The political crisis in Britain (coalition governments, referendums on Scottish independence and on the EU, the decline of the Westminster parties etc) has had a direct effect on the Labour Party. Delighted by the initial rise of UKIP, full of talk about how the Social Democrats' spilt from Labour in the 1980s had 'divided the left' and now how the rise of UKIP would do the same for the right, Labour's leaders suddenly find themselves in a desperate position. And they are taking desperate measures.
The Blairites have been counselling doom for Ed Miliband's Labour Party for months. They argue that Miliband's failure to 'steer to the centre' and to 'win' the votes of 'Essex man' is to fail to learn the lessons of Blaire's success fifteen years ago. They moan and groan about comrade Ed's lack of admiration for business. They worry that the wrong Miliband is now steering the Labour ship onto the port side rocks.
In fact they need not worry. Ed Miliband had his troops march into the coalition lobby when Chancellor Osborne demanded a vote on £30 billion worth of cuts in the the first 3 years of the next parliament. Ed is no Alexis Tsipras. However, it is true that Miliband and his team have been making a lot of noise in the last two weeks about Tory tax dodgers, about a new tax on Bankers' bonuses, about new laws against financial fiddles and about the Living Wage. Is Ed having an epiphany?
Sadly no. But the not so red Ed has 'seen the light' on one important matter. He has awakened to the terrible realisation that the Labour Party could be finished as a party of government. If the SNP takes away Labour's base in Scotland then for the foreseeable future Labour will never again have a majority in Parliament. Ed knew this would happen if there was Scottish independence. But now he realises that it could happen anyway, via the emergence of a mass party, with an anti-austerity message, in its traditional Scottish heartlands.
So when Ed speaks these days, he is speaking to the Scots, or, more specifically, to Scottish ex Labour voters. He is in a race to the death with a party, the SNP, that has just announced that it is in favour of the end of austerity and who did not vote for the £30 billion cuts to be applied in the next Westminster parliament.
Leaving aside the character and motives of the SNP leadership, they have created a mass base for themselves in the Scottish working class, and are reinforcing it with an anti austerity policy and the idea that in a coalition with Labour, they would force the concessions in an anti austerity direction. But for Miliband and his 'strategic thinkers', that would open up an even more terrible vista.
The Labour Party is not what it was. It is no longer rooted in an organised social-class, base. Active union members and not just in the RMT, are arguing for the union 'political funds' to be spent on anti austerity candidates and parties - like the Greens. The Labour leadership has not only unhinged itself from what remains of the trade union movement by consistently supporting the worst anti-union laws in Europe, it has deliberately turned its back on working class people and their futures as its main enterprise. Perhaps surprisingly to Ed and his ilk, what this means is that there is no longer the strength of purpose, the history, the imagination and the will, to see out a period of retreat and defence. There are no longer the people who understand the imperative sometimes to carry that load. Instead the Labour Party, like the other main parties, is dominated by careerists, chancers, by the modern political class, with all the specious corruption that carries. So, they will not hang around Ed. If Labour cannot take office, then the modern lynch pin of the modern Labour Party has been pulled out.
That is what really gives Ed his sleepless nights. Whether he will preside over the drawn out disassembling of Labour. That could be the next drama in Britain's political crisis
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