400 days ago, Barack Obama celebrated his marginal Super Tuesday victory by proclaiming “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” To some, it was a grotesque exercise in hubris. But as it turned out, it was the rallying call to a new generation of activists craving to reclaim a stake in their own lives through a meaningful campaign that was ultimately their own.
 
In another 400 days, Labour will return to the electorate, seeking a fourth mandate that will allow the party to govern on the progressive values that really matter in modern Britain: not just tolerance of all, but genuine inclusion; not just political transparency but real openness and interaction; not just interdependence but a full rejection of the Tory mantra that you’re on your own.

After 12 years in office, Labour remains the party of ideas and ideals. In the first post-recessionary election, the voices for a centre-left future are as loud as they’ve ever been and our commitment to change and social democratic solutions to the challenges we face is real. Labour’s progressive values are 21st century values: welfare support in times of hardship; a just spread of the rewards of our national economy; a fully fit and fully funded national health service; rights and responsibilities in our communities and our economy alike; and the educational fairness that leads to increased opportunity and social mobility.

But at the most tangible level, in our local communities and at constituency meetings, our diligence and desire for a permanent process of renewal have been diminished by our habitual acquiescence to a clique of implicitly trusted yae-sayers.

In these localities where Labour policies truly find delivery, our organisation can be a barrier to participation rather than a gateway to it. Experience or incumbency count over innovation. Loyalty to the individual is more important than loyalty to the group’s aims. Votes are familiar-faced formalities. Orthodoxies go largely unchallenged except for the pedants screaming to impose arcane and archaic party rules.

The result is that new voices are crowded out by the same hands that built a commanding but controlling party structure in the 1990s. Members and delegates leave meetings feeling more frustrated than empowered and our movement for constant progress can feel stagnant even to those directly involved.

Frankly, it’s a problem symptomatic in our entire participatory process. Technological advances such as Facebook and Twitter are used as commodities for hammering home a message, rather than as a sincere means to open up. Ministers would never hold a press conference and then stand fingers-in-ears while questions were asked, but on LabourList they refuse to respond to comments or engage in anything like a two-way relationship. And councillors aren’t reaching out to supporters and constituents nearly enough, either online or on the doorsteps.

In the next 15 months, this sluggishness will lead only to failure in the face of a relentless Conservatism, unless there is a real shift in the procedural ethos of our people on the ground. It won’t take anything so radical as a Cultural Glasnost – but it will require a bottom-up spring clean and a recognition that the tried and trusted personnel cannot always bring about the Change We Need.

Labour hasn’t run out of talent – on the contrary, our movement contains within it the seeds of its own regeneration. There are many brilliant and passionate people and many fresh voices pushing the party forward toward our common aim.

But if we are to end the anachronistic torpor at the heart of our movement, we must take a risk on renewal at our grassroots. That means being bold enough to make a candid reassessment of the quality of our people’s organisational skills, and changing them where required. It means reengaging young people in our CLPs by allowing them a greater stake in their constituencies and a bigger say in how they’re run.

And we need to start now, because there are only 400 days left to reconnect.