Down with Brown ?

When Labour lose the Crewe and Nantwich by-election tomorrow, should Golden get the blame ?

It's not that unusual for governments to lose by-elections eleven years into office, even in what are usually considered to be safe seats.

Brown has not been a conspicuously successful Prime Minister, that is undeniable. The once reasonably social democratic Brown has become a vacuum, unlike Blair, who was always that way. Their overwhelming need to win produced a capitulation to the political Right which was always shameful and has now become pathetic. They adopted the 'free market' ideology in the name of a spurious 'third way'. They imagined that their triangulation to attract ' middle-class ' voters would be a permanent achievement, but they misunderstood both the nature of the international economy and the depth of commitment that many people still have to the idea of a welfare state. Could the more populist and charismatic Blair have won tomorrow ? Possibly.

Given that this is a safe Labour seat at general elections, Blair may just have held it. You won't really be able to blame Golden, unless the loss is massive. In which case, it will be seen as a judgement on his short premiership.

We may then be tempted to join in the baying for Brown's removal. This is a temptation which socialists and social democrats in the Labour Party should resist. I'm not fond of Brown, although I probably dislike him a little less than Blair. However, this is surely a matter of politics, not of personalities alone, no matter to what extent those personalities themselves personify a particular kind of politics. New Labour is the enemy.It is the marketisation agenda, the privatisation of our public goods, the betrayal of the working class, in its fullest sense, including all disempowered people, my fellow carers, the sick and disabled and the elderly poor. The involvement in American imperialist wars, with their vast loss of lives and the maiming of innocents. This is the betrayal.

I don't imagine that the good people of Crewe and Nantwich will have all of these considerations in mind when they reject Labour tomorrow, although they may have some of them. They will see Blairite and Brownite New Labour alike as having been an egregious failure. If the Labour Party is to be revived as a major political force in this country, it may possibly do so by a reconstruction of the New Labour Project under a new name and a new leader. That seems to me to be unlikely, but I wouldn't want to be a part of that in the slightest way, in any circumstances. If we can't remake the Labour Party as a decent, sincere and authentic social democratic force, then we will need to try to forge a new kind of politics, based on a new alliance between socialists and radical greens and other genuine progressives.