Abolishing the 10p tax rate shattered the contract on which New Labour was based

Why is the abolition of the 10p rate of tax unlike any other rebellion of backbench Labour MPs? The answer lies in the mood of Labour backbenchers following decades of modernising the party, a process that began under Neil Kinnock but only became a root and branch operation under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Repeated Labour defeats in the 1950s were accompanied by the burst of outriders demanding a revision of an exclusively economic definition of socialism. This plea ought to have fallen on fertile ground. There has always been a sizeable proportion of activists who believe that socialism could not be achieved without first changing the kind of people we are. Herbert Morrison, Peter Mandelson’s grandfather, touched on this when he claimed that socialism can only be built by socialists.

Morrison’s plea was, sadly, a backward cry to a lost age. Emphasis on Labour’s ethical roots lost its dominance when Ramsay MacDonald formed the 1931 National Government against the overwhelming wishes of the Labour Movement.