Elections are ultimately a clash of ideas. As we look towards a third term, I believe we must make tackling falling levels of turnout, and the disengagement of the public sphere this represents, a key priority. Fundamentally, it is the recognition of the opportunity politics offers to change our lives, our communities and our world, which is key to revitalising interest in the process.
We must be open about what choosing Labour means: that voting for us puts into office people determined to make Britain a society defined by a concern for social justice not unfettered market power. It is ultimately our shared vision of how we will change society, rather than the appeal of any one policy alone, that will motivate people to vote for us. In short, low electoral turnout can only be challenged effectively by high public purpose.
Such a vision is the bedrock of political revitalisation. It is also a necessary component in creating our capacity not just to adapt to the society in which we live but to transform it. In The Progressive Dilemma, David Marquand argues that the failure of previous Labour governments was to focus only on ‘mechanical’ reform to deliver services and so undermine the very civic entities that those services depended upon, by failing to shape the ‘moral’ values of a ‘Labour England’. Marquand writes: ‘We create communities by practising the habits of community: we acquire citizenship by acting as citizens … these values cannot be taught. They can only be learned in use.’
Put another way, if we get the ideology right, the policies, and the necessary public support for them, will flow. In the years ahead, Labour must articulate a compelling narrative that reflects the mutual bonds of individuals, communities and the state as the basis of our policy agenda.
It is this narrative which will secure reform into a wider discourse about the progressive society we wish to create, and so help us to render irreversible the political climate of progress. Without such a vision, any reforms would be necessary but insufficient in themselves to deliver a more equitable society.
Getting our vision right, showing the difference voting for us could make to our shared future, must be the basis on which we then engage in an explicit discussion of the necessary constitutional and democratic reforms required to expand and sustain our vision of the good society. No one constitutional change can solve the challenge of low turnout, but together, as part of a progressive agenda, each can play a role.
Our constitutional changes must secure within our society our sense of citizenship such that it would be impossible for a party of the unfettered free market to later destroy the networks of care, concern, mutuality and participation that we had established. Just as our Conservative predecessors did, our goal must be not just to inhabit the centre ground of British politics, but to actively shift it.
Championing the narrative of egalitarian citizenship through our words and deeds will help cement a new settlement between individuals, communities and the state, embedding our values of social justice into the very core of society for generations to come.
As the former US vice president and senator Hubert Humphrey argued in 1942: ‘It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea.’