Cruddas on the deputy leadership

Question: Why have you decided to run for deputy leader?

Jon Cruddas: I was approached in mid-summer by people representing some unions and constituency organisations. They said “can we talk to you about the deputy leadership thing?” My response was “well I haven’t agreed to vote for anyone yet”. They said “no, no, no about you running, putting your hat in the ring”. I said “that’s not really my thing”.

However the more I thought about it, the more I thought we need to contest some of the terms of debate within the party at the moment.

I was partly inspired by two things. One was a conversation I had with a member of the cabinet who said that the future lies in something called the “virtual party”, rather than a real party based on real people in real communities. It’s quite an authoritarian relationship between the centre of our party and an amorphous mass of supporters. I think there are big issues for us there as a party.

The second thing was a comment by another candidate who said that all of the outstanding policy issues are resolved. They are not for me in terms of the community I represent.

Both are issues of internal party democracy in terms of the future of our party, as well as some of the policy issues. I thought it was time to put up or shut up really.

Question: What do you think you can personally bring to the party?

Jon Cruddas: Let’s be clear. I’m not interested in being deputy prime minister. I’m not interested in having some big cabinet portfolio. What interests me is whether we can redefine what the post is.

The deputy leader of the Labour Party could abolish the chair of the party and have the job as the transition belt of the views of the party to the government, as well as the job of rebuilding the party on the ground.

I think I’ve got some stuff that I can bring to the party on that in terms of my own experiences of the party. We’ve just produced, in association with a Guardian columnist friend of mine, John Harris, 30,000 words on rebuilding the party as a living, vibrant institution.

I think that debate needs to be had in terms of our own party as a pluralist, federal democracy and rebuild membership and our activity on the ground.

Question: You are clearly starting with the lowest profile of all the declared candidates. Is it a campaign of principle or are you running to win?

Jon Cruddas: I’m running to win. I’m no show pony. I’m not really interested in personalities at all. I’m interested in the terms of debate around the party and in the shape of the government in terms of its policy priorities.

My reason for getting involved was because it was looking like it was going to shape up to be a beauty contest within the cabinet for the job of deputy prime minister rather than a debate across the whole of the labour movement about the job of deputy leader of the Labour Party.

That’s why we decided to contest it. More of the same will not work for me.

The responses we have been getting around the country have been fantastic. I’m increasingly of the view that we are going to win it.

Cruddas on participation

Question: There has been a general decline in party political participation across the board. How is it going to be possible to reverse that?

Jon Cruddas: I think the political classes - and its functional for them all to say it - all collude in this deterministic view that we are post-party. That structures, members and activity on the ground doesn’t matter. What you have is a sort of virtual political gameshow, mediated through the media, at the expense of active, vibrant campaigning on the ground.

I just refuse to accept that we are in this post-party period. I don’t think there is anything inevitable about the decline of political party activity.

If you look at, for example, the pioneering work of the Power inquiry, they suggest that it is the forms of debate that are a turn-off, rather than politics itself. Therefore you can reintroduce politics in a much more vibrant way, which will reintroduce people back into participating.

I think it is symptomatic of the decline and the out of touchness of the political classes, rather than the inevitability of decline in party political structures. Therefore I want to contest the assumptions that we are on an inevitable road to the end of politics in terms of living, breathing political organisations.

Question: What is the membership like in your constituency?

Jon Cruddas: It’s good. It’s been going up for the past few years, every month.

Question: How have you done that?

Jon Cruddas: Partly because it’s a very different political atmosphere to the one in Westminster. We have got 38 Labour councillors, 12 BNP councillors and one Conservative who just hung on.

The terms of debate are very different because of the threat of the far-right. That in turn has served to rebuild the Labour Party on the ground. To rebuild a popular front politics with the voluntary sector, the churches and the trade union movement.

So the Labour Party is growing and its activity is increasing and the average age of the councillors is in decline and the activity of the councillors is on the increase. So actually I think it is a good example of our activity in Dagenham that we are no post-party in that these things are retrievable.

I think that is the story nationally, we can retrieve the Labour Party. The trouble is the political classes all collude in a very specific positioning game for a very specific part of the electoral landscape, mainly swing marginal voters in swing marginal constituencies, at the expense of communities like mine.

The problem with that is that you create political vacuums that other extremists will move into.

Question: Is proportional representation one solution to that problem?

Jon Cruddas: I don’t think so. I’m not convinced by the case for PR. Electoral systems are second order issues.

The key issues are whether people are enfranchised in terms of the terms of debate. The danger with PR is that you could compound the problems by removing the link between individual representatives and real people on the ground.

Question: Is the idea of a supporters network one way of engaging more and younger people through single issue politics? Are you a supporter of that?

Jon Cruddas: I’m obviously a supporter of engaging with supporters of the Labour Party. That is so self-evident it is absurd. That is exactly what we should be doing, over and above membership.

But there is a real danger where this is being used by a very small group within the Labour Party to substitute the participation and rights of members for rights for a sort of amorphous supporters’ base.

The model is very clear. It is a North American model of party political structures. You can see the argument around primaries, where you hollow out the party structures themselves in terms of internal representative democracy and then in turn you substitute a direct plebiscitary link between the centre and a loose group of supporters.

We have even seen it before at the last Labour Party conference, where there were consistent attempts to give rights to supporters in terms of the rules of the party. I would resist all of that because I think it is symptomatic of an attempt to create what I have described as a virtual party.

There are different options available in terms of the future of modern political parties. But again it is couched in the language of inevitability, that this must happen. I don’t think that is true at all.

I think you can rebuild the Labour Party with vibrant, inclusive, pluralist structures which reflect the ongoing insecurities and concerns of people on the ground.

Question: Why do you think so many people have left the party in the past 10 years?

Jon Cruddas: I think a lot of people joined immediately on the back of the Blair phenomena and then left afterwards because they had got rid of the Tories, which was their primary concern. I think there is a deep disillusionment around some of the policy shape of the government. And I think there is a sense of remoteness from the party in Westminster from the party on the ground that inevitably leads people to leave.

We have lost more people since 1997 than we currently have as members. That is not a sign of a vibrant political formation.

Question: Is there not a danger that by not involving a broad range of supporters, the party can get taken over by cliques, such as New Labour in the 1990s and the hard left in the early 1980s? How do you counteract that and keep it a plural force?

Jon Cruddas: You do it by rebuilding it, not seeing it simply as a structure to elect.

Take for example the debate in the United States. Howard Dean embarked on a 50-state strategy of rebuilding the Democratic party in every part of the landscape, rather than an ever more precise formula for winning key seats. Arguably that has had pretty strong benefits across the whole of the 50 states, as seen in the mid-term elections recently.

I think we have to restate as our objective our attempt to rebuild the party in every single seat, rather than simply the key marginal seats that matter in terms of key seats in Westminster. There are huge implications for all of that in terms of the hollowing out of the party.

You can do it. You can do it for example by borrowing some of the ideas contained in the Power inquiry, such as getting a £3 voter voucher. If you ring fence that for getting a whole cadre of local organisers to rebuild the party in every part of the country, then I think you can turn this around.

There is nothing inevitable about this. It is retrievable.

Question: So you are a fan of state funding?

Jon Cruddas: Yeah, as long as it is not about putting the money into this empty pit in Westminster for central secretariats. If it is exclusively there to rebuild and reconnect party organisations to local communities, in terms of enhancing democracy, then there is a very strong case for it.

Question: You’ve said the deputy leader should not be deputy prime minister, or even a minister. Would you want to abide by collective responsibility? Or is there a danger that by separating off the two posts you drive a wedge between government and party?

Jon Cruddas: No, I think it would enhance a sense of collegiate responsibility across the whole of the Labour Party if you have a series of separations of powers, a series of checks and balances, which is a hallmark of a pluralist democracy.

The responsibilities of the deputy leader should be the elected chair of the party in effect. It should be in the cabinet but not working on another cabinet portfolio nor all the trappings and responsibilities of the deputy prime ministership, the diplomatic elements and the international elements that go along with all of that. That should be up to the prime minister to determine who his deputy prime minister is, it shouldn’t be the product of an election within the Labour Party.

The deputy leader of the Labour Party should be the elected chair of the party whose role is to articulate the views of the party to the government. Now that means at an earlier stage the views of the party are brought to the table.

Sure, the consequence of it is that you are locked into a system of collective responsibility. But it allows for a much more deliberative space to be opened up in terms of the role and contribution of the party itself.

When we recently introduced the chair of the Labour Party, that was reflecting the views of the government to the party. I would see this as completely the opposite, reflecting the views of the party to the cabinet.

Question: Are you expecting Gordon Brown to win the leadership when the election comes?

Jon Cruddas: I think that has to be the working assumption, yes.

Question: Would you be happy to work with him on his programme as required by collective responsibility?

Jon Cruddas: Yeah, the job is to work with whoever is elected leader. But in the case of Gordon Brown, yeah, absolutely.

Question: Clearly you have got a lot of disagreements with some of the decisions the government, including Gordon Brown, have taken. Are you expecting radical policy departures that you would be able to sign up to?

Jon Cruddas: Well I think there has to be some changes. We will have to see what the agenda is Gordon Brown puts to the party.

But I would like to see an overhaul of some of the policy thinking. The status quo isn’t an option. Gordon Brown himself will want an overhaul of policy and will be looking to re-energise us in terms of the shape of the government and try to reconnect us to a way we can articulate and understand the needs of the country.

Question: So don’t sign up to the argument that Brown has been as responsible for domestic policies as Tony Blair?

Jon Cruddas: Not in the sense that he has been prime minister and overseen them. He has been responsible for the Treasury.

No new prime minister is just going to come in and say he is just going to carry on with the policy agenda. There has to be an overhaul of the trajectory and shape of the government. We will see what that turns out.

It will be challenging. But by definition I think those challenges will be important in helping to renew and rebuild the government itself.

Question: The deputy leader can only do what the leader agrees with them. If you want to debate the future direction of the party, shouldn’t you be standing for leader?

Jon Cruddas: No because I’m not interested in being leader of the Labour Party or prime minister.

Question: So should others stand for leader? Perhaps some of those who are also running for deputy leader?

Jon Cruddas: Well it’s up to them. It is curious. On the one hand it reflects the towering presence of Brown himself.

On the other hand it is curious that so many people who have held so many significant jobs aren’t challenging for the leadership. I find that curious in terms of the laws of politics.

Why are they interested in being deputy leader? Arguably they are not really interested in being deputy leader of the Labour Party, they are interested in being deputy prime minister. That’s up to them.

I’m not interested in big offices of state and country houses and London flats and the chains of office and the big cabinet portfolios. I’m interested in rebuilding the Labour Party because I think the stakes are really high in terms of us hollowing out to the degree that we have become atrophied.

That is why we have to debate how we rebuild the party. The danger is, without that debate, we will just continually drift into inevitable decline.

Question: So if you won, would you argue that you had a mandate to make these changes to the organisation and structure of the party?

Jon Cruddas: No, I think you would have to discuss them with the leader because it is his mandate as leader of the Labour Party. But I would hope that gives some strength to the ideas that we are putting forward.

We have been trying to percolate the argument across the party, across the country, across the movement, about how we can re-energise and rebuild the party on the ground. I think it is achievable. If people want to disagree and put other ideas in, good. That is what will re-energise the party.

But simply saying there are no outstanding issues and we just carry on as we are doing is not enough. In communities like mine, it is not enough.

Cruddas on government policy

Question: You have been arguing that white working class voters in your area are feeling let down. What would you like to see the government do to re-engage them?

Jon Cruddas: There are huge public policy issues that need to be discussed around resource allocations. The basic problem in our area is there massive demographic changes driven by the search for low-cost housing.

We have got the lowest cost housing in greater London and the consequence of the right to buy is that you have got a bigger private housing market. So you have got this massive migration within London in terms of getting on the property ladder and a massive migration of people into the city who also gravitate towards low cost housing areas.

So the population is growing and changing rapidly. But resources are driven by completely out of date census data. So in real terms things are getting even more difficult in terms of resources such as housing or access to healthcare.

You have got to turn that around and help those communities that are taking the strain in terms of a massive migration of people. Because unless you do that, you could create a zero-sum game within which this migration takes place, which builds racial tensions and reinforces a sense of isolation and disillusionment.

So the state has a key responsibility in terms of managing these processes of economic and social transformation. The remedies are in terms of housing, investment in health and education, how you help councils in terms of the block grant available to them.

All of this is retrievable. It is an exercise in political will.

Question: The government is already in a lot of trouble for supposedly directing resources towards “Labour areas”. Do you want to see that accelerate?

Jon Cruddas: Let me give you an example. Empirically I think we have got the worst health inequalities in terms of the distance of where we are to where we should be in per capita spending on primary care trusts. Across east London and the Thames Gateway there will be a further 750,000 people moving in in the next 10 to 15 years.

That has huge implications in terms of resource allocations. So it is not a question of putting money into Labour areas. It is putting money into those areas that need it, objectively, empirically, on the government’s own statistics.

Question: Would that be within existing budgets or should there be increased public spending?

Jon Cruddas: It seems to me you need to have that real time demographic framework to alter the fiscal stance of how you distribute resources. You can’t have such chronic inequalities that exist in our borough and other boroughs and say that it shouldn’t be the role of the government to correct them.

That seems to me to be a process issue. It is not some kind of ideological one.

Cruddas on Trident and Iraq

Question: Two of the big issues that seem to be causing enormous disillusionment among Labour activists are Trident and, still, Iraq. Where do you stand on those two and what would you like to see change?

Jon Cruddas: I’m not convinced at all on the Trident issue. Despite the white paper, which I’ve read.

The big question seems to me to be is this issue taking an awful lot of public expenditure to retain, upgrade and in the future renew a weapon which belongs to a previous epoch in terms of the cold war. Is this a hangover from the cold war? That is the question which should be answered.

I’m not an international affairs expert. I’ve never been a member of CND. But I’m not convinced at all. It just seems to me a very pragmatic issue of what is the best way to equip our forces, secure our borders, help internationally in terms of maintaining a peaceful world and what is the appropriate weaponry. I cannot see for the life of me where this weapon fits in.

Question: Gordon Brown obviously supports retention at least. Would you be able to support that if you were within the cabinet?

Jon Cruddas: Well let’s see. In all of these things the press loves to predetermine the terms of debate. We are going to have a three month consultation, let’s see what it brings.

I think there is a real strength of feeling within the party that there needs to be a really quite profound evaluation of where we are and what is the appropriate weaponry for the future.

Question: The government does seem to have made up its mind. Do you think the party can change it?

Jon Cruddas: I think the party should be able to put its two pence worth in. To give an example, Compass - one of the constituency groups within the party – has 2,000 members and has had 1,000 responses already to an online consultation on Trident.

That is healthy. This is not the Labour Party of 1981, this is not the supremely factionalised party that we had then. The party is much more mature and I think we should allow it to contribute to these sorts of decisions.

I don’t know whether the government has made its decision, they say they haven’t so let’s see.

Question: And what does the government have to do to allow the Labour Party to move on from Iraq?

Jon Cruddas: You’re right to say move on from it. The first question is, it has to reconcile itself to the facts of what is going on. It seems to me it has been pretty much a disaster. And I voted for it.

I think the premise, obviously, has been proven to be wrong in terms of weapons of mass destruction. But the consequences afterwards have been dreadful. We cannot say it has been a resounding success in terms of building a secure, democratic liberal democracy. Therefore the question is, knowing what you do now, would you do the same again? I would say no.

But you don’t compound the problem by legging it from something you have the responsibility of creating. You have to internationalise the situation and work to secure an orderly withdrawal in a suitable timeframe. But to simply withdraw now would create carnage.

Cruddas on party funding

Question: You used to advise Tony Blair on union issues. What would you be saying to him now about party funding?

Jon Cruddas: This issue arose on the back of the cash-for-honours debate. It seems to me now a debate singularly driven by the internal constitutional arrangements between the trade union movement and the Labour Party. I’m not sure how it’s been flipped over into that.

The basic issues are first, the Labour Party has a position on all of this, unilaterally passed by its last party conference. Which is about voluntary donation caps which the parties themselves decide, regulated through the Electoral Commission.

The second issue is it has to be up parties themselves to define their own constitutions. If what has been mooted in the Hayden Phillips review is turned into a bill, it would serve to fundamentally alter the internal constitutional architecture of the Labour Party.

That cannot be right in terms of the role of the state. So that would have to be resisted. So I would argue that he should be very pragmatic and seek to secure a bill that he can get through his own party.

Cruddas on campaigning

Question: You have already been making extensive use of the internet through your campaign blog and website. How do you see internet campaigning playing a role in the upcoming election and for the party.

Jon Cruddas: I think it is going to be massive. I’m coming at this somewhat late. However I have people who are fully equipped on all of this stuff. Matthew and Nick, who work for me, have been over to the States looking at new forms of political mobilisation and campaigning and the role of technology within that.

We will be test driving a lot of that in terms of our own campaigning. It is the future. It allows for real time mobilisation and campaigning, the rapid dissemination of information, two-way and lateral communication.

Obviously in North America they are ahead of the curve. We are in on-going discussions about how we can appropriate the best of that for our own campaigning. I think it will be of interest to the party to see how our experiments, of which I don’t want to give too much away now, work over the next three or four months.

We’ve got a lot of support from bloggers as well. We are getting quite a big infrastructure together through new technology. That will widen and deepen as the months go on.

Question: There is no vacancy yet, but with so many candidates is your strategy to come through the middle or from behind, using second and third preference votes and win that way?

Jon Cruddas: It seems to me that what you are going to see is a lot of candidates for five months dancing on a pin head because they are all locked into the government and can’t say anything. We are outside of that, seeking to redefine territory, open up spaces, debate things all round the country.

I’m not quite sure how they are going to deal with that. It’s a great position to be in for us. We are in the fortunate position of being able to say what we think. The other candidates don’t want to debate. We are going to debate ourselves silly and the party is desperate to start discussing where we are going.

Question: You’ve said that others want to be deputy prime minister and you want to be a beefed up chairman of the party. You’ve mentioned Howard Dean yourself and bloggers have likened you to him. If you lose, would you do what he has done and take on the party chairmanship?

Jon Cruddas: I find it very difficult to answer that when I think the post should be abolished.