Just under a year ago the newly elected Labour leader declared to the party faithful that: ‘The era of New Labour has passed. A new generation has taken over.’ The remarks seem somewhat hollow in the context that it is less than a week since the publication of The Purple Book in which six former Cabinet ministers, eight members of the present shadow Cabinet and an array of Labour modernisers set out their suggestions on how to return the party to power. It represents the first concerted attempt to map out a new agenda for Labour after a defeat of such proportions that it would make Michael Foot blush. At the annual Progress Rally in Liverpool, successive Labour grandees declared that the party must not be ashamed of New Labour, nor consign it history – but extract the core tenets that won the party three successive elections.
Douglas Alexander, the general election co-ordinator, began the evening with a stark warning first aired by the father of Labour revisionists, Hugh Gaitskell. Surveying his party in 1959 in the aftermath of its third successive general election defeat, the oft-forgotten Labour leader remarked that it was quite conceivable that the pendulum might never again swing in Labour’s favour. There is no inevitability about ‘the pendulum swinging back’, Alexander told the packed hall, but Labour can be optimistic. A battle of ideas is vital to the health of the Labour party to ensure that the historic trend is bucked; on every occasion bar one when Labour has left government, it has lost the next election even more heavily.
Continuing the theme, John Woodcock, the shadow transport minister, said that the coalition government has ‘such a 1980s feel’. But he received a spontaneous round of applause for saying that the Labour party must not turn itself into a 1980s party in response.
The ‘veteran moderniser’ Tessa Jowell spoke passionately about the electoral difficulties facing the Labour party. ‘Out there, people are not listening yet, because they are by and large so beset with the financial anxiety of managing from one day to the next’. The fact ‘nobody won the last election’ showed the lack of confidence the public has in all politicians, Jowell said.
The revelation of the evening was Ivan Lewis. He attacked some ‘on the right and in our own party’ who ‘would have you believe we were a bad government’. Lewis gave examples of people who were helped to get training, learnt to read, organised their own care, and freed from persecution in Sierra Leone – all achieved by the Labour government.
Progress will be at the heart of the debate about the future of the Labour party. It has, as Tessa Jowell remarked, an amazing ability to self-generate and is as important now as it was in its conception in the mid 1990s. The Labour party’s history is littered with rather more defeats than victories. For too long the party was a footnote in the chapter of Conservative governance. That’s why we changed.
Far from an end of an era, the breadth and depth of Labour talent on the podium suggests that the Labour party can be confident in its future and proud of its past. New Labour was not a faction within the party, but a coalition within the party and it has the potential to be at the heart of the party once more.
I find myself in full agreement with Tessa who i had the pleasure of campaigning with during the Battle of Barking. She was very strong on the mutual approach if I remember correctly.
She used a term on the Daily Politics that I referred to during one of my rants, the post riot rant when once more I was gutted at the state of things, especially the defunct position of the Rule of Law, and the sheer lack of understanding of it by the privalaged people who consider themselves “elite” without exhibiting any excellence.
I digress. The word was “enable”
Anyone who experiences frontline services understands fully where the system fails and did MPs know that our current Health Service encourages people forcibly out of work due to the drug availability and decisions that make our economy suffer for short term spreadsheet satisfying narrow account priorities which are by the way, false economies as the drug prices fluctuate due to demand/availability and the GP decision making limited to prevent an executive decision dealing with this?
That is just one example, so we need an “enabling” narrative that ensures those who work are given all the support they need to do their jobs rather than hampered. Employers have to be supported when staff or those who run companies are genuinly sick (as confirmed by GPs), if we want a great strong economy then we have to look after the real footsoldiers of society (please do not steal this phrase brief-writers) those try bloody hard to get out and work when faced with challenges and difficulties and costs from a system that is stifling itself.
I genuinly heard some encouraging stuff from John Denham (see John I am not after you personally lol) about the voice of businesses but we need more than this, we need a fundamental understanding of process.
Labour has two massive challenges and they are very serious as they have a terrible responsibility that is upon them and not the Tories.
The first challenge is to understand the “democratic” need for people to be able to have a say and there are some naive moves here, but we need to rely more on communication and information technology here as well as on the doorstep as we reach out to people, we certainly have to increase our volunteer base……but we must also understand the very very important principle that the process of democracy is more important than the outcome, it has to be even when a corrupt cretin wins out (they will get caught later – they always do, though it often causes tremendous damage to the party because of what they do). Nonetheless we have to give full respect to democracy and principles of democracy and weaken and limit nepotism and corruption whenever we can and favour equality, transparency and accountability instead.
The second challenge is on policy and self interest. I ranted on the blogs endlessly about this and won’t do so today, we do need a narrative, we know that their is ideology even when people say their isn’t people are not calculators and where decision making is involved values are always being applied, there is no escape from ideology except when we delude ourselves. After the expense scandal the public learnt precisely what that ideology was. It was a weird and deluded position by MPs that they were somehow smarter than the rest of society, did not have to treat the public with any respect and so history played out and Parliament was hung as an unorganised public punished all three political parties and reminded them who the boss really is.
So the challenge is placing the public interest first as far as is practicable, there will lawyas be corruption of some sort, but we must learn that is ok to be idealist but not dogmatic, whereas at the moment we seem to be continually repeating the brief, the short statements and making them dogma and setting ourselves up to fail later.
So I agree with Tessa, but the hurdles on the course have been raised and we have to raise our game and at the moment I am not convinced because of the need for radical and the reliance on people who really do not want to change because they do not understand themselves, the Labour Party or the danger of the situation the UK is in or are in denial of it, wanting to live a past which is gone as the shareholder economy struggles.
I did warn what a collapse in trust would do on all levels and its having a profound impact…on all levels.
We need to be firm, consistent but we need that new narrative the people are begging for on the doorsteps, never has there been such a massive opportunity to win people over and create an exciting economic and political policy platform, but for that we need change in the PLP.
I find myself in full agreement with Tessa who i had the pleasure of campaigning with during the Battle of Barking. She was very strong on the mutual approach if I remember correctly.
She used a term on the Daily Politics that I referred to during one of my rants, the post riot rant when once more I was gutted at the state of things, especially the defunct position of the Rule of Law, and the sheer lack of understanding of it by the privalaged people who consider themselves “elite” without exhibiting any excellence.
I digress. The word was “enable”
Anyone who experiences frontline services understands fully where the system fails and did MPs know that our current Health Service encourages people forcibly out of work due to the drug availability and decisions that make our economy suffer for short term spreadsheet satisfying narrow account priorities which are by the way, false economies as the drug prices fluctuate due to demand/availability and the GP decision making limited to prevent an executive decision dealing with this?
That is just one example, so we need an “enabling” narrative that ensures those who work are given all the support they need to do their jobs rather than hampered. Employers have to be supported when staff or those who run companies are genuinly sick (as confirmed by GPs), if we want a great strong economy then we have to look after the real footsoldiers of society (please do not steal this phrase brief-writers) those try bloody hard to get out and work when faced with challenges and difficulties and costs from a system that is stifling itself.
I genuinly heard some encouraging stuff from John Denham (see John I am not after you personally lol) about the voice of businesses but we need more than this, we need a fundamental understanding of process.
Labour has two massive challenges and they are very serious as they have a terrible responsibility that is upon them and not the Tories.
The first challenge is to understand the “democratic” need for people to be able to have a say and there are some naive moves here, but we need to rely more on communication and information technology here as well as on the doorstep as we reach out to people, we certainly have to increase our volunteer base……but we must also understand the very very important principle that the process of democracy is more important than the outcome, it has to be even when a corrupt cretin wins out (they will get caught later – they always do, though it often causes tremendous damage to the party because of what they do). Nonetheless we have to give full respect to democracy and principles of democracy and weaken and limit nepotism and corruption whenever we can and favour equality, transparency and accountability instead.
The second challenge is on policy and self interest. I ranted on the blogs endlessly about this and won’t do so today, we do need a narrative, we know that their is ideology even when people say their isn’t people are not calculators and where decision making is involved values are always being applied, there is no escape from ideology except when we delude ourselves. After the expense scandal the public learnt precisely what that ideology was. It was a weird and deluded position by MPs that they were somehow smarter than the rest of society, did not have to treat the public with any respect and so history played out and Parliament was hung as an unorganised public punished all three political parties and reminded them who the boss really is.
So the challenge is placing the public interest first as far as is practicable, there will lawyas be corruption of some sort, but we must learn that is ok to be idealist but not dogmatic, whereas at the moment we seem to be continually repeating the brief, the short statements and making them dogma and setting ourselves up to fail later.
So I agree with Tessa, but the hurdles on the course have been raised and we have to raise our game and at the moment I am not convinced because of the need for radical and the reliance on people who really do not want to change because they do not understand themselves, the Labour Party or the danger of the situation the UK is in or are in denial of it, wanting to live a past which is gone as the shareholder economy struggles.
I did warn what a collapse in trust would do on all levels and its having a profound impact…on all levels.
We need to be firm, consistent but we need that new narrative the people are begging for on the doorsteps, never has there been such a massive opportunity to win people over and create an exciting economic and political policy platform, but for that we need change in the PLP.
I find myself in full agreement with Tessa who i had the pleasure of campaigning with during the Battle of Barking. She was very strong on the mutual approach if I remember correctly.
She used a term on the Daily Politics that I referred to during one of my rants, the post riot rant when once more I was gutted at the state of things, especially the defunct position of the Rule of Law, and the sheer lack of understanding of it by the privalaged people who consider themselves “elite” without exhibiting any excellence.
I digress. The word was “enable”
Anyone who experiences frontline services understands fully where the system fails and did MPs know that our current Health Service encourages people forcibly out of work due to the drug availability and decisions that make our economy suffer for short term spreadsheet satisfying narrow account priorities which are by the way, false economies as the drug prices fluctuate due to demand/availability and the GP decision making limited to prevent an executive decision dealing with this?
That is just one example, so we need an “enabling” narrative that ensures those who work are given all the support they need to do their jobs rather than hampered. Employers have to be supported when staff or those who run companies are genuinly sick (as confirmed by GPs), if we want a great strong economy then we have to look after the real footsoldiers of society (please do not steal this phrase brief-writers) those try bloody hard to get out and work when faced with challenges and difficulties and costs from a system that is stifling itself.
I genuinly heard some encouraging stuff from John Denham (see John I am not after you personally lol) about the voice of businesses but we need more than this, we need a fundamental understanding of process.
Labour has two massive challenges and they are very serious as they have a terrible responsibility that is upon them and not the Tories.
The first challenge is to understand the “democratic” need for people to be able to have a say and there are some naive moves here, but we need to rely more on communication and information technology here as well as on the doorstep as we reach out to people, we certainly have to increase our volunteer base……but we must also understand the very very important principle that the process of democracy is more important than the outcome, it has to be even when a corrupt cretin wins out (they will get caught later – they always do, though it often causes tremendous damage to the party because of what they do). Nonetheless we have to give full respect to democracy and principles of democracy and weaken and limit nepotism and corruption whenever we can and favour equality, transparency and accountability instead.
The second challenge is on policy and self interest. I ranted on the blogs endlessly about this and won’t do so today, we do need a narrative, we know that their is ideology even when people say their isn’t people are not calculators and where decision making is involved values are always being applied, there is no escape from ideology except when we delude ourselves. After the expense scandal the public learnt precisely what that ideology was. It was a weird and deluded position by MPs that they were somehow smarter than the rest of society, did not have to treat the public with any respect and so history played out and Parliament was hung as an unorganised public punished all three political parties and reminded them who the boss really is.
So the challenge is placing the public interest first as far as is practicable, there will lawyas be corruption of some sort, but we must learn that is ok to be idealist but not dogmatic, whereas at the moment we seem to be continually repeating the brief, the short statements and making them dogma and setting ourselves up to fail later.
So I agree with Tessa, but the hurdles on the course have been raised and we have to raise our game and at the moment I am not convinced because of the need for radical and the reliance on people who really do not want to change because they do not understand themselves, the Labour Party or the danger of the situation the UK is in or are in denial of it, wanting to live a past which is gone as the shareholder economy struggles.
I did warn what a collapse in trust would do on all levels and its having a profound impact…on all levels.
We need to be firm, consistent but we need that new narrative the people are begging for on the doorsteps, never has there been such a massive opportunity to win people over and create an exciting economic and political policy platform, but for that we need change in the PLP.
Sorry: To summarise the challenges;
1) Democracy, process over outcomes.
2) Putting people first via practical policy without dogma where service provision or decision making places the outcome first with less concern over the process as we have to make our policy decisions cleaner and more pragmatically relevant and applicable.
Dead easy 😉