Taking as their cue the recent election victory in Portugal by the main centre-right party, Messrs Diamond and Cramme got straight to the point in arguing that with only four of the 27 EU member states run by the centre-left, European social democracy is in crisis.

And quite right they are too. Indeed, they went on to note how the way in which the Portuguese Socialist party lost power was very similar to the way Labour was ejected from office in the UK (not withstanding the Liberal Democrats), with the centre-right in both cases painting the incumbent administrations as profligate spenders who’d saddled their countries with huge debts.

The authors then reminded readers of something which anyone who cares about progressive politics would do well to never forget (and which it is worth quoting in full):

When the [global financial] crisis broke three years ago, many on the left believed it would rejuvenate support for the interventionist state. Instead, the pendulum has swung aggressively against social democracy throughout Europe. For although voters were concerned about vested interests in the financial system and soaring inequalities driven by unregulated financial markets, their confidence in the capacity of the state to act was at rock bottom. In the meantime, the centre-right deftly redefined the crisis as a fiscal crisis of government overspending, high public debt and unsustainable structural deficits. Bloated and bureaucratic government was now the enemy.

Not necessarily particularly cheery reading but undoubtedly bang on the money. And so the article continued, with the potentially uncomfortable (but in my view correct) assertion that New Labour and other European social democratic parties had ‘allowed free-market triumphalism to obscure the left’s historic commitment to regulating markets in the public interest’.

But then I was suddenly jolted out of my nodding agreement, when I read the next line: ‘The third way offers no route-map out of the economic and political crisis’.

Hang on. We’ve just been reading a succinct overview of how social democratic governments went along with and then were swept away by free-market theory because they failed to offer a compelling enough narrative to the electorate of who was to blame and what was to happen next, but the authors think there’s no merit in triangulating a response between old-style social democracy and neoliberalism?

Have I missed something? Surely now is the moment of the Third Way. Not picking up where New Labour left off when in its twilight years, but by rescuing the Third Way from misunderstanding and misrepresentation, and using it (and the high watermark for European social democracy which it represented in the mid 1990s) as a reboot point.

And Patrick Diamond and Olaf Cramme nearly came close to saying this.

Nearly, but not quite. For despite asking ‘what is to be done’ and then answering that ‘it is delusional to believe that merely restating the case for traditional state action will revive support for centre-left parties’, the writers then commit the cardinal sin.

Because instead of attempting to actually define in simple language what is to be done, they assert that a ‘more fundamental analysis of the underlying causes of the crisis is necessary, together with the development of a viable programme for power’.

In that sentence lies the answer for why the right won yet again. Because despite the fact that the writers go on to explain the three ‘vital elements’ which they believe a viable programme for power must include, by this stage they’ve already lost most people.

What exactly does ‘a more fundamental analysis’ mean to somebody worried about their job? What does the development of a viable programme for power look like in terms of addressing immediate concerns and insecurities about living standards?

And despite the laudable aims which the writers go on to espouse in the final rhetorical flourish at the end of their article, none of it matters. Because the vast majority of people have stopped reading by this point. In fact, they were never reading it in the first place.

This is the communications challenge that Labour faces. For the time being, it doesn’t matter what is being said (nor, necessarily, by whom), but the way in which it is being said – currently characterised as dense, academic, aloof language, which does not chime with the national mood.

The truth is that until Labour finds a language that resonates with the majority of people, the right will keep on winning.

So, to reinvent an old saying, it’s not ‘the economy, stupid’ – it’s the language.

To read Patrick Diamond and Olaf Cramme’s original piece please see here

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