“We’ve got our Party back!” proclaimed Lord Kinnock this morning, grinning manically as though he had set Labour off on some kind of hilarious boomerang adventure in April 1992 - swirling through some highly undesirable years of unprecedented electoral success - only to snap right back into his hands this week, as though it had never left. Welcome back, old boy!
Kinnock’s cri de coeur is a real double whammy: it offends the New Labour past (implying that the Party has been rescued from recent caretakers who are somehow alien to the movement; I'm sure they will all be thrilled) and, moreover, it stifles Labour's future (emphasising that the net effect of the leadership election has been to reverse, not to renew). Kinnock’s excitement reflects his characteristic misjudgment of the public, who found Labour most palatable when they weren’t “The Party” but were reaching further beyond. Eighteen years on and he still doesn’t “get it”.
But when you see Kinnock’s explanation for where this phrase comes from, the signs are worse still for Labour:
"A trade union delegate leaned over and said 'Neil, we've got our party back'. I thought that was so accurate as an instantaneous response to the leader's speech."
The double-meaning appears to be lost on Kinnock. "We've got our party back" was not said by a long-in-the-tooth member warmly welcoming back Old Labour to the views of The Membership. It was said by a trade union delegate and thus appears rather to emphasise the Unions' new possessive rights over the leadership and the Party: "We've got our party back". Back in our pockets. And well they have. After all, to paraphrase a headline close to Kinnock's heart, it was the Unions Wot Won It.
