In the years ahead, New Labour must be the party that champions a new progressive individualism in British politics. The marriage the New Labour coalition arranged between prosperity and justice has hitherto been both our defining trait and our biggest strength. Upset that balance and you risk undermining everything we wish to achieve as a progressive government.
We must, therefore, remain enthusiastic – not pragmatic – about financial success. We are, for example, rightly renewing our historic pledge to eradicate child poverty in Britain. But tackling poverty is about bringing those at the bottom closer to those in the middle. It is statistically possible to have a society where no child lives in a family whose income is below the poverty line – 60 per cent of median average income – but where there are also people at the top who are very wealthy. In fact, not only is it statistically possible – it is positively a good thing.
So rather than questioning whether high salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country. Rather than placing a cap on that success, we should be questioning why it is not available to more people. It would be a good thing for our country if there were more millionaires in Britain not fewer. Our overarching goal – that no one should get left behind – must not become translated into a stultifying sense that no one should be allowed to get too far ahead.
A key challenge for New Labour over the coming years is to recognise that, far from strengthening social justice, a version of equality that only gives you the opportunity to climb so far actually subverts the values we should be representing. Instead, any progressive party worth its name must enthusiastically advocate empowering people to climb without limits, free from any barrier holding them back – be it background, gender or outdated social attitudes.
We must recognise and understand the huge changes that have taken place in Britain over the past decade. The difference between collective action now and the kind Labour governments advanced in the past, is the greater capacity and desire of people today to choose what they want to be involved in, and what they don’t.
A consequence of this breakdown of uniformity is not just the end of the age of deference; it is the end of blind loyalty to institutions. More than ever before, any government body, or collective process, must convince those that use it of its value to them as individuals.
As a party, we have got to properly understand and adapt to those changes in attitude. Clearly, this is not year zero. New Labour over the past 10 years has recognised the importance of reflecting the individual aspiration inherent in the British people in its pursuit of progressive policy goals. Yet this change in approach must go further and be more explicit in the next decade of New Labour. We must approach the battle for a fourth term proud of our positions as the party of progressive individualism in British politics.
This is a world apart from the narrow attitudes of the Tories when it comes to the role for government. We believe in using the strength of collective provision to unleash individual aspiration. Traditional Conservatism left individuals to fend for themselves. Cameron’s Tories put forward a hybrid version of this tradition – that of a strong civic society but a weakened state. Neither of these two views offers a sensible way forward. We won’t prosper as an economy or as a society if we will the ends but not the means.
We must, therefore, continually question whether public services are properly responsive to the needs of the individuals who pay for them through their taxes, rather than relying on an historic British belief in the value of collective public services.
The challenge for progressives is to win the argument about incentives in public services. Rewarding public services that help advance individual aspiration and ambition and holding to account those who do not.
Renewing our commitment to wealth creation and enterprise in Britain, and championing an increase in individual aspiration, is important not simply because such things are vital if we are to remain an electoral force in the years ahead – though that is indeed true. More than that, these aims are in themselves essential progressive goals for a modern party of the centre-left.