tony Blair's detractors as conspiracy theorists and crackpots: "Never forget that Blair is the most skilful politician in modern British history. Look at how he is pushing his opponents into the corner reserved for crackpots - not that they need much of a shove."

In his efforts at rehabilitation, Cohen attempts to play down the fact that Blair was an electoral liability for Labour - attaining levels of unpopularity unmatched during Brown's tenure as Prime Minister. One can only imagine the electoral carnage that would have ensued if Blair had persisted in No 10 until the 2005 general election.

The Labour leadership election appears to have narrowed to a two-horse race, and the differences between the Miliband brothers is less significant than is imagined. The important issue is what strategy the eventual leader will pursue.

Labour is at a cross roads. It can retreat to the real comfort of New Labour, or it can set about making a popular case for Social Democracy in the United Kingdom. If the party decides to pursue the former strategy it must be careful - moderate Social Democrats are unlikely to tolerate another 13 years of being hidden away like an awkward family secret.

Open, honest, and accountable?

The coalition government promised to shame Labour by being more open, honest, and accountable. But news-junkies regularly tuning in to Newsnight may have noticed a recurrent failure by the coalition to provide spokespeople for the BBC's flagship current affairs programme - especially when it comes to stories which reflect badly on the government.

On Wednesday 18 August, Kirsty Wark told us that nobody from the coalition was available to answer questions about proposed cuts to universal benefits and splits in the Conservative party over welfare reform. It was left to Michael Crick to do all the talking.

Again, on Thursday, no minister was available to answer questions from Laura Kuenssberg about how the coalition's education policies are expected to assist social mobility. That's right - nobody from the Department for Education was available to comment on Newsnight on the day A-level results were announced.

And again on Friday - my-oh-my, the government must be busy - no minister from the Department for Transport was available to explain how removing speed cameras from our roads is expected to impact on road safety. You would have expected the coalition to mount an energetic defence of their approach, rather than leaving it to controversial anti-speed camera agitators, Safe Speed.

Could this be further evidence to support claims of government hostility towards the BBC?

Going mobile

Arch-Blairite ex-cabinet minister Alan Milburn is to join the coalition government as a social mobility tsar, and in doing so is set to illustrate why the New Labour project foundered and eventually failed.

In aiding and abetting the most economically right-wing government since the 80s, Milburn is crossing the line between pragmatism and complete ideological blindness.

His readiness to participate in a government which is so hostile to the idea of the state as an enabler for social mobility shows why the Blairites missed the point - and illustrates why they presided over a growth in inequality over 13 years.

When Peter Mandelson famously said "we are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, as long as they pay their taxes", he proved that Labour were in denial about the relationship between mobility and equality. Less equal societies are less fluid. If you want to help people change their social circumstances, you need the courage to use progressive taxation to stop the emergence of a wealthy elite.

This conclusion is off-the-table when it comes to Milburn's forthcoming work for the coalition. As Labour renews itself in opposition, it must not make the same mistake. In government it had a mandate to reverse the galloping increase in social inequality and division, but it chose to retreat to the real Labour comfort zone: do what the Tories would do, but more slowly.

When people voted in the 1997 and 2010 general elections, they voted for change. It is a harsh irony of our political system that in both cases - just when a change was desperately required - they got more of the same.

Double-dipping

The Bank of England again revised its growth predictions down today - further evidence that withdrawing state support from the economy will damage the prospects for a recovery in the United Kingdom.

The main body of cuts may not yet have bitten, but there have already been significant reductions in public sector recruitment and capital spending.

With Vince Cable now refusing to rule out the "double-dip" recession Gordon Brown warned us about before the election, the outlook is not promising. History will be kinder to Brown than the British press has been, at least with regards to his reputation as Chancellor.

However the Tory/Lib Dem government tries to spin it, this recession is global. It is not the fault of Labour's economic policies - policies that were supported by the Conservatives for over ten years.

George Osborne has a significantly weaker economic record. History will be very unkind, and so will the electorate.