Noughties were 'golden age' for Labour

By Richard Hall - 14th December 2009

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Labour MPs might not appreciate it as they leave Westminster – and the Noughties – behind this week, but the decade that is drawing to a close represents a golden age for their party.

Three full terms in office has ensured that, for the first time ever, Labour has excluded all other parties from power for an entire decade.

How will history judge how well it has used this power?

The National Minimum Wage, the independence of the Bank for England, removing hereditary peers, devolution to Scotland and Wales – all these were achieved in the two-and-a-half years of Labour government in the late 1990s. In the Noughties, achievement has come less easily.

Restoring public services has been Labour's central domestic mission.

Since the self imposed limits on government spending were lifted at the end of the 1990s, total expenditure rose from £393.7bn to £541.8bn by 2007-08.

The area seeing the biggest rise was health, with the budget rising over this period from just under £60bn to £100bn.

The parties argue keenly over whether this injection of funds has produced requisite improvements in services. Labour's opponents point to health outcomes that are lower than in comparable countries.

The government points to reductions in waiting times, and surveys indicating that users of the NHS rate the personal service they receive highly.

As the decade has progressed, it has become clear that an ageing population and improvements in drugs and treatments means that the scope for extra health spending is unlimited.

In response, measures to improve public health have assumed increasing importance.

After all it is cheaper to help people stay healthy rather than make them better.

In this area Labour can point to health support through Sure Start, expanded vaccinations, more school sport, the smoking ban and healthier school meals.

Education spending rose by more than 50 per cent between 1999-00 and 2007-8. Again, there is conjecture over the level of improvement that this funding has brought.

Labour boasts that around 80 per cent of 11-year-olds reach the required standard on English and mathematics, and that the proportion of young people achieving five or more good GCSEs is up nearly 20 percentage points since 1997.

Opponents claim that grade inflation means that this is not a true picture.

Since Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, the increasing of competition within the education system has abated. The Conservatives are picking up the Blairite torch by promising more power for parents and less local authority control.

The subject of university funding produced one of the decade's most dramatic votes in the House of Commons.

In January 2004, Labour's parliamentary majority of 164 was reduced to just five as education secretary Charles Clarke narrowly passed legislation to introduce top-up fees payable by students.

‘Personalisation' and ‘choice' in public services have been the buzzwords for much of the decade.

People are now much less likely to meekly accept mediocre schools and poor local health services. The political prize in the next decade will go to those who can get the most out of the tighter budgets that will be available.

Expansion in childcare and more flexible working conditions has made a big difference to family life over the past decade, as a sometimes reluctant business community has gone along with government moves to foster more flexible working conditions.

At the start of the decade, unemployment was 1.7m. This figure dipped below 1.5m for much of the middle of the decade before rising again from the end of 2005.

At last week's pre-Budget report the chancellor Alistair Darling welcomed the fact that, even in the deepest recession since the 1930s, unemployment has not reached the peaks of the 1980s and 1990s downturns.

Having ridden the dotcom bust in the early part of the decade, the economy sailed on serenely.

When sustained growth came crashing to a halt last year, an economic crisis that will define the next decade took root. The economic crisis has exposed a deep flaw in the New Labour project.

At the elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005 the case was made for significant increases in the funding of public services, but Labour convinced voters that economic stability, rather than increased taxes, would pay for it.

When instability took over, and the financial sector – whose taxes had paid significantly for the public services' funding boost – collapsed, Labour was left with a huge hole in the public finances.

Last week's pre-Budget report gave some clues as to how this will be filled over the next five years, but the message of increased taxes and reduced spending in all but a few ring-fenced areas is hardly an enticing one in election year.

An achievement widely recognised is the establishment in 2007, after two false starts in the preceding decade, of the Northern Ireland Assembly – with the previously irreconcilable DUP and Sinn Fein sharing ministerial office.

A recent revival in extremist action gives notice that peace is not yet secured.
But the mainstream of both loyalist and nationalist communities now accept that peaceful co-operation within democratic structures is the only way forward.

This is the most decisive breakthrough in the province since the resurgence in violence in the late 1960s.

The government's response to the terror outrages of 11 September, 2001 in the US, and 7 July, 2005 in the UK had huge implications for domestic and foreign policy.

Domestically, Tony Blair suffered his only defeat in the Commons over plans to extend to 90 days the length of time terror suspects could be held prior to charge.

This issue was symbolic of a debate over civil liberties, ranging from the expanded use of CCTV cameras, to the scrapping of jury trials, which characterised the decade.

The decision for Britain to join the war on Iraq is unquestionably the most contentious of the last 10 years.

It has produced three major inquiries, and, for Blair's critics, exposes the flaws in governing structures and decision-making processes that undermined his premiership.

Having made a case for invasion on the grounds that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that could be used against British interests, the failure to recover WMDs left critics feeling that Britain had gone to war on a false prospectus.

Blair of course still won the 2005 election, but his prosecution of an unpopular war, and close association with such a disliked figure as George W Bush, did much to accelerate his departure from office.

The less contentious decision to attack al-Qaeda and Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan is having a longer term impact on our armed forces.

Asking them to perform a key role in an activist foreign policy has clear implications for funding. It will take next year's defence review, and a reassessment of Britain's future role on the global stage, for this to be resolved.

You have to go back to the Liberal-dominated 1910s for the last time the Conservatives were consigned to a complete decade in opposition. How have the Tories spent their years in the wilderness?

If it took Labour defeat at the elections of 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992 to reconnect itself with mainstream opinion, then the Conservatives – if they are successful at next year's poll – can claim that it took them one fewer election to get the message.

After the 1997 humiliation was followed by similar punishment in 2001 and a significant reverse in 2005, David Cameron seized the leadership and immediately sought to soften an image that, under previous leaders William Hague and Michael Howard, had been characterised by opposition to Europe, talking tough on immigration, and swingeing tax cuts.

The early years of Cameron's leadership spoke of Tory commitment to the NHS, tackling climate change by reducing CO2 emissions, and addressing deep-seated social problems.

His 2009 party conference speech marked a slight departure from this approach as he attacked the state and affirmed his faith in markets.

The test of Cameron's success in changing the Conservative Party will come at the ballot box in the spring.

The Lib Dems end the Noughties with more seats in Parliament than they started with, and have overcome mid-decade leadership turmoil to remain handily-placed to perform well at the next election.

The process of branching out from their traditional south-west and Celtic stongholds continues, but the prize of electoral reform, tantalisingly offered by Roy Jenkins to Tony Blair in his report at the end of the 1990s, still remains seemingly out of reach.

What of Parliament itself?

It ends the decade certainly in low public esteem with a huge job ahead of it to regain respect.

The expenses scandal, exposed by the Daily Telegraph, further accelerated the move away from deference.

People no longer accept that the ruling classes know best and now, aided by the internet, can organise and communicate far more effectively than before.

Despite the upheavals of terror attacks, Iraq, Afghanistan, public service reform, climate change and MPs' expenses, the personalities at the top of the domestic political landscape have remained remarkably stable over the past decade.

Given the size of Labour's victory in 1997, it was destined from the start to govern for the first decade of the 21st century.

Therefore, essentially, the identity of the prime minister has been governed by the deal over the Labour leadership struck back in 1994. When Tony Blair handed over the leadership, there was no challenger to Gordon Brown.

David Cameron will hope that all this ends next year.

In the spring, Labour is desperate to portray Cameron as the leader of an unreconstructed party which looks after the rich and has obsessions, over Europe and foxhunting for instance, that are not shared by the majority of people.

Should voters decide otherwise and elect a Conservative Party that accepts a 50p upper tax rate, civil partnerships, the minimum wage, the need to further increase NHS funding and reduce carbon emissions, Labour, in defeat, may demonstrate its main achievement of the decade: reversing the trend of the 1980s and 1990s, and shifting the mainstream towards the left.

This article first appeared in the latest issue of The House Magazine, which is available from today.

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