Steve Hilton’s exit from No 10 confirms that this government has lost all of its reforming instincts.  That is both an opportunity and a cautionary tale for Labour.

While he will largely be remembered as a series of anecdotes about bare-footed platitudes and blue skies thinking, the Conservatives have been at their most dangerous when they’ve listened to his advice. In opposition, it was Hilton who provided the tone that underpinned David Cameron’s early detoxification efforts. When Cameron sang from Hilton’s hymn sheet – social liberalism, hard-headed environmentalism, the ‘big society’ – he led in the polls and a Tory majority looked inevitable. But when he abandoned the sunlit uplands in favour of George Osborne’s aggressive anti-Labourism, the Conservatives fell back and the result was the 2010 general election.

What happened afterwards was the triumph of Cameron’s Hilton brain; the ‘big, open and comprehensive offer’ that led to the coalition. But since those heady days in the Rose Garden – when, let’s remember, it briefly looked as if Cameron might achieve a realignment of British politics that would have left Labour in permanent opposition – the Osborne brain has won out again and again. This is a government that has lost its reforming mission. In three years’ time, when the universal credit turns out to be unworkable and unaffordable, when the health reforms are either abandoned, neutered or a disastrous mess, and when all they’ve done in education is count the number of tables at Toby Young’s free school, it’s difficult to know what the Conservatives’ offer in 2015 will be, beyond more cuts.

That’s not to say that Steve Hilton’s exit means Labour will now coast to victory. John Major had nothing left to offer in 1992, but because Labour looked addicted to taking away people’s money the Conservatives won a fourth term – and only the electoral system obscured the fact that it was a heavy, bruising defeat – and Labour spent the best part of two decades in the wilderness. Hoping for an own goal isn’t a viable strategy for victory, but that the Tories have lost one of their best brains makes Labour’s task that little bit easier.

But there’s also a question that this raises for Labour, and a message that should inform Labour’s future direction. The question is this: how on earth did Steve Hilton so effectively steal Labour’s clothes?  Reforming public services to improve outcomes, making welfare a way into work not a subsidy on the scrapheap, gay marriage … don’t these sound awfully like Labour policies? And yet, on all of these, Labour was outflanked by the Conservatives.

How might Labour change this? Bringing in Stephen Twigg to education has shown the beginnings of where Labour needs to be. In health, that means not retreating from Labour’s reforms, which used private contractors and market mechanisms to cut waiting times and improve patient outcomes, and Andrew Lansley’s bill, which introduces private care with no focus on improving patient care.

In education, we need to highlight how under Labour, the thrust of the academies programme was in turning failed schools into academies, while under this government, successful schools are expensively rebranded as academies so Michael Gove can boast about how many academies he’s opened. In welfare, Labour needs to get back to the position it had when James Purnell was at the Department for Work and Pensions, taking serious steps to encourage people back into work, while pointing out that Iain Duncan Smith’s reforms don’t make it easier for people to work, and in fact may push many disabled people who are working into unemployment.

Above all, Labour mustn’t be frightened to use language that falls outside of the Labour tradition. Cameron’s great strength was that, under Hilton’s guidance, he sounded like a different type of Tory: caring, liberal, and possessing a real vision for making Britain a better country. For Ed Miliband to win, he too must speak not just for Labour but for Britain. It’s not enough to oppose. You have to propose, too.

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A new public realm: How should progressives reform the public sector?

6pm, 13 March 2012, Grimond Room, Portcullis House.

With:

Andy Burnham MP, shadow secretary of state for health
Andrew Adonis, former schools minister
Ben Lucas, director, 2020 Public Services Trust
Cathy Warwick, general secretary, Royal College of Midwives
Cllr Florence Nosegbe (chair)

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Stephen Bush is a member of Progress, works as a copywriter, and writes at adangerousnotion.wordpress.com

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Photo: Mick Fealty