On May 6 this year, Labour polled its second worst result in a general election since 1918. Only 1983 was worse, in terms of our national share of the vote. No-one, then, who believes in centre-left, progressive values should be under any illusion that we enjoyed a ‘soft landing’.

The awful truth is that we did not. We performed extremely badly in some parts of the country, losing scores of seats in the West Midlands, the East of England and the South East. We held our position in Scotland, but in South Yorkshire our performance was significantly below our 1983 result in that area. We did badly in the old East Midlands coalfields, even though we held on to seats, albeit narrowly.

So the challenge before us is great. But in the midst of all this doom and gloom, in the context of our rejection by the electorate, I believe there are still reasons for us to be optimistic, and that all those who believe in a progressive future can be motivated to make a contribution towards renewing the left.

First of all, if it’s true that Labour lost election, then it’s also true that the Tories didn’t win either. After 13 years in opposition, they only managed to secure 36.1 per cent approval for their rightwing agenda, an agenda which none of us should doubt is fundamentally ideological, focused as it is on reducing the size of the state and shifting the UK ever more towards a US-style social and political culture and ever further away from the social democratic model so typical of western Europe.

But the electorate is not convinced. Older voters remember with a shudder previous attempts to shrink the state, and younger voters are acutely aware of the support they get for bringing up their children. The electorate, which voted overwhelmingly against Tory cuts to public spending, is not prepared to let go of social democracy.

And that’s why I believe that we now face a huge challenge, one beset with opportunities and threats, but one which if negotiated successfully offers the prospect of durable and lasting progress for centre-left values.

Media pundits and various political commentators were keen during the election to assert a view that general election 2010 was a critical election, a crossroads election, if you like. Well, we’re still at the crossroads. Over the coming years, this country will make decisions which could determine for decades to come what role the state has to play in the everyday life of this country. The threat is of an emerging consensus that is rightwing and reductive; the opportunity, and I believe it is an entirely achievable opportunity, is to build an alternative consensus, one which takes voters’ core beliefs and constructs a fresh, modern and social democratic vision of what the role of the state is in the 21st century.

In other words, we need to listen to the voters, to listen to the sometimes very challenging criticisms they have to make about the way the state functions at the moment. We need to listen to what they deem as unfair, to their experiences of how the state shapes and organises our lives. It will be difficult. It will not be easy. But the reward would be a refreshed and more meaningful role for the state in modern society, and a real opportunity to sustain social democracy well into the 21st century.

We should not be despondent. The future is ours, if we are willing to make it so.

Photo: lewishamdreamer 2009