Chuka Umunna’s Speech

Chuka Ummuna is a polished and erudite communicator. He is a powerful politician. He is slightly left of centre. But he is not a socialist and he should not be in the Labour Party. He is, in fact, a left wing Tory. He wants Corbyn to call off ‘the dogs’. But dogs only bark at strangers in their midst.

There is really no such actual place as the centre unless there is a left and right. After the huge social revolution begun in 1945 and led by Labour, the centre shifted to the left and with it, after its shock defeat by Attlee, Churchill’s Conservative party. Eden, Macmillan, Home and Heath stayed there in a consensus which saw a huge rise in the standards of living of all the sub professional and working classes, as well as massive improvements in health, housing and education. Then came Thatcher.

For sound political reasons she swam with a tide of anxiety about the drift downwards in the competitive position of British manufacturing and appalling industrial relations, by far the worst in Europe. The state had become unwieldy and business people spent more time arguing with unions than innovating and investing. She took several steps to the right and the centre followed her. Blair scampered after her legacy and governed from what he called the centre, in reality it was Thatcher’s consensus, and in the process he and Gordon Brown lost the support over four elections  of nearly 40% of Labour votes. On top of that all the worst features of market driven asset inflating capitalism flowered, leaving the most distorted economic model for many generations. Hardly surprisingly the tide has now changed. It flows strongly to the left.

Labour has returned to its founding purpose, discovered its true heritage, once again become the party of the socialist tradition and the dominant party of the left. Rightly it believes in democracy and most of its members want to have an opportunity to choose their parliamentary candidates; understandable as the party is not of the Establishment, is the voice of the people and invested with a strong democratic ideal. The fact that Chuka Umunna and some of his colleagues equate this to being harassed by ‘dogs’ shows that the Labour party is no place for them and they should leave it as soon as possible.