Labour historians say prime minister resembles Tories' most electorally successful leader of the modern era
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David Cameron is compared by two Labour historians to Stanley Baldwin who led the Conservative party to its greatest ever victory during the Great Depression. Photograph: PA News
Stanley Baldwin, the Conservative party's most electorally successful leader, is back in fashion.
In his New Year message on Thursday Ed Miliband accuses David Cameron of a "counsel of despair" reminiscent of the approach adopted during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Miliband did not mention any leader by name. But it is clear he had in mind Baldwin who was (unofficial) prime minister between 1931 and 1935 and (real) prime minister between 1935 and his retirement in 1937. Baldwin was also prime minister for eight months between May 1923 and January 1924 and then again from November 1924 until June 1929.
Baldwin is given a bigger write up in a pamphlet by Gregg McClymont and Ben Jackson, two of Labour's leading intellectuals. In Cameron's Trap, Lessons for Labour from the 1930s and 1940s, the authors say that Cameron is on course to become the Stanley Baldwin of the 21st century:
The accurate comparison for David Cameron is not Margaret Thatcher or Harold Macmillan, but Stanley Baldwin.
McClymont, the shadow pensions minister who was an Oxford history don before his election as an MP last year, and Jackson, still an Oxford history don, say that Cameron resembles Baldwin in two ways. First, he is imposing tough spending cuts. Second, his "pluralist willingness to form a grand coalition with sympathetic Liberal Democrats" echoes the National Government of the 1930s.
Cameron may resemble Baldwin in a third way, they write. Baldwin – followed by Margaret Thatcher fifty years later – cut spending and presided over "sluggish economic growth" and yet still won elections. The Tories did this, according to McClymont and Jackson, by achieving economic success for key sections of the population and setting a trap for Labour by portraying their opponents as profligate:
Our starting point is that previous Conservative governments – and Conservative-Liberal coalitions – have won elections even while presiding over mass unemployment and deep cuts to public services. In the 1930s, the Conservatives led by Stanley Baldwin were electorally dominant in these circumstances. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher repeated the trick. It is vital that Labour learns the lessons from these Conservative successes if it is to prevent the Conservatives gaining a majority in 2015.
They later write in their pamphlet, published by the Policy Network think tank established by Lord Mandelson:
This success...depended on presenting Labour as 'profligate' and 'incompetent'. The Conservatives won elections in the 1930s and 1980s by claiming relative rather than absolute governing competence: under Labour, they argued, things would be much worse. This line of attack need not depend on objective economic success – as the 1992 election showed.
McClymont and Jackson say this could happen again because the Tories could face a "win-win situation" if Britain faces prolonged austerity:
If the key political challenge facing the country over the long term becomes defined as cutting public spending, then the Conservatives are more likely to prosper. Prolonged austerity reinforces this perception, rather than undermining it. The Conservatives could potentially be in a win-win situation. If growth does ultimately return and an end to austerity heaves into view, then they can pledge tax cuts rather than a return to pre-crisis levels of spending. The Conservatives will seek to reverse the trap set by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the 1990s and 2000s, returning the Labour Party to the invidious position it occupied in the 1980s. Instead of Tory promises of tax cuts being translated successfully by Labour into the threat of deteriorating public services, Labour promises of improved public services will be converted successfully by the Conservatives into the threat of higher taxes. By 2015, the Conservatives hope that they will have created the fiscal space to promise tax reductions, at least at some point in the course of a second Conservative parliament. Meanwhile, the British electorate are to be accustomed to a lower level of public spending, and a more regressive balance between direct and indirect taxation. The aim is to build a public preference for tax cuts over a return to higher levels of spending on public services. If growth is unforthcoming, then acceptable alternatives remain. Tax cuts can be advocated even earlier, as right-wing supporters of a more avowedly Thatcherite 'growth strategy' have long been demanding. Or, perhaps equally attractively, low growth and high deficits will mean that reducing public spending will continue to be regarded as the primary economic imperative during the election of 2015. Even under the worst-case scenario that we seem to be entering, political debate could continue to be defined on terms highly favourable to the Conservatives. The Conservatives aim to prevent Labour from offering their election- winning recipe of 1997-2005 – economic responsibility coupled with social justice and high quality public services – in 2015. There are many routes to this outcome – not all of which involve successful economic management by a Conservative government.
The authors say that Ed Miliband can avoid the Tory "electoral trap" if he takes care not to resort to Labour's "core support" in which the party simply defends the public sector:
Labour can sidestep the electoral trap being sprung by the Conservatives by refusing to be driven back to its core support. A patriotic appeal to the nation to improve growth and living standards, not a simple defence of the public sector and public spending, is crucial to foiling Conservative attempts to render Labour the party of a sectional minority.
McClymont and Jackson write that in his Labour conference speech Miliband "announced [his] intention" to put forward a more convincing strategy for private sector growth than the Tories. In the conclusion to their pamphlet they praise Miliband for focusing on what they call the "incomes squeeze".
The authors then outline what the Labour party needs to do:
First, Labour needs to become the party of economic renewal and growth – a position it successfully occupied in 1945, 1964 and 1997. Ed Miliband's conference speech made clear that a future Labour government will begin to make active judgements about the sorts of economic activity we need to promote sustainable growth, jobs, investment and innovation. One element of this differentiation between companies should be an active industrial policy. Now that a political consensus exists around the need to 'rebalance' the economy away from financial services, there exists a space for Labour to make a better fist of this agenda than the Coalition are willing or able to. The Conservative Party, as we have documented, is instinctively hostile to intervention in the economy, not only because of an ideological commitment to laissez-faire but also because it fears such intervention sets the terms of political contest around which party can best organise an activist state. Labour should seek to pull debate in this direction since it reframes the macroeconomic debate more widely in terms of delivering growth rather than simply reducing cost. Labour needs to fill out its proposals and ensure that it gains the support of a wide range of stakeholders so that it can claim to represent the nation with its forward- looking economic policy. Labour's announcement that it is considering the case for the creation of a National Investment Bank, a proposal that emulates the successful experience of the European Investment Bank and expands on Coalition proposals for a Green Investment Bank, is an important contribution to the debate on growth. Labour is being urged to consider a National Investment Bank on the grounds that it could (if adequately empowered and capitalised) leverage significant investment in infrastructure, new technologies and the regions, and as an independent body would be insulated against traditional accusations of politically-motivated lending or 'picking winners'.
In a Guardian article on Thursday they write:
So the historical record suggests Ed Miliband's decision to focus on the plight of the "squeezed middle" and need for a new growth model for the British economy was the right political judgment. Labour can sidestep Cameron's political trap by mounting an electoral appeal based on increasing private-sector growth and improving living standards for the majority, rather than a simple defence of public spending. This would force the Conservative party away from talking only about cutting public spending and on to the terrain of explaining how growth is to be delivered.
Cameron will have mixed feelings about being compared to Baldwin. He would no doubt love to follow in his footsteps and win 470 seats (and 55% of the vote) at the next election, as Baldwin did in 1931. Of course Baldwin fought the "doctor's mandate" election under the banner of "National Government" – the name for the coalition government with Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister who had by then been expelled from his old party.
A year ago Cameron would have been appalled by the thought that his government would be ranked below a government of the 1930s on the economics front. A tight fiscal consolidation by George Osborne was meant to stabilise the public finances and trigger a private sector-led recovery in the run up to the 2015 election. Now Cameron would probably be grateful, in relative terms, for the rising living standards (despite high unemployment) enjoyed by key voters in the 1930s.
The danger to Cameron of even weaker growth, in relative terms, is identified by McClymont and Jackson. They write in their Guardian article that one of the factors that propelled the Tories to electoral victory in the 1930s was that living standards increased for key sections of the population. This may be lacking over the next three years:
The problem the Conservatives face in repeating the trick is that economic winners will be thin on the ground over the next few years. Unlike today, the recessions that propelled Conservative governments to power in the 1930s and 1980s were not caused by systemic crises in British banks. Such crises tend to produce long, slow and anaemic recoveries. There is little scope for the traditional Tory remedy of a housing and credit-based boom. Meanwhile, high commodity prices and a weak pound are leading to imported inflation. The result is an unprecedented squeeze on real incomes. This is the cardinal fact of contemporary politics, and one likely to leave the electorate hungry for a credible alternative to the coalition's politics of "There is no alternative."
Cameron's greatest disappointment, if he becomes the Baldwin of the 21st century, is that he will not be seen as a prime minister in the mould of Harold Macmillan. I blogged during the Conservative conference this year about how Macmillan, who embodied consensus Toryism, is Cameron's hero.
Baldwin is usually overlooked as modern leaders of the Conservative party draw comparisons with the less electorally successful Winston Churchill or Macmillan. But if Cameron does emulate Baldwin he can look forward to retiring as prime minister two months short of his 70th birthday in October 2036. This means George Osborne faces a long wait to reach No 10 – until early August 2036, by which time he will be 65.