It’s high time that James Purnell did some litter picking
Its been quite a week for Labour party. I don’t want to dwell any further upon the ridiculously entitled smeargate. I think I was far more incensed by reports of James Purnell charging the tax payer up to £400 a month for his groceries. As the man in charge of social security, he expects the unemployed to meet all their needs on a little over half that sum. Meanwhile, if Purnell’s plans go ahead, the long term unemployed could be forced to go out litter picking in return for their entitlement to such vast sums. Now that’s the kind of policy to make Daily Mail readers cream. Anyway, today the number of unemployed workers is 4 or 5 greater than the number of vacancies. And Purnell’s insistence that unemployment can be cut by hitting benefit claimants with a big stick are looking more and more ridiculous.
For the past decade principled members of the Labour party have been hammered over the head with the need to be pragmatic, the need to get things done and to stay in power. The left have been presented as a political liability, as a bunch of self-indulgent idealists – selfishly interested in the purity of their ideology rather than actuallly being in government long enough to offer help to people who need it. Today however it is clearer than ever that electoral millstone hanging round Labour’s neck is not the Trade Unions nor the left. It is men like Purnell – who have been determined to bleed the taxpayer dry for personal gain, regardless of the political and electoral risk, who have been so shortsighed as to have spent years baiting the unemployed (3 million voters by the next election) – that has made reelection a distinct improbability.
Yet before we proclaim the death of labour as a progressive force, it is worth looking a bit outside our chronological bubble. When Britain faced the great crash of 1929, the ordinary people of this country face an even greater betrayal at the hands of labour politicians, who pursued a brutal policy of Laissez-faire. Fifteen years later the Atlee government was elected. Once this sorry circus comes to an end, members of the labour party will be asking questions. They will be asking ‘what have we become?’. And they will be asking how Labour can win back power. And they will be aware that the great Blairite truth – that you win elections by adandoning your principles and racing to the centre – has well and truly had its day.
And one more thing. I will be deeply unhappy when the tories return to power. But I cannot pretend that I do not relish the possibility of some of watching the likes of James Purnell experiencing a David Mellor moment, as somebody on another blog put it.
