John Prescott illustrates Labour’s progressive problem

Many Liberal Democrats become very suspicious when they hear Labour members talk about the need for a broad progressive coalition, suspecting that for many of them the definition of progressive is really “agreeing with Labour”.

Labour’s reaction since the general election has done little to assuage such fears, with a sequence of policies that were previously paraded as part of being progressive either now opposed or not talked about as soon as someone other than Labour goes about implementing them.

Hence Labour’s previous support for fixed-term Parliaments has gone missing as numerous people in Labour have opposed the government’s plans, not over matters of detail such as 66% or 55% to call an early election, but over the principle of fixed-term Parliaments themselves.

So too with universal benefits for pensioners. Now that the coalition government is committed to restoring the earnings link for state pensions sooner and on more generous terms than Labour was planning, the use of support for such universal benefits as a symbol of progressive intent has largely stopped.

It’s the same again with public spending cuts. Labour’s last budget committed the party to tens of billions of cuts, without a progressive complaint in sight. But now that that someone else is doing the cuts, there’s barely a peep from anyone in Labour willing to say quite what those progressive cuts would have been. (An honourable exception should be made for Andy Burnham who, whatever your views of his talk about cutting NHS spending, at least is offering one substantial route by which those cuts could have been made.)

But it’s John Prescott‘s latest outburst that perhaps best illustrates the progressive problem. When Gordon Brown and before him Tony Blair were Prime Minister, the government often – with varying degrees of success – invited those from other parties to take up roles. Yet when the current government invites ex-Labour cabinet minister John Hutton to take up a role, John Prescott blasts him as a collaborator.

So others should cooperate with Labour but Labour shouldn’t cooperate with others? If Labour members are serious about progressive being more than just code for agreeing with Labour, that’s the sort of attitudes they need to fix in their own party.