Peter Hain on new book "Must Labour Always Lose?" by Denis MacShane

Must Labour Always?Lose?

(Lord) Peter Hain’s Review of Must Labour Always Lose? by Denis MacShane (Claret Press, 2021, ￡11.99) Published in “Order, Order” November 2021

When Denis MacShane succeeded me as Europe Minister in late 2002, Foreign Office officials remarked, somewhat sniffily, on his frequent articles in the main continental newspapers like Le Monde or El Pais.?

????????Part-Minister, part-journalist and part-politician, part-writer and part-trade unionist, multi-lingual, voluble, witty, irreverent, passionate, eloquent, enthusiastic, engaging – Denis is multi-talented, as this part-memoir, part-manifesto for future Labour success reflects.?

????????We are of the same Labour generation and his highly readable book is a tour de force of Party ups and downs from the 1970s onward, the triumphs and more often the setbacks.

????????He is trenchant and provocative, ending with twelve steps to make Labour electable, the most compelling being:?‘Don’t stick with a loser as a leader’; ‘In Opposition behave like a government;’?‘Establish a story – the famous narrative.’

????????Other MacShane lessons are more contentious, such as abolishing the annual Party conference, setting time-limits for MPs, and always having two or three Shadow Cabinet Members who have ‘written proper books’.

????????Must Labour Lose? also has a novel format: throughout the text are inserted 52 lessons from a rich and continuing political life. His blunt judgement in Lesson 41 is typically controversial and simultaneously insightful: ‘Never assume after a period in government it is easy to win back power.?It is usually a two or even three election project.?Tiggerish ex-ministers should be quietly retired to Select Committees and new faces brought on, not the tired out ex-ministers voters have rejected.’

????????Lesson 45 resonated with me though will doubtless grate with self-styled keepers of the Party faith:?‘Labour’s love of dumping on what previous Labour governments and prime ministers have done is debating-society politics, not establishing Labour as a serious party od power.’

????????Like Denis I am proud of the Labour government in which I had the privilege to serve for twelve years.?We did some amazing things, the peace and power-sharing settlement in Northern Ireland perhaps the proudest.?We made mistakes, Iraq being the biggest and most damaging.?I argued with New Labour’s high command that we were neglecting our traditional base at our peril.?We shouldn’t ?have been neoliberal-lite in our economic policy: pro-market and pro-business, yes; but not pro- even more outsourcing and privatisation. And yet the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown massively increased public spending whilst reducing debt and borrowing – until the global credit crunch hit us hard, and Cameron and Osborne were allowed to get away with the blatant falsehood that Labour rather casino finances of international banks were to blame

As the devoted MP for Rotherham he was in what he describes as ‘almost permanent warfare’ with the BNP for denouncing their racism and anti-Semitism. I know the feeling…

Denis is invariably good company and never dull in his writing, challenging and arguing over the Party he both loves and is frustrated by –something we all probably have in common with him.

His encyclopaedic knowledge of European politics, history and culture, together with his friendships and contacts, many at the highest level, was always awesome and shines throughout the book.

And as a proud European – though with his feet on door-knocking ground, not stuck amongst the ivory tower Euro cognoscenti – Brexit was a painful repudiation of all he stood for, all our Party stands for.

‘Am I in the end a failure?’ he asks disarmingly, when concluding the book.?‘I failed to keep my country in Europe…I failed to get Labour to take seriously policies and social and economic practice in other countries.’

No, Denis, that’s grossly unfair to yourself.?Not least because it could be asked of virtually every Labour MP of our generation.?Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all.?

Former Labour Cabinet minister and anti-apartheid campaigner, Peter Hain was MP for Neath from 1991 to 2015 before joining the Lords