Laurie, I enjoyed your piece right up until the last sentence. What exactly does it mean? How exactly should the left respond?

Have you read this piece by Peter Riddell in The Times?

Labour has lost two points to 28 per cent since early December, while the Tories have gained three points to 41 per cent, its highest level since September for the largest lead since then. The Liberal Democrats are on 19 per cent, down 1 point.

Mr Brown will secure some consolation from the poll finding that 41 per cent of voters – up 8 points since last September – believe he is the best leader Labour could have at present. Among Labour voters that figure is 71 per cent, up nine points, underlying isolated the anti-Brown plotters are in the party. . . .
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6984223.ece

So much for the attempted coups in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

The interesting question is who or what motivated it. Perhaps you’ve read the news report in June 2006 about Blair’s 22-page letter to Michael Foot in 1982?

“Tony Blair’s youthful enthusiasm for radical socialism and his admiration for socialist theorist Karl Marx are revealed in letter written in 1982.

“In the 22-page letter, the 29-year-old Mr Blair tells then Labour leader Michael Foot how reading Marx had ‘irreversibly altered’ his outlook.

“He also praises Tony Benn, agreeing with the left-winger’s analysis that Labour’s right-wing was bankrupt.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5081798.stm

I suspect Tony Blair’s many dedicated admirers here and abroad will be surprised to learn that he was inspired both by Karl Marx and Tony Benn.

… they demonstrated, as so many sitting members of both the Labour and Conservative parties have in the past, the sincere conviction that it is the job of parliament to decide who should lead the people, rather than it being the right of the people to decide who should run the government.

Well, to be fair, the former is the effect of our constitution.

Fear not, good people.
Salvation is at hand

http://www.progressivelondon.org.uk/conference/progressive-london-conference-2010.html

But the Tories have realised, as Labour did with more integrity in 1994…

Hang on, Laurie, you’re associating the ascendancy of New Labour and its playbook of surface over substance (and cameron’s schtick is pretty much just a carbon-copy) with integrity..? Fucking hell, and your last line implies simply copying that copy.? Jesus wept, what would that be New New labour? Purnell has had a stab at that in today’s Guardian and rightly been ripped a new one, not by Tory trolls, but by disillusioned lefties and liberals who’ve been betrayed.Float the prospect of the Tory bogeyman all you like, it still doesn’t merit backing NewLab. The prospect of being hectored with bullshit by the two (and a half) sets of neo-liberal, corporatist self-serving careerist spivvy chancers over the next few months is depressing. The opportunity to shift the centre of political gravity radically towards the left was in 1997 – with the Tories destroyed and moribund. The last 13 years, have been more than one long missed chance, with the appalling ‘project’ instrumental in enshrining the sickening witless neo-liberal corporatist duopoly that British politics has become, disgracefully eroding civil liberties while overseeing an expansion in inequalities and a more divided,fractured society.
In some regards a Tory govt might be needed to galvanise real opposition to both showers-of-shits. The Tories are more upfront as bastards to us, whereas Labour are shiftier and sneakier enemies, so mobilising against neo-liberal bastardry might be easier with a more open and overt foe.

I agree with most of what Laurie is saying but the problem for those who would oppose Cameron is he does nor scare people. As much as I can see through Cameron as a bit of an all things to all men. Cameron and the shadow cabinet just do not scare and generate the same level of dislike that their counterparts in the 80s did. The point I am making is there must be millions just like me. The Tories are selling Cameron as a brand not a politician. However, read the comments section of the Tory blogs and below the articles in the national press and the Tory base presents a quite different image to the smiling Dave. If he is in government he is going to have as many problems from the nuttier elements of his core vote as from anywhere else on the political spectrum.

Bang on.

Max Weber got it right 90 years ago. All mass democracy is, is a contest between one plebiscitary Caesar and another. He with most charisma wins.

The important thing is getting our bastard (or bastardette) in power.

Alisdair – I do think that Labour decided to do Charisma politics for some of the right reasons back in 1994. Reasons that didn’t *just* involve them wanting power at any cost, without working out what they wanted to do with it.

John Booth – you’re right, that last sentence was confused, I was cutting this in a rush. I’ve changed it now so it makes more sense, thank you.

@Paul S “Max Weber got it right 90 years ago. All mass democracy is, is a contest between one plebiscitary Caesar and another. He with most charisma wins.”

So why, for example, didn’t Churchill defeat Attlee in 1945, why wasn’t Wilson re-elected in 1970, and why didn’t Kinnock end thirteen long years of Tory rule in 1992?

“So why, for example, didn’t Churchill defeat Attlee in 1945, why wasn’t Wilson re-elected in 1970, and why didn’t Kinnock end thirteen long years of Tory rule in 1992?”

Weberian answer:

Because the party machines backing the other charismatic Caesars were better organised on the other side (and in the case of 1945, the electoral system was rigged against the people’s actual favourite).

The masses have to really believe in their plebiscitary Caesar, and the system must work such that their belief can return him with power. Of course, there are times when no true leaders with the “calling for politics” actually emerge, and all you get is second-raters.

In 1992, Kinnock in the end didn’t manage to cut it vis-a-vis the incumbent (even if, in this case, Major was noteably lacking in charisma in our pejorative ordinary usage, for Weber remember “charisma” is a technical term; it means the ability to command loyalty and trust, and that doesn’t always mean oily charm), and in 1945 the system was fucked. As for 1970, that was more a reflection again of the system being a mess, and the fact the masses were fairly evenly split between the prospective Caesars they wanted to put their trust in, hence the continuous to-ing and fro-ing between Labour and Tories from 1970-79, when neither party could clearly pull ahead of the other.

In short, apart from 1945 which represents more a system-failure, the fact that genuine leaders aren’t always available, and that the leader who (with hindsight) looked more charismatic (in the pejorative sense) didn’t always win doesn’t disprove the Weberian take.

Which is much more subtle and sophisticated than I’m rendering it…

Honestly, read “Politics as a Vocation”. It’s really hard. But it’s the best single-piece analysis of modern political realites that I’ve ever read (provided one filters-out the context specific influences of it having been penned in Germany in 1919).

@ Laurie (8). I’ll grant you that some involved with the New lab project back in ‘94 may have embarked upon their terrible misadventure with good intentions, hoping that charisma in the form of smarmy-call-me-Tony would smooth the way to being able to do good deeds. I’d argue though that such folk were used as ballast by those fixated on power for power’s sake, who then spent the next 16 years quelling dissent and stifling the principled.It’s become a closed shop: only if you’ve been brainwashed into the ‘game’ from teen years, gone to Uni done kiddy student-playing-at-politics,become a wonk/think-tanker etc , researcher, maybe a light touch of lecturing,or gentle legal-eagling then a seat is found for you.At no point does the pathetic and risible politics-as-a-game mindset, the progress of ‘pets’/proteges,favourite sons and daughters stop, and nor is the real world ever allowed to intrude upon ‘the project’. Witness the witlessness this very week: not a damn word about what the nation needs, about what’s good for the populace, but everything about what’s good for the bleeding party with nobody capable, principled or even insightful enough to tell that the whole damn upper structure needs dismantling, its senior personnel retired, dismissed or demoted, and the only route to avoid oblivion would be to issue one of the biggest apologies in all history, eat humble pie, display honest humility and penitence etc. Instead it’s all still spin, surface and jockeying for personal advantage, which is what happens when none of the senior figures have much integrity or principle.j

“why didn’t Kinnock end thirteen long years of Tory rule in 1992?”

Because as dull as Major was, Kinnock just came across as an utter twat.

“Because the party machines backing the other charismatic Caesars were better organised on the other side (and in the case of 1945, the electoral system was rigged against the people’s actual favourite).”

How was the electoral system rigged against Churchill in 1945? I don’t think I’ve seen this claim before. Is the point that they won a landslide of seats with 49.7% of the popular vote, or something else?

@11: “Weberian answer: . . ”

IMO your Weberian answers have no historical crdibility – and BTW my parents took me to watch them voting in the 1945 election.

Churchill was much regarded as war leader but public sentiment had turned against a return to the politics and policies of the 1930s. There was a powerful popular tide running for change and especially for the Beveridge vision of a welfare state.

Kinnock lost out in 1992 because of the Labour Party election rally in Sheffield:

“So what did cost Labour the 1992 election? Worcester has no doubt that it was the Sheffield rally, just eight days before polling day. On the eve of the rally, three polls came out, showing a seven-point lead, a six-point lead and a four-point lead for Labour. That day, Labour peaked.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/199812110020

To get a taste of why the rally generated such an adverse reaction, try this BBC video report of the event:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/in_depth/election_battles/1992qt_sheffield.stm

Richard is correct about Kinnock – as the video clip of the Sheffield rally shows.

@Laurie, thanks for that. I do think the article could do with a few hundred more words spelling out what our response to the politics of empty charisma should be. There are plenty of suggestions going round the blogosphere (e.g. quite a few on Labourlist) but they are mostly shite: I was hoping you’d provide your views on the way forward. Cheers

@don

yes, pretty much; I meant that the Tories were able to carry a majority of seats in the House that didn’t reflect their proportion of the popular vote.

“Rigged” was putting it too crudely. Though possibly not entirely inacurately.

“I meant that the Tories were able to carry a majority of seats in the House that didn’t reflect their proportion of the popular vote.

“Rigged” was putting it too crudely. Though possibly not entirely inacurately.”

By that definition, every British election has been “rigged”. Anyway, it was Labour, not the Tories, which won a majority of seats. In 1951, Labour won 48.8% of the vote to the Tories 48%, but the Tories ended up with a parliamentary majority, was that what you were thinking of?

I can’t see the grounds for referring to 1945 specifically as a “system-failure”, unless in fact your analysis is that “All mass democracy is, is a contest between one plebiscitary Caesar and another, except in the case of the UK and every other electoral system where parties do not win seats in strict proportion to their share of the popular vote”.

Responses to Empty Tory Rhetoric:

- class war (as advocated by Sunny)
- class war (as advocated by Balls – in case they’re two different things)
- middle England strategy (as advocated by Mandelson)
- anti-inequality strategy (as advocated by Harman)
- ‘Tory Stories’ (as advocated by Cruddas)
- swing to the left (as advocated by Benn and McDonnell)

Somehow, none of these seem capable of stopping a Tory majority.

Further, the reason for focusing on 1945 is that the Labour Party at that time managed to engage millions of working-class people into doing politics as more than just ‘avocation’, which is how they defeated the charismatic war leader.

And to bring it back to the original post, the response of the British left to the politics of empty charisma should therefore be to (re)build a grassroots movement in which lots more people are actively engaged in doing politics, rather than relying on the professional politicians.

What a load of twaddle, as if Blair wasn’t the archetypal ‘charismatic’ leader without any clear policies before being elected. How quickly we’ve forgotten his former nickname Tony Blur! Such a vast agenda of change, without any clear thinking, leaving us with partially reformed NHS, House of Lords, Welsh Assembly…

Labour and integrity?