POLITICS
With both hands tied behind his back, Mr Smith plots Labour's brave future
SIMON HEFFER
'We're not going to win the next elec- tion,' a prominent Labour MP told me the other day. it doesn't matter how much of a mess the Tories make. Look how much of a mess they made before the last election.'
'But surely things can change before then?' I asked, naively.
'Smith's not a campaigner. The trick is going to be fighting the Tory lies machine. We didn't do that successfully with Kin- nock, and he was a street-fighter. So don't expect Smith to do it.' My next inquiry, about the warrior qualities of Mrs Beckett, was met with derision.
'I divide politicians up into club and non- club politicians,' a Labour ofticial informed me. 'The club ones like using the Commons to get the message over. Smith is like that. Kinnock was a non-club politician. He liked to get out and take on his opponents out- side. People aren't fair to Kinnock. His tac- tics worked. This party is in better shape now than it was when he took it over. They don't realise what a struggle he had.'
'They' — and we — probably don't. Mr Kinnock is praised for his internal reforms, and for starting to create a less extreme party than was the case a decade ago. How- ever, those reforms have further to go, and then Labour must think afresh about what policies will help them attack the Tories.
To the anger of many of Mr Smith's sup- porters. the biggest reform of all — one member, one vote elections for candidates that end union control of selection proce- dures — has been postponed. The two men who might have shaken up Labour suffi- ciently to win the next election, Mr Tony Blair and Mr Gordon Brown, are especially upset by the delay in this fundamental change. Mr Brown will probably be shadow Chancellor and Mr Blair shadow Home Secretary when Mr Smith becomes leader. At September's party conference both will try, for the first time, to win places on Labour's National Executive Committee. Although the NEC is notoriously hard to get on to at the first attempt, both are so popular that their chances of success are high. The NEC makes Labour's rules. If Messrs Blair and Brown join it, internal reform (about which Mr Smith seems dan- gerously cautious) will be speeded up.
The reforms, if accomplished, may make Labour more presentable by lowering the chances of local parties choosing unrecon- structed candidates. But the public, as Labour MPs know, want policies as well as presentation. Labour has been an unim- pressive opposition since 9 April. Seldom can a Government presiding over so grave an economic crisis have had so easy a ride from its opponents. Labour's behaviour, the result of its own devastated morale and incredible economic policy, contradicts the supposed advantages of political pluralism. It has, though, proved that Mr Kinnock was right to call the leadership election as quickly as possible, rather than let the party s aimlessness continue until the Blackpool conference, when it would nor- mally have been held. The benefits of Mr Kinnock's foresight will only be felt, howev- er, if Mr Smith acts decisively once elected.
He has two possible options for an early strike against Mr Major. The first is Europe. Labour wants to be pro-European because it sees the Bennite vision of isola- tionism and command economics as the sort of thing from which it has been retreat- ing since 1983. Therefore it let the Maas- tricht Bill through on second reading, even though the Treaty lacks the social chapter that Labour so badly wanted. However, Labour is manoeuvring to support a refer- endum. The need to lift morale by wrong- footing the Tories is urgent. Aware that unanimity of view on this question is as absent from its benches as from the Tories', Labour feels a referendum would allow everyone to have his say while (because of Mr Major's objections to a plebiscite) embarrassing the Government. If Labour defeated the Government on a vote for a referendum in the Commons (far from impossible, given mounting Tory support for one), Mr Smith could allow his MPs freedom to campaign on either side of the question. Such a luxury is unlikely to be accorded to the Tories.
The economy should provide Labour with its richest pickings. However, Mr Smith's own commitment to the Exchange Rate Mechanism makes it hard for him plausibly to call for lower interest rates. This week Labour indulged in the fantasy of suggesting that the Germans revalue the Mark upwards, helping other ERM coun- tries maintain the fiction that their curren- cy can stay steady while interest rates fall. Support for the ERM has limited the Gov- ernment's room for manoeuvre; it now lim- its the Opposition's. Rather than pursue the old policy of always claiming that inter- est rates should be one point lower than the Government has set them, Labour is now reduced to asking for help from other countries to achieve its economic aims.
Labour's hard men admit British industry is inefficient, and that more jobs, especially among its client-groups in the public sector, may have to be lost before national effi- ciency is obtained. They do not, though, see that German revaluation would be a cos- metic way of devaluing, without facing the electorate with the truth that the economy has been run so badly that the currency is overvalued. Labour will talk much in the months ahead about 'supply-side reforms', by which it means borrowing more to invest in better quality products to improve com- petitiveness. They will have to find some- one prepared to lend the money first.
As an opposition, Labour should have the luxury of changing its mind, and chang- ing it with breathtaking cynicism. If it really wants to attack the Government it must argue that the decline of the economy since British entry to the ERM in October 1990 (a contraction of 4.2 per cent, according to latest figures) means that the currency Is overvalued. Labour should have the wit to present itelf not as the party of devaluation, but as the party clever enough to convince the public that Tory economic mismanage' ment has made devaluation inevitable.
By no other means can Labour capture the affections of the newly unemployed, bankrupted and repossessed who are the symbols of Mr Major's achievement. Mr Smith had better start the revisionism with- out delay. As it is, Labour faces what the working class movement likes to call a long march. Without some opportunism, that march will become an interminable limp.
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