John Humphrys asks: What does David Miliband’s departure mean for the Labour Party?
David Miliband’s decision to leave British politics and take up an international job in New York marks the end, at least for the time being and possibly forever, of a political career many saw as likely to finish up in Downing Street. It is a radical departure for the former Foreign Secretary. But what does it mean for Labour, the party he so nearly led?
“I didn’t want to become a distraction … I didn’t want the soap opera to take over.” That was the explanation Mr Miliband gave to Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, in an interview after he had announced that he was going.
His political difficulties were obvious to everyone. Once he had been beaten for the top job by his younger brother, Ed, it was hard to see what role he could play in British politics. He was offered positions in the Shadow Cabinet but he feared that if he took them, everything he said would be interpreted simply in terms of the ‘soap opera’ – whether he was being loyal or whether he was trying to stake out a position of his own with the intention, one day, of challenging for the leadership. Equally, if he remained on the backbenches he would be doomed either to be silent and impotent or suspected of being a plotter.
No one can know whether he will come back one day. Allies such as his old mentor, Tony Blair, say the move to New York may be just “time out”; and another, Lord Mandelson, said that if he himself could make a comeback then so could David Miliband. We shall have to wait and see.
Until his announcement, David Miliband had been the most prominent and senior representative of the Blairite wing of New Labour still active in politics. Does his going mean the end of New Labour? But what does his departure mean for the party? Has the coffin lid finally closed over the remains of New Labour?
Labour’s opponents will want to portray it in this way but it may not be so simple. ‘New Labour’ was an invention of the new leadership of the Labour Party after John Smith’s death in 1994. The party had lost four elections in a row and the public had to be persuaded that things had changed. Tony Blair, with whom David Miliband worked closely throughout his leadership of the party, was obviously the principal figure in New Labour’s creation but he was not the only one. Gordon Brown was just as much a proponent of the New Labour message. It was only the growing personal rivalry of the two men that led New Labour to split into two camps, the Blairites and the Brownites. The Miliband brothers split too – David as a Blairite and Ed as a Brownite.
But the Blairites were always more zealous in wanting to distance themselves from Old Labour, especially the trade unions. In this they represented the ‘right’ in the old Labour Party much more than the Brownites. So when the two brothers fought over the leadership after the party’s defeat in 2010, the Brownite Ed was seen as the less ‘New Labour’ of the two. Indeed his very narrow victory was won with the support of the unions. The former leader, Neil Kinnock, a moderniser in the party but never much of an enthusiast for the notion of New Labour, is famously reported to have said after Ed won over his brother that he and people like him had “got the party back”.
It is certainly true that under Ed Miliband’s leadership very little has been heard of the phrase ‘New Labour’. To some in the party this is ominous and a mistake and they looked to David to revive it. Now he has gone.
But although Ed Miliband tends not to use the term, has he actually buried New Labour? He has certainly made no explicit attempt to do so; he has just stopped calling it that. Had he really set about abandoning what New Labour represented there would have been a big row in the party. But what is perhaps the most striking aspect of the party under Ed Miliband’s leadership is the absence of internal strife. This is virtually unheard of in the history of a party which tended to plunge into bitter civil war after every big electoral defeat – such as it suffered in 2010. That’s what happened in 1951 and in 1979. But not now.
Of course old Blairites still express their views. Lord Mandelson, for example, has gently criticised the Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, saying he needs to come up with a new tune on the economy and warning Ed Miliband that it would be ‘clinically insane’ for Labour to offer the electorate a referendum on the EU at the next election. But this is advice rather than the fighting of a civil war. And while David Miliband’s praise of his brother’s leadership may tempt cynics to jibe “he would say that, wouldn’t he”, there is no obvious reason to think he doesn’t mean it.
It is early days, though. Much of the Labour Party’s policy agenda has still to be spelled out. We are promised much more in the autumn. By then, however, David Miliband will no longer be around to say what he thinks about it.
What does David Miliband’s departure say about how parties, in general, evolve? Many commentators have remarked that in the non-ideological age in which we now seem to live, party politics is all about the same thing – trying to occupy the centre ground. The result is that actual policies tend to converge and the electoral business of making a party distinct and attractive is now simply about public relations. On such an account, ‘New Labour’ was largely a PR exercise, just as David Cameron’s attempt to ‘detoxify’ the Conservative Party by hugging hoodies and worrying about polar bears was all about image. Actual policies are determined on other grounds.
On this reading, ‘New Labour’ did its job twenty years ago and can now be dropped. For the moment Labour seems to think it does not need a substitute and that presenting itself simply as a party united in its opposition to the government will be enough to persuade the public to vote for it. Current polls suggest that may be right, for now at any rate.
But in this PR world, individuals are important symbols. In that sense the departure of so prominent a figure as David Miliband is itself symbolic. But of what? Will it be seen (as the Tories will want to portray it) as the defeat of that element in the Labour Party which made it electable, leaving the unelectable unchallenged? Or will it be seen as showing that the Labour Party no longer has need of this ‘heir to Blair’ to persuade the public that it can be trusted with government?
What’s your view?
- Do you regret David Miliband’s decision to leave British politics or do you think it doesn’t really matter?
- Do you hope he will return one day?
- Does his going in any way affect how you will vote at the next election?
- What effect do you think it will have on the Labour Party and in particular on how the public views the party?
- What do you make of the argument that party politics is now largely about public relations rather than policy differences?
- And do you think New Labour is dead and is reverting to being Old Labour or that the party has so embraced what New Labour stood for that it no longer needs to use the term?
