{"id":1895,"date":"2021-02-17T10:22:25","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T10:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewitnessexet.wpengine.com\/?p=1895"},"modified":"2021-10-10T15:12:17","modified_gmt":"2021-10-10T15:12:17","slug":"is-it-time-to-resurrect-one-nation-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=1895","title":{"rendered":"Is it time to resurrect \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>5 Minute, 15 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

The first phase of Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s leadership of\nthe Labour party is nearing completion and many commentators are asking what\nlies ahead. The next step is to establish a policy base and a brand on which\nthe next three years can be built on. For Blair it was \u2018New Labour\u2019, for\nCameron the \u2018Big Society\u2019 and for Ed Miliband it was \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019. Milibandism\nwas tragically crucified on the electoral cross six years ago, yet the ideas\nsurvived and influenced the Conservative party more than anyone else, perhaps\neven contributing to their landslide win at the last general election. I\nbelieve that \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019 was not rejected on May 7th, 2015, but that Ed\nMiliband was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milibandism was an impressive set of policies that\ncomprised virtue with popularity. Sadly, the political project was led by the\nwrong Miliband brother. Everything wrong with \u2018Red Ed\u2019 can be summed up in nine\nwords: \u201cAm I tough enough? Hell yes, I\u2019m tough enough!\u201d, his nerdish demeanour\nand middle-class British politeness meant Ed Miliband had the perceived\npolitical strength of a particularly timid lamb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same could easily be said of many of his\ncolleagues on the front bench, most notably Ed Balls. Perhaps it is not unclear\nthen why so many voters were more inspired by Nathalie Bennet and Nigel Farage\nthan the man whose nickname in Whitehall was \u2018The Emissary from Planet F***k\u2019.[1]<\/a> Despite this\ncharacterisation, Ed Miliband possesses a first-rate political mind and his\nelectoral strategy, similarly to Tony Blair\u2019s in 1997 successfully evaluated Labour\u2019s\nshortcomings and its looming landslide losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What exactly is \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019 though? Launched at the 2012 party conference \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019 emphasised national unity and social justice. The strategy set out to differentiate itself from New Labour in certain key ways. Miliband made sure that Labour took a far tougher attitude to migration by emphasising the need to prevent emigration of skilled workers and offering policies such as requiring new EU migrants to wait two years before claiming benefits[2]<\/a> and ensuring people in public-facing roles have minimum standards of English to appeal to those enticed by UKIP.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another policy in which \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019 deviated from its predecessor was its approach to the economy. Policies such as the \u2018Mansion tax\u2019 and the promotion of technical education aimed to ensure investment and jobs were available in Britain\u2019s neglected regions and represented a more interventionist shift in the direction of the party. Compared to his successor though, \u2018Red Ed\u2019 was not so red after all, as commitments to reduce tuition fees and allow greater public-sector involvement in the railways were considered the radical socialist policies that made him a danger to the economy. Both policies, however, have been floated by the current conservative government and it was rumoured that a \u2018Mansion tax\u2019 would be announced in the March 2020 budget only to be shelved due to the pandemic.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final key pillar of Milibandism was the devolution\nof power in England. Miliband proposed a \u2018constitutional convention\u2019 to assess\nEnglish devolution and other much-needed reforms to the archaic Westminster\nsystem such as a Senate for the regions and the feasibility of codifying the\nconstitution.[5]<\/a>\nThe purpose of the convention was to strengthen the nation by giving a voice to\nregional identities. Many contemporary progressive critics might attribute\nMilibandism with pandering to \u2018Little Englanders\u2019, yet this is a cynical way of\nviewing \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019 and a foolishly idealised view of politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Miliband proposed was a set of visionary ideas, as\nhe realised the erosion of party support from traditional heartlands in the\n\u2018red wall\u2019. \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019 addressed the feelings of those forgotten and\nharmed by economic globalisation and sought to find effective solutions to\ntheir problems, without resorting to populist sensationalism such as the\nabolition of tuition fees, endless Brussels-bashing or xenophobic rhetoric that\nwould only have made a lot of people worse off. By listening to genuine\nconcerns about the loss of national and economic identity and providing honest\nsolutions to alleviate those concerns, Labour stood on a moral and potentially\npopular platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the Labour party needed was a more effective\nleader to communicate those solutions to the public. The age of Corbyn has\nsadly wiped out many possible Messiahs that could resurrect \u2018One Nation Labour\u2019.\nOf the MPs that remain, possible saviours include Dan Jarvis, Yvette Cooper,\nHilary Benn, Liz Kendall and most likely of all shadow foreign secretary Lisa\nNandy. Compared to Miliband or Sir Keir, Nandy has multiple advantages. She\ncomes across as honest, genuine, relatable and charismatic and the more one\nsees of her, the more one likes her. Whereas Sir Keir has the vibe of a\nheadteacher who thinks creating a TikTok<\/em> account for his school will\ngive it a modern edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa Nandy\u2019s greatest asset though is her Northernness, her distinctly Lancashire personality and her ability to fully understand the feelings of residents in abandoned towns up and down the country such as those in her own constituency of Wigan. That is why throughout the last Labour leadership election, she proved herself as the most popular candidate amongst conservative voters and the most worrying candidate amongst conservative politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ed Miliband\u2019s policies may not have gotten him into\nNo.10 but when seat after seat fell to the Tories on December 12, 2019, the\nconstituents of Doncaster North which had one of the highest Leave votes in the\ncountry decided to give him another chance because they knew he fought for\ntheir interests valiantly. I predict that unless Sir Keir rebrands Labour into\na party that acknowledges and addresses the concerns of neglected towns then\nhis political career shall end in 2024 having only flipped a few dozen seats.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> The\nmeek vs the geek: Brothers Miliband battle it out | The Independent | The\nIndependent<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> EU migrants would wait\ntwo years for jobless benefits, Labour says – BBC News<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Our\nImmigration Reform Bill will set out our new approach to make a real\ndifference. \u2013 The Labour Party (archive.org)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Boris\nJohnson ‘considers mansion tax on Britain’s most expensive homes | Daily Mail\nOnline<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Labour\nproposes devolution settlement to ‘shape own futures’ | Scottish independence |\nThe Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n

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The first phase of Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s leadership of the Labour party is nearing completion and many commentators are asking what lies ahead. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,6,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-british","category-featured","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}