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IAIN WATSON: With the General Election
looming, Labour apparatchiks are busy redrafting the manifesto, to give
it a bit more impact. But in the end, will they offer the prospect of
consolidation or change?
If Labour ARE granted
a second term, will Britain look a very different place in the future?
Well perhaps with a little bit of help we can try to find out. But there
are those within Labour's ranks who say the government isn't embarking
on an exciting enough journey.
MATTHEW TAYLOR: The reality is that even if Labour
was to spend all the money that it's committed to and the economy was to
stay in good shape, in four or five years we would still be in Britain
the most unequal of the major European economies and we would still have
the lowest level of public investment. So I think that I'd like to see
Labour's manifesto sensible, prudent, incremental but signalling a sort
of Utopia, where do we really want to get to in fifteen or twenty years,
what does a good Britain feel like?
LORD SAWYER: I don't know that you make
lots of promises, you give people confidence that the second term will
be a term of good and sound economic management and that you'll do what
is necessary to maintain high levels of employment, low inflation and all
the things that people expect from government.
WATSON: Labour 's policy wonks
at Number 10 have been searching far and wide to try to find something
as rare as a sighting of Halley's Comet - the elusive big idea. But in
the end they've decided to settle on a theme which links together a constellation
of bright, but small ideas; this unifying vision will apparently be of
a meritocratic society - expressed in the rather more populist phrase,
'opportunity for all'. But there are some influential thinkers within the
Labour Party who say this just isn't nearly enough if Tony Blair is to
deliver on his promise of a second term more radical than the first.
MICHAEL JACOBS: When people have the opportunity
to earn wealth they then accumulate it for themselves and they pass it
on to their children and you've no longer got a meritocracy. So meritocracy
constantly requires the redistribution of wealth, the redistribution of
opportunity and sometimes it sounds like what you want to do is create
opportunity for this generation but then the next generation will not be
meritocratic.
PHIL COLLINS: The drawbacks of the idea
of meritocracy is that it tends to leave people behind and policy has to
address those people at the bottom. It will be even worse for people who
are in disadvantaged positions to be told that they're there on merit.
VOICE OVER. Labour will now have a majority
of 64O.
WATSON: If we go back to 1945,
it's obvious radical ideas can win elections. But don't count on a repeat
performance. Some Labour insiders are stressing that the 2001 contest will
not be 'a transformative election'; instead we should expect evolutionary,
not revolutionary change - in line with Labour's mantra 'a lot done, a
lot still to do'. But just in case that isn't very inspiring, Labour will
set out longer term aims looking far into the future.
Many of Labour's ambitions
have a rather generous time scale for fulfillment. Only if we travel forward
to 2010, do we enter a Utopian world where British productivity has risen
faster than our competitors; where the number of children in poverty has
been cut by half; where there are millions more in higher education; where
fuel poverty has been banished; and there are homes 'fit for all'. But
just before you get too enthusiastic, I should point out that Labour are
saying reducing world poverty by fifty per cent will take five years longer.
JACOBS: I think ambitions for the
year 2010 are probably a bit too far distant for most ordinary voters,
but there's a very easy way to marry those to what voters can recognise
now, which is to say well what will we have achieved by the end of this
Parliament, on our way to a target at 2010.
WATSON: As well longer term ambitions
and challenges Labour's manifesto will also include a series of pledges
in each policy area - to be fulfilled during the lifetime of the next Parliament.
But these new, improved pledges will apparently be very different in nature
to those they put on offer back in 1997.
TAYLOR: If you look back at the
'97 pledges there pretty micro and arguably they're not terribly good policy
I think the waiting list policy for example was a bit of an albatross round
the neck of Frank Dobson when he was running health after '97. So I hope
that if there are pledges this time that there broader and that there more
about ultimate objectives and less about particular devices
LORD SAWYER: I don't think they are necessary
in the second term, I think pledges can lock you in to decisions that you
don't need to make at the time. Look the world is changing rapidly, you
go to any business - not very many businessmen these days give pledges
for three or four or five years.
WATSON: On the basis of information
from recent drafts, it now appears as though Labour's manifesto will be
split into five main sections - broadly speaking these would encompass
the economy; welfare and work; investment in public services; anti-crime
measures to build stronger communities; and Britain's international role.
But Labour are perhaps being just a little coy about how to pay for their
policies - because, as well as offering targeted tax cuts when affordable,
'On the Record' has been told that they're going to repeat their pledge
not to increase the basic or higher rate of income tax; much to the disappointment
of some of their, usually loyal, supporters.
LORD SAWYER: I don't think that any pledges
need to be made on taxation either way, I think people need to, the government
has now got sufficient support and sufficient confidence amongst the voters
to be able to say, you know we're going into the election, it isn't our
job to put the taxes up, we think people already pay enough taxes but if
there are circumstances that are unforeseen then we might have to make
changes in the taxation system.
TAYLOR: I would hope that Labour
doesn't tie its hands too much in relation to taxation. Partly because
I think actually, you want to have flexibility because you know, who knows
where the economy's going to go in the next few years, but also because
if there is a growing public appetite for Labour to go further in terms
of investment and justice, and if that begins to look as though people
are saying look actually we recognise that there's going to be consequences
for tax, well then I think one needs to respond to that public mood.
WATSON: A critical section of the
manifesto will concern continued investment in public services; by the
end of a second term, for example, Labour wants to see our health service
catch up with some of the best in Europe; but some Labour-supporting thinkers
say if they won't grasp the nettle of tax, to make public services better
- then a radical option would be an up-front commitment to make greater
use of the private sector in the NHS.
COLLINS: There is scope for greater
private involvement in the provision of health care There's still an ideological
Rubicon to be crossed here. It's been crossed in education but I still
don't think it has been in health care and if there's a real hostage to
fortune in the next term of Labour government it will be this: What will
happen if the promised money doesn't yield the benefits which we hope for
it?
WATSON: If Labour wins the next
election, newborn babies will be given a hand up and a handout by government,
which they can draw down in adulthood. These 'baby bonds' - announced
last week - are the first in a series of family friendly pledges. But Labour's
former policy director, who generated some of these new ideas, says his
party shouldn't be too cautious in the manifesto when it comes to offering
more rights to working parents; standing up to business wont be harmful
economically or electorally.
TAYLOR: I think that on the issue
of work, life, balance that probably, that business is probably hectoring
government, it's exaggerating the damage. I actually think that a better
set of work life policies would be good for productivity and other European
countries have gone further and there's no evidence at all of problems
resulting from that.
WATSON: Cast your mind back to
nineteen-ninety-seven and you may recall the phrase 'new Labour, new Britain'.
Constitutional reform helped define Tony Blair's government - but it won't
form a central section of this manifesto. There'll be plenty of rhetoric
on giving power back to people; Labour will offer regional assemblies where
there's demand, and, despite the Ken Livingstone fiasco, will create more
city mayors. but some criticise this piecemeal approach.
JACOBS: I think
we do now need an overall constitutional blueprint which brings together
reform of the Lords, which is very much unfinished business, with a regional
government for England which is the unfinished business of devolution,
with an improvement in the powers and status of local government which
is absolutely crucial to deliver high quality public services, I don't
see how you can do that without having an overall plan
WATSON: So, if Tony Blair really
wants to see a more meritocratic nation by two-thousand-and-five, radically
different from the Britain took on, will he be able to put an inspiring
package to voters now, in his two-thousand-and-one manifesto which will
also fire the enthusiasm of his own supporters?
JACOBS: I think many people confuse
new with radical, and that what people are asking is that Labour should
have lots of new things, perhaps rather gimmicky things which don't add
up to much, when in fact the ideas and ambitions and objectives it's got
are radical. Think of European levels of public service, think of full
employment, eradicating child poverty, these are not new but they're certainly
radical if you look at the state of the country at the moment and the country
that Labour inherited.
TAYLOR: I think the reality is
this, at the end of Labour's first term, it's a general view of progressives
is, if it's the first chapter it's not a bad first chapter, we're looking
forward to the rest of the book. If it was the whole of the story it would
be a disappointment.
WATSON: But some say Labour's ambitions
are limited by space and time; they want to maintain into the future the
grand coalition of support they built in nineteen-ninety-seven; so 'big
vision' politics can be counterproductive.
COLLINS: Every coherent tale that
you tell about a government deliberately marks out enemies; it defines
you against someone else, and in so far as this term of government has
been an attempt to avoid doing any such thing then incoherence has been
its friend.
WATSON: Losing the prize of an
historic second term has been something of a worry for Labour party members;
they dare not risk a journey back to the political wilderness. But some
say the government needs a clearer sense of direction, with a leadership
more radical in its outlook; otherwise even after two terms, future political
historians may say - Tony Blair. Who?
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