Interview
What Labour did next 25 June 2010 After losing the General Election, the Rt Hon David Miliband on the lessons Labour needs to learn from Scotland Just 35 days after the election that saw him booted out of office and the day after nominations closed for the Labour Party leadership contest, the Rt Hon David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary, New Labour wunderkind and now hopeful Labour leader-in-waiting, sat in the gallery of the Scottish Parliament to watch FMQs. Sitting next to MSP Duncan McNeil who, instead of his normal heckling from the Labour benches, offered a subdued running commentary in Miliband’s ear while one down, the former Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy, stretched across excitedly every now and again to remark on some comment or other from the First Minister with a smirk, David Miliband looked slightly uncomfortable as the media cottoned on to who was sitting down wind of them in the public seats. Here was a big Labour beast from Westminster watching the SNP Government and as he glanced around at an environment so different from that of the cloistered environs of the House of Commons and with his own position so radically changed, it must have felt like a foreign land indeed. He nibbled nervously on his fingernails. But as he exited the Chamber and walked into Holyrood’s Garden Lobby, he was greeted like the prodigal son. He may have said that he was here to learn what Labour in Scotland had done right in the General Election but he was treated with all the undignified deference we Scots reserve for those that come up from the big city of London to grace us with their presence. Alex Salmond uncharacteristically skulked in the background, perhaps waiting for the Labour hierarchy to show some etiquette and introduce Scotland’s First Minister to one who hoped to be leader of the opposition in Westminster but no gesture was forthcoming. And as the media shuffled its feet, waiting for something to happen, Labour MSPs milled around slightly unsure what to do, other than bask in the glow from the chosen one. It was hard to believe that just five weeks had passed since his government, a government and a politics that he was so intrinsically linked to, had managed to lose an election for them. But then David Miliband is nothing if not brass necked. Here is man who, for the whole of his elected political career, has been dogged by speculation that he would be the next Labour leader as the brainy protégé of Tony Blair and despite that apparent disloyalty, hinted at by muted denials or silence that fuelled the continued headlines about his succession, he has managed to remain in high office and close to the leader that the rumours centred on. As one of Britain’s youngest foreign secretaries and one of the intellectuals behind the New Labour experiment – Alastair Campbell famously dubbed him ‘brains’ - David Miliband strutted the world stage in the company of world leaders and enjoyed lavish ministerial offices, today he is relegated to a tiny, coombed ceiling room on the top floor of Portcullis House. He hasn’t had time to unpack his boxes and the office is adorned by just a single collection of a couple of dozen political biographies, dictionaries, political guides and historical tomes. If and when he and his party get back into power again will depend on whether the contest for its leadership really does begin Labour’s renewal. He was the first to declare his eventual intention to replace Gordon Brown as the next leader and has been the bookies’ favourite ever since. He is joined in that battle by his own brother, Ed, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and Diane Abbott. And far from offering a radical break with the past, Abbott has accused her combatants of being ‘New Labour creatures’, products of the party that have served both Blair and Brown, with the implication that they are part of the problem rather than the solution. But while all of the male contenders claim now to be against all manner of things that they supported while in power, from Iraq to the 10p tax, Miliband also claims to be completely relaxed that he is now fighting his own brother making this the first leadership contest involving siblings: “Family is more important than politics,” he says. And to be fair, the Milibands should know. As the sons of the Marxist intellectual and historian, Ralph Miliband, they grew up in a rarefied atmosphere completely encompassed by the political ideology of the left. Their mother, Marion Kozak, was also an academic and both she and Ralph were Jewish immigrants who had narrowly escaped concentration camps by fleeing Belgium and Poland during the Second World War. Apart from a brief residence in Leeds, the family home was in Primrose Hill, North London, and was a left-wing intellectual meeting ground. David Miliband was leafleting for Labour as a schoolboy at Haverstock comprehensive, which he points out, repeatedly, was a state school albeit one that was crammed with the offspring of affluent left wingers who were able to keep their money and their principles by sending their children there. The author Zoe Heller was a contemporary as was Oona King. So with a combination of nature and nurture, it is unsurprising that both he and Ed, read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. What is more unusual is that they both ended up in government sitting around the same Cabinet table and are now running against each other for their party’s leadership. A party that, ironically, their father was a huge critic of and claimed it would betray the working classes. The joke among many Brown supporters was that Ralph Miliband argued Labour would do nothing for the working class and his son would be the one to prove it. “Quite a lot of people react against their surroundings. As it happens, it is true that both Ed and I went into politics but some of my fondest memories of my father are of taking me to play football on a rainy Saturday morning and that might not be what people associate with an intellectual life but to me, my dad was my dad and my mum was my mum, not some great political animals. It was obviously a household that took politics seriously but not itself too seriously.” Is it odd to grow up to be less politically radical than his father? “Well, with the only qualification that yes, he was the more radical but he would have said that we were still on the same side of the fence. You have to remember that I was 21 in 1986 and the product of a middleclass household and he was 21 in 1945 and had been a refugee and seen or read about fascism and communism. That is a very different world 41 years later and in that everyone is a product of their circumstances and he would say that he could see the shared goals, shared sense of what is right and wrong but although he was a person of very definite political views and in some ways doctrinaire, [he] wasn’t dogmatic or particularly sectarian. It can sound a bit pat but I think he would say that we would share very strong values and what we were against; inequality of income, of power, of opportunity of wealth and of connections and being against shortsighted, ignorant prejudice and that you stand up for a humane view of people and circumstance.” What would his father make of the Labour Party that his sons have helped shape and are now fighting to lead? “I think that he would be both proud and appalled about aspects of things we are doing but I hope pride would be greater.” Would Ralph have voted for David or his brother for the leader? “That’s a very unfair question...asking for Solomon’s judgement and he would have said as much and as my mum would say, family is more important than politics and you don’t take sides if it prejudices family.” Is it a distraction that they are both standing? “It’s a fact rather than a distraction and one of those things that you have to live with.” Isn’t Ed just a small and irritating younger sibling trying to pour rain on David’s parade? “He is neither small nor irritating...so you can’t look at it like that...you have to be open and honest with each other and the point about that is not being honest and open with anyone else so those discussions that we have had about how we operate, this remains between us and may the best man win.” Perhaps they hadn’t learnt to share as children? “Yes, we did share as children but we were four and half years apart so we were doing different things at different stages but we did a lot together. We weren’t a big family, just Mum and Dad and us two boys so we were a close-knit family and did a lot together and there is a very strong bond and we are friends, of course. Of course we would work together; you have to be grown up about these things.” What he is willing to face up to in a very grown-up way is that it was a very bad General Election for Labour. It’s second worst since 1918. Indeed as the map turned blue, the party shrunk to just 12 seats in southern England outside London. However, in Scotland the party was overwhelmingly returned and gave Miliband 41 reasons to be cheerful.  “I came up to Scotland the day after the nominations closed because it is important to learn from success and what Jim Murphy, Iain Gray and all the thousands of envelope stuffers and activists did was show that the progressive heart beats strongly in Scotland and we have to capitalise on that with a strong performance next May and that is a really important milestone because it will show that Labour can recover. It is probably the most significant election for us and it will be important for Team Labour to be strong from Westminster, in Holyrood but also in the councils and with activists all around Scotland. What I have said to Iain [Gray] was that I hoped he could be a pioneer for ideas on affordable housing, safer seats, and decent jobs and then that is what we will run the next general election on.” So despite the fact that Scotland helped Labour emerge with at least some dignity in May, it is to be rewarded by becoming the testing laboratory for how Labour should reinvent itself? “No, no…testing ground carries the wrong intonation, which is why I say pioneer because this is a pioneer for ideas not a testing ground for ideas to be implemented elsewhere or for us to be doing something to the Scots, this is Scots pioneering Scottish ideas but if you do pioneer particular ideas on affordable housing or on jobs that work then we would learn from that success for the rest of the UK. “I think the rewards from voting come from the representation and Scotland has strong Labour representation which is important to us being a fighting opposition to a government that people in Scotland didn’t vote for. “We have to be the people who fight in opposition but we must also be an alternative government and the Labour Party historically in 1955 and 1987 has comforted itself that the pendulum will bring us back into power but it won’t and we will only get back into power if we deserve it and win the battle of ideas and show that we are a living, breathing movement in all parts of the country.” So what is the new message? He was one of the principal architects of New Labour and has since talked about Next Labour. “Iain will be leading the message and given my commitments to devolution, I would not presume to tell him what to say but together we will craft a message about how a Labourled administration in Holyrood can make a difference to Scots’ lives and that is what politics is all about.” Doesn’t he recognise that by May Labour, if elected, could face a perfect storm in the Scottish Parliament; a coalition government in Westminster that has managed to effect some semblance of recovery and a Scottish Government facing up to a reality of cuts delayed by the SNP just in time for the takeover? “They have deliberately set out to avoid the cuts this year and have them faced next year and it is typically underhand of both the SNP and the Tories. That is an unholy alliance if ever I saw one, the two of them together trying to obscure what is going to happen and then avoid the blame for it but I think Scots are canny enough to know what is going on.” Does he still agree with the call made by Wendy Alexander to ‘bring it on’ in terms of a referendum on independence? “I don’t think referendum is where Scots are thinking just now. Devolution has made Britain stronger and constitutional upheaval is not where people are at at the moment, they went solutions to practical problems.” If elected in September as Labour’s new leader, David Miliband will be the first non- Scot to lead the party since John Smith; does that feel like a heavy responsibility? “Is Tony an honorary Scot because he went to Fettes,” he laughs but is reminded that Blair was actually born in Edinburgh and his parents lived in the city which does technically make him a Scot. “Look, we live in a world where people are comfortable with their shared identity as well as their own distinctive ones and Scots will judge the new Labour leader on what he or she can deliver for them and for Britain. “Scots don’t slavishly support us and they gave us a very sharp reminder of that in Glasgow East in 2008. We fight for every vote and we can do more to get a Scots voice on the UK stage, which is why I keep repeating the idea that we put Iain on the National Executive Committee of the party which would help but there is nothing slavish about the Scottish support; it’s serious and it’s proper. I think that Scots were sick and tired of voting Labour and getting a Tory government and what New Labour did for them was give them a Labour government which made positive massive change in the lives of the Scottish people, which is why I say we should be more proud of our record, more humble about our mistakes, 10p tax being a prime example and more honest about our offer for the future. What I want is a Labour Party that can win because leadership without values is just management but values without leadership are just dreams and the job of politics is to make reality more like the dreams that people have.” It’s poetic stuff but there is no doubting that some in the party blame him and other senior Labour figures for the generalelection result because they dithered in replacing Gordon Brown. Miliband did not challenge Brown in 2007 when Blair left and he appeared to bottle it again in 2009 which saw the departure of his friend James Purnell from Government and again, earlier this year when many still believed he was behind the abortive Hoon/Hewitt coup. Some members of the last Cabinet believe voter aversion to Brown cost Labour as many as 40 seats and while Miliband can not really argue against such speculation, he would say that failure at the ballot box was not down to one man alone. Labour failed to win a fourth term because “we all said we needed to renew but we didn’t sufficiently”. “New Labour was a reaction to the 1980s but it was trapped by the 1980s. Anyone who thinks that the future is about re-creating New Labour is wrong. I think we’ve got to use this period to decisively break with that. What I’m interested in is Next Labour.” So on that note of change; how does he feel about the fact that despite talking about the need to reform and refresh, Labour won in Scotland using a very old message? “Yes, it was ‘we hate the Tories’, but given what has happened in the seven weeks since, that was very apposite because it has turned out that although the argument that the Tories hadn’t changed was mocked in some quarters, it has turned out to be true and we are re-fighting an argument from the 1930s, never mind the 1980s about what is the role of the Government in the modern economy.” Given what he feels about the Tories, doesn’t he think his own party should have done more to form a coalition? “I think the numbers just weren’t there and the Libs weren’t interested so it wasn’t possible. It’s just nonsense to say that it was us that didn’t want to do a deal, complete nonsense. The truth is the Libs, led by Mr Clegg, decided to throw their hat in the ring with the Tories and people like Andrew Adonis, who was perfectly open to a coalition and went into the talks, was shocked by what he found. The Libs had been out of power for 60 years and they became transfixed by power and Mr Clegg, who I have described as a dumb waiter in the sense that he is dumb because he doesn’t speak and waiter because he is at the bidding of Mr Cameron, has put his own job ahead of the jobs of tens of thousands of people around the country and this coalition is only held together by power because the Libs spent the whole election saying the Tories were going to end civilisation as we know it and we want to keep them out and then got into bed with them, so that is why this is not new politics, it is very old politics. It is change backwards rather than forwards and we are fighting old battles and the Libs bear responsibility for being the shield for a Tory government. It is a Tory government with a Liberal fig leaf and the Libs are going to have to be made to pay for it because you expect Tories to be Tories but you don’t expect Liberals to be Tories. “The fact that we now have an administration that seems blind to the dangers of Britain having a slow growth decade, like Japan did in the 1990s, is very real and the fact is that it is going to be done in a very unfair way is the same old Tories but if you are saying, do we need to fight the next general election on hope and not just fear, yes, and do we need more hope, yes, should we have been more proud of our record, yes, and should we have been more humble about our mistakes, yes, and should we have been clearer on our offer, yes, and should we be more clear on our offer for the future, yes...” Labour lost the election, he says, because it was no longer the party of aspiration or the future. “We lost the twin mantles of new Labour’s political dominance — that we were the party of fairness and the majority, and that we were the party of change and reform. Unless we get those two things back we won’t win again.” So why should the party back him rather than the others to lead it into that change? “I’m running on why I would be the best leader of the party, not against one of the other candidates. I think I can turn dreams into reality and I was brought up believing that if you could make a difference and didn’t then it would be a waste.” Holyrood Magazine - issue 237 | Previous article Related articles: Moore of the same 5 September 2010 Taking power 5 September 2010 A liberal view of life 11 June 2010 The Alexander Technique 28 May 2010 Made from girders 26 April 2010 See all articles in this category Submit a comment |
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