Dinosaur Labour Is Back

Considering the audience to which it was aimed, I suppose one could say that Johann Lamont’s first leaders’ speech to the Scottish Labour party conference was a success. Expectations for Ms Lamont were not quite at Obama-levels. I suspect Labour types will have been pleased by it. Which means, naturally, it should terrify everyone else.

It was, naturally, a Unionist speech largely because it reminded one that Scottish Labour would be a powerful force in an independent Scotland and, by god, that’s enough to make one wary of the entire enterprise. England and Wales and Northern Ireland offer some protection, minimising the amount of damage Labour can do in Scotland. This too, perhaps, is an argument against further powers at Holyrood: at some point Labour will have a chance to play with these toys. I grant that this is not an edifying argument since it rests upon an awareness that plenty of Scots remain thirled to a party that makes Ed Balls appear a vision of neoliberal exhuberance.

Ms Lamont says she’s not old or new but rather “Real Labour”. Like the Real IRA, this is an organisation that’s not yet come to grips with a changed world in which old certainties have been dismantled and ancient impossibilities are made almost possible. Neither old nor new, Ms Lamont is instead Dinosaur Labour.

Unsurprisingly, Labour continue to argue that the SNP and the Tories are twins:

Does anything feel familiar conference. We’ve lost and we have a government, cutting services for the poor and vulnerable. Blind to the needs of real people. Wrapping themselves in the flag….and oh….backed by Rupert Murdoch.

Well fine. Anything for an applause line and all that. Nevertheless, Ms Lamont’s speech was not tethered to reality. No hint from her of any awareness that spending cannot control unchecked forever. On the contrary, she seeks “a world where a politicians’ budget matches their claim to care”. That is: spending is proof of care and outcomes or efficiency be ignored and damned. Just in case anyone doubted her meaning, she told conference she desires “a world where caring for you loved ones is regarded as a common good to be supported not a welfare benefit to be cut”. I confess I don’t quite know what this is supposed to mean but I think it’s probably a call for increased government spending.

And never, not really, was there any emphasis on the need for economic growth, far less what might be done within Scotland to help achieve this. On the contrary, tax cuts are a “race to the bottom” and, anyway, hand-outs to (evil) “big business”. Meanwhile, it’s a disgrace foreign – ie, non-Scottish – companies are permitted to bid for Scottish government contracts. There were moments, raiding Ms Lamont’s speech, that I wondered if the last 35 years had even happened.

Apparently not. This was a speech designed to appeal to Labour’s core working-class vote in the west of Scotland. Thats fine and, tactically speaking, it makes sense for Labour to rebuild their credentials with their base. But it was not a speech that spoke to anyone but the blind or those baptised in the Labour tradition at birth.

As I say, this was a reality-denying speech that ignored fiscal reality and, instead, operated in some make-believe world in which spending is considered an axiomatic good and the revenue side of the equation never needs to be addressed. In its own way, then, this speech was an unwitting indictment of the devolution years in which something could always be had for nothing and Scottish politics was sheltered from the troubling winds of reality. Moreover this was a speech showing that Scottish Labour are giving the Liberal Democrats a run for their money in the Most Childish Political Party stakes. They have learnt nothing and show no signs of wanting to learn anything. More sensible Labour types, such as Alistair Darling, must have looked at this and wondered what the hell they’re doing in the same party as these dinosaurs.