Análisis de los resultados

Given his desire to push the party beyond the New Labour epoch and improve its

responsivness to constitunents’ interests post-crisis, Miliband was initially keen to take a ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ approach to the renewal of Labour’s programme (Miliband cited in Jones 2011; see Bale 2015a: 115; Watson 2011; see also Finlayson 2013 and Beech and Hickson 2012 for more on this).113 _{The early period of the 2010-15 Parliament was thus}

marked by engagement with an array of different intellectual traditions and arguments. However, few if any of these sets of ideas contained an internal logic powerful enough to provide the rationale for a significant policy departure or the long-term problem-solving potential required to set out a robust prescription for a resolution to the crisis. Moreover, as I make clear in the following sections, Miliband struggled to develop upon the ideas that were available, lacking the necessary institutional support and relationship to a particular

organisation or school of thought that could support his leadership intellectually.

Blue Labour represents perhaps the best-known strand of new thinking within the ideational spectrum around Labour during this period (see Jobson 2014). Led by Maurice Glasman, the basis of the Blue Labour political economy is an ethical socialist critique that draws upon Polanyian (2001 [1944]) thought (see Finlayson 2013) to reject the statist, materialist and redistributive conception of socialism upon which the party had, it argues, come to rely since 1945 (see Glasman 2011: 21-22).114 _{Attendant to this, moreover, is a}

deeply conservative perspective of ‘the Good Society’, embedded in localism and community (see Glasman 2011: 26-31).

113 _{Indeed, a number of interviewees confirmed Miliband’s intellectual curiosity saw him attempt to engage with}

a range of new political economic ideas. One senior member of his Shadow Cabinet noted that Miliband’s approach was often more suited to a think tank or seminar type of environment than the cut and thrust of parliamentary politics (Shadow Cabinet Minister A, personal interview, 11/01/17).

114 _{Led primarily by the academic Maurice Glasman, Blue Labour ideas were subsequently developed during a}

series of seminars in Oxford and London in 2010-11 (see Glasman et al. (eds.) 2011; Gaffney 2017: 93-7). This led to the publication of a book, The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox (Glasman et al. (eds.) 2011), which was endorsed by Miliband, who wrote a preface for it.

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Blue Labour ideas held sway over Miliband, at least in the first half of the Parliament; Miliband made Glasman a Peer in 2011, whilst Blue Labour proponents were at the heart of Miliband’s team, including Stears, as well as Jon Cruddas MP and Jonathan Rutherford, who were heads of the Party’s Policy Review team. Furthermore, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a think tank associated closely with the New Labour years, sought to reorient its mission under director Nick Pearce and engaged with a wider array of viewpoints including some of Blue Labour’s thinking around community and localism. This can be seen in its major report during the 2010-15 Parliament, The Condition of Britain: Strategies for Social Renewal (Lawton et al. 2014).115 _{These ideas gained traction amongst a handful of}

MPs, particularly those on the right of the party elected in the post-New Labour era such as Chuka Umunna and Dan Jarvis, yet they never disseminated much more widely in the PLP beyond that point and Miliband ultimately never fully embraced its ‘faith, family and flag’ approach to social and cultural issues.116

The Purple Book (Philpot (ed.) 2011a), an edited book convened by Progress, a pressure group from the right-wing ‘Blairite’ element of the party, represents another major strand of thought in the party during this period. This grouping retained significant strength within the PLP during the parliament and included MPs close to Miliband such as Rachel Reeves and Tristram Hunt. Purple Book thinking advances a critique of New Labour’s statism and centralising tendencies, but its political economy remains firmly of New Labour’s social liberalism. This can be seen particularly in relation to its desire for more market-driven and localised welfare as the basis for a more empowered and liberal society, such as ‘asset- based welfare’ (due to the ‘“waning capacity” of the state to deliver greater equality or social mobility’) (see Philpot 2011b: 284, 298). Most crucially, The Purple Book also makes the case – prevalent on the right of the party and within its think tanks more generally (e.g. the

115_{The Condition of Britain was intended as a follow up to 1994’s Social Justice: Strategies for national}

renewal (The Commission on Social Justice/IPPR 1994), which was heavily influential on Blair’s New Labour. The report was a wide-ranging analysis of social and welfare policy, as well the role of the state vis-à-vis civil society and sought to shift policy away from New Labour’s redistributive model towards social investment, strengthened local institutions and the restoration of reciprocity to the social security system. However, as will also be detailed, Miliband’s Labour shied away from embracing much of its bold social policy thinking.

116 _{Blue Labour’s influence on the party leadership was side-lined as the parliament progressed, as it became}

increasingly ‘shrunken, populist, right-wing, racially-obsessed’, in the words of Jon Cruddas (personal interview, 10/03/2016); Maurice Glasman, personal interview, 02/02/2016.

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‘Black Labour’ group, see Cooke et al. 2011)117 _{– that fiscal conservatism had to be the}

cornerstone of Labour’s economic approach, in order to re-establish the party’s economic credibility with the electorate (see Mandelson 2011; Hunt 2011). Yet, in their attempts to reheat social liberalism, the Purple Book camp failed to provide a normative account of the crisis that could readily move the party beyond the New Labour years and thus never particularly inspired Miliband.

Within the wider think tank environment, key inspiration came from the Resolution Foundation, headed by Gavin Kelly, a former Downing Street advisor to Brown. The Resolution Foundation’s work on living standards (see Plunkett 2012) had a significant influence on Miliband’s thinking around ‘the cost of living crisis’ narrative, as will be explored further below. However, whilst these arguments and ideas were cognitively powerful in demonstrating the necessity of social policies to redress issues such as growing inequality, they presented only a rather dry and technocratic approach to understanding issues of income, welfare and equality. The Resolution Foundation’s ideas could not, therefore, serve to renew Labour’s political economy itself.

There was not, therefore, a dearth of new ideas in and around the party in the early Miliband era. However, as the following sections show, the development of new ideas was fundamentally constrained by internal political contestation over both the nature of the crisis and New Labour’s legacy, as well as concerns over how to demonstrate the party’s economic credibility to the electorate.