Jon Cruddas: I fear Labour will have no mandate for change

LONDON – Unlike many other Labour MPs, Jon Cruddas is not reluctant to talk. Member of Parliament for Dagenham and Rainham, he has already announced his exit from politics, despite a possible landslide victory of his party at the election this year: “I just want to do a few other things”, he tells me, “these are occupations that you shouldn’t hang around. But I’ll still be active in the Labour Party”.

Yes, he is. So, now he can speak freely about what he thinks about today’s Labour Party, which he has worked for across 35 years, and its leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Cruddas, 61, Deputy Political Secretary under Tony Blair and former party policy chief with Ed Miliband as a leader, has just written his new book, “A Century of Labour” (Polity Books). Britain’s first Labour government took office 100 years ago, on 22 January 1924. Now history might repeat itself thanks to Keir Starmer, who is the clear frontrunner of this year’s election, according to the polls. However, Cruddas is quite concerned about the future of the Labour Party, and he reveals to us “his biggest fears” in this respect.

Starmer is giving a major speech today, his first of 2024. He will reportedly say that “nobody will be above the law in a Britain I lead”, according to the Guardian, and will pledge that his Labour government will restore standards in public life by cracking down on cronyism and cleaning up politics.

Cruddas praises the words of his leader, because “it’s quite a good, ethical case to make in terms of public standards in public life. There’s only been three Labour Prime Ministers who won power at general election in 100 years and the possibility of Starmer becoming the fourth Labour Prime Minister is a phenomenal development. Objectively that’s something that should be recognised”. However, Cruddas stresses, “the journey is not complete, and I don’t think anyone should assume that the election is done and dusted”.

So far, Starmer has played a very cautious but productive political strategy, also thanks to the self-destructive instincts of the Tory Party. Moreover, he has made clear that he looks at the centre ground of British politics while he apparently hopes to steal as many voters as possible from the Conservatives. Is this position tenable? “I think it’s insufficient”, Cruddas notes, “the danger is to win an election, which becomes a referendum on the incumbent government, but without a mandate for change. That seems to me to be a real concern, because the Labour will inherit a total mess”.

Cruddas elaborates: “We’ve got crises in housing, cost of living, adult social care. Our councils are going bankrupt. There’s a sense of everything deteriorating. And I can’t think of an example where a Labour Government has secured a mandate for change after the election. You have to create it before the government. I fear we will lose the opportunity to govern with a mandate to deliver real change. It could become quite tricky in government. I understand [Starmer’s] caution but I fear it could come with a downside after the election”.

But what is change for Cruddas? “Housing policy, adult social care, how we’re going to support or rebuild our civic administration and council functions, what we’re going to do in terms of reforming Public Health agenda, especially in primary care”.

In his book, Cruddas writes that Starmer’s “approach to economics does not appear to be grounded in any specific theoretical understanding of inequality, material justice and welfare distribution. Despite a successful career as a human rights lawyer, as Labour leader Starmer appears uninterested in questions of liberty and freedom.” Which are the pillars of the history of the Labour Party. How can Starmer reconcile and appease all the history, factions and activisms of his own party?

“You’ve hit the nail on the head”, the MP replies. “If you look at the whole history of that, there’s been 23 leaders at the Labour Party. Every single one of them you can account for where they come in terms of their political factions within Labour Party. They are usually the product of certain intellectual traditions within the party. This is much more difficult to Keir Starmer, though, partly because he’s entered party politics much later than a lot of other people. He remains quite an elusive political character”.

Cruddas goes more in depth: “I think Starmer is a really decent guy and that’s why the ethic of public service could be a really strong card for him”. Nevertheless, “Starmer doesn’t seem to be a political operator. I initially assumed he would be quite a traditional, liberal progressive Labour leader, because of his role and reputation as an international human rights advocate. I thought he would fall into that tradition of liberal justice”. However, “he seems to have moved away from that. In terms of some of the legislation in Parliament around the “Spy Cops Bill” or the rights to protest, or the defence of the Human Rights Act, he hasn’t really led from top quite deliberately. I just don’t see where you would locate him at the moment. That has implications for the government because for example, under New Labour, the first period Labour government was very much identified with this liberal progressive tradition around devolution, human rights, freedom of information, the Good Friday Agreement, constitutional reform. All key landmark elements of the first New Labour period. Instead, I don’t think you can really identify what would be the signature elements of the Starmer administration yet”.

In his book, Cruddas writes also that “without reconciliation” across the party, “Labour could be destroyed by victory.” Why? “My fear is that if you win power without a mandate and you govern in a period of profound economic and social turbulence without defining yourself in terms of organising public philosophy, then the danger is you become consumed by events, while in power without a clear agenda. Meanwhile, the coalition that got you into power is fracturing in all different ways. Gaza is quite instructive in all of this in terms of relations with a lot of younger voters, for example. Our political position could look to be quite brittle, quite quickly. Without this reconciliation across the different traditions, the danger is that you don’t have the resources to provide stable government, alliances of interests and organisations to give you stability and power. Then it becomes fractious very quickly, in a very, very difficult climate. That’s why I’m sort of concerned about all this stuff: it could become quite difficult, quite quickly. In those instances, you need an alliance to hold the party and the government together. Maybe we’re not doing enough to secure that”.

However, Cruddas is even more concerned by the lack of internal debate in the Labour Party: “I’m supportive of a lot of what Starmer has been doing. But my biggest fear around Labour is about the internal culture within the party and the candidate selection: the control exerted by the traditional right wing faction within the Labour Party hierarchy is a real cause for concern. The consequence of that is to empty independent thought from the party. Look at what happened to a friend of mine, Neil Lawson. That’s a very good example about those liberal progressive traditions being attacked from within. The control by the centre and the lack of independent thought are a worry for me in terms of the party revitalising intellectually over the next few years”.

And what about Brexit? Is there really a plot from the Labour Party to rejoin the EU, as some from the right-wing fear? “That’s very unlikely. My view was always that Labour should have had the softest Brexit possible so that within a generation we could get back in. But that doesn’t look likely to me now. You’ll see a more pragmatic sort of incremental realignment [with the EU] over time, without saying “rejoined”… that will be much further down the line, generationally. However, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing more you can do in terms of offsetting the worst economic effects and trying to make sure that the damage does not intensify over time”.