The Spectator’s Notes | 28 January 2012

As the Labour party wrestles with self-definition in hard times, I wonder if it was wise to ditch Clause 4. In 1994-95, it was important for Tony Blair to win a symbolic victory over the left. This undoubtedly helped get him into Downing Street. Clause 4 of the party’s constitution was considered a doctrinaire text of nationalisation. But the key contentious words do not have to bear that interpretation. The clause promises ‘to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’. Today, in the era of the credit crunch, the question of the ownership of wealth has returned to the centre of debate, and rightly so, because the many — to adapt a Blairite phrase — have had to pay for the rescue of the few. The great question in the debate between capitalism and socialism about how people can best obtain ‘the full fruits of their industry’ is unresolved. Labour would surely be in a stronger position if it were able to stand on the ground of common ownership and then modernise it in the least state-oriented way possible (a new look at cooperatives, wider share ownership, workers’ equity etc). The Blairites were right about the need to modernise, but their dreadfully vague talk about ‘values’ has disabled Labour from having alternative answers to the key question of who actually owns, and therefore controls, the wealth of nations.

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What terrible rents in our social fabric have been caused by the phone-hacking scandal. Last year Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse gave a private dinner party in London, at which the guests included Rebekah Brooks, then still at News International, her husband the equestrian hero Charlie Brooks, and Lord and Lady Rothermere.