Of course, he had to go – but it's sad. Hain, for all his faults, was the last remaining member of the cabinet who was on the left in the 80s and 90s and who still retained some credibility as a leading soft-left (or democratic-left or whatever you want to call it) figure in Labour politics.
His demise is significant. The extraordinary incompetence of his deputy leadership campaign speaks volumes about the state of the democratic left in the Labour Party: leaving aside the allegations of dodgy donations, it's hard for anyone who was around 15 or 20 years ago not to notice that he took on the most useless people to run his bid for the post. No names, no pack-drill, but ... Jesus!
I guess they were the only comrades from the old days who were still around. The whole democratic left scene has hollowed out. Whatever, the Hainites spent a vast amount of money and failed – not least because they stupidly targeted the trade union and individual membership vote in Labour's electoral college rather than the MPs who have much greater weight inside it. (Hain came fifth out of sixth in the overall result but was a respectable third in terms of the actual number of votes cast: his humiliation came from his fellow MPs.)
Oh, well. Another long march through the institutions that ends in nothing much. Time for sex and drugs and rock'n'roll.
11 comments:
That's because Peter - who I think at a personal level is a really good person and someone who I really like - never grew up.
The moment of decision was that hot and sweaty room in Bournemouth after Kinnock made the speech. Obviously, then and now, the correct position for the left to take was to back Kinnock to the hilt: he was telling the Leninists that the show was over.
That was the view in the room but Peter was editing the LCC bulletin so he took his own line - whining about the appearance of an attack on the party.
I don't regret the path that I and others have taken since that electric moment - we didn't just save the Labour Party, through it we gave progressive politics hope and life. I do regret that maybe we never developed a strong enough left libertarian current within the moderniser/Blairite trend and partly that was because of that parting of the ways in 1985.
But look at what Peter achieved: to use that old Maoist slogan we can only fight where we are and Peter did plenty of that - just to have been target of BOSS is enough. How many of us can say we stood on the same frontline as schoolkids of Soweto: Peter can.
More than that. History will be kind to him - the greatest social democrats are the ones who "seized the power".
No he came 5th out of 6th among memebers. His decent showing among trade unionists was largely due to the GMB and ASLEF endorsements that he got.
it's hard for anyone who was around 15 or 20 years ago not to notice that he took on the most useless people to run his bid for the post. No names, no pack-drill, but ... Jesus!
But he didn't have much of a choice. Those who could competently run such a campaign won't have anything to do with anyone who has served loyally under Blair (most aren't even in the party any more). And rightly so. When you consider that McDonnell's campaign fell at the first hurdle, and that Ken Livingstone looks like he could be on his way out, there is no democratic left, left.
Anonymous 1: you're wrong: here are the results
Anonymous 2 (if different): Up to a point. Some of the competent soft leftists got out for good, but many are government apparatchiks or indeed MPs. And I don't accept that serving in the government or "supporting the war" are necessarily the same thing as selling out: I can see reasons for doing both that I respect.
Ad Astra: I stayed in the Labour Coordinating Committee flat the night of Kinnock's Bournemouth speech in 1985 and I remember the arguments after it, so we probably know one another or at least met. I broadly agree with you about what the democratic left should have done then: I think I got there about 1991-92 though I wasn't that far away before. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. More importantly, I share your admiration of Peter Hain as a person of democratic socialist principle.
Yes thanks to "progessive politics" getting "life and hope" a Labour woman Home Secretary can now have a terminally ill Ghanaian woman, cared for by foreign if not Ghanaian nurses, dragged out of hospital and put on a plane back home, without a murmur of protest from any Labour MPs. Life? Hope for what exactly?
Now that he's resigned what are the odds Hain will recover a bit of the old radical credibility that he lost during the past few years. A newspaper column? A speaking tour? A Gallowayesque chatshow? OK, perhaps not but I doubt we've heard the last of him.
Anonymous 1: My apologies. You are right. I misread the results. Peter Hain did come fifth among members. So I'm completely wrong about everything on this except that his campaign was hopeless...
I wasn't around in the 1980s so I can't really comment on what Hain did or didn't do then.
He clearly do some good things before becoming a politician but I think his positive impact as a frontline politician has been extremely limited.
He might've have been the soft left candidate for deputy leader in his head - and in the mind of media pundits who remembered his principle from the old days - but slagging off your own government every couple of years while not resigning from it or persuading it to change policy is an exercise in self-promotion not principle.
That's all Hain ever did in government.
He might be a good man but, politically speaking, I'm glad to see the back of him.
I too can see reasons for "supporting the war" that I respect. Serving in the govt, though, I can't. There was a point, during Blair's first year as PM, when the govt was pushing ahead with Tory welfare cuts. A swathe of ministers and juniors quit in protest. Those who stayed, sold out, and have been nakedly selling out ever since (at least until they get sacked, or until they want left-wing votes in a deputy leadership election, etc).
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