Oppositions rarely get a hearing for their policies, unless they are particularly mad or bad. People remember Michael Foot’s pledges on unilateral nuclear disarmament and nationalising swaths of the economy, but the Labour policies of 1994-7 are largely forgotten. What lingers is Clause IV – not for the policy itself, more for what it said about Labour’s values. It said that we weren’t going to hide behind dogma that was, famously, ‘irrelevant to the real needs’. We were going to be honest – to level with Britain about what we could and couldn’t do.

Voters reward opposition parties whose values are clearly on show, and whose values chime not only with the public’s, but also within those parties. In opposition, David Cameron hugged his hoodie and his husky, seeking to show that his party had changed. His lack of a majority now isn’t down to the fact that the public don’t like values, or didn’t like his professed values. It is because the public – rightly – didn’t feel that Cameron’s party actually held those values. They felt that, in the final act, the Tory party would rather hang the hoodie and shoot the husky.

Values can’t come out of a focus group, or a piece of PR wizardry. If a party doesn’t truly feel them, then that party gets found out – and rightly so. This is what distinguishes values from policies. Policies come and go; values much less so. The policies which really hurt parties are those that reveal something about the party’s inner core which, when all the policies and fluff are stripped away, looks very different to the inner core of the majority of British people. The policies of 1983 showed Labour to be indifferent about defence and hostile to anybody working in the private sector. They were disastrous, not because of what they were as policies, but because of the values they revealed Labour to hold dear.

It’s why the Lib Dems’ tuition fee about-turn has been so devastating for them. Less because of the £9000 levy; more because it showed that, when the Lib Dem apple was peeled, it had no core – the party had betrayed what it professed to be its values. We need to get serious about our values. Our values are our bugler and standard-bearer, at the front of our troops, marching into battle against the coalition. No army goes into battle without a standard, and neither should we. That’s why Ed has been so right to place the policy review process in the hands of Jon Cruddas. Because the process has been wrongly named – it shouldn’t be about policies; it should be about values. And that is something that Cruddas instinctively understands.

We need to nail to our standard the values that form our Labour core – the values that we will govern with and be judged against. Neither this government, nor either of the parties in it, has ever done that. Without a standard, they have become lost in the fog and noise of daily events, with no core values to justify their decisions. They appear to be taking decisions simply because decisions have to be taken – accompanying events that would have happened anyway, rather than following their values and shaping those events to their will.

We mustn’t make the same mistake – and I don’t think we will. At the top of our list should be an aspiration which would have chimed in Keir Hardie’s day as strongly as it does today: a decent job for all. Many will say that this is simply a platitude but, if so, ask yourself when you last heard a senior Labour politician mention full employment. I can’t remember, but this goes to the heart of our mission as party. It also goes to the heart of our name and our traditions – Britain grew the Labour party; France, the Parti Socialiste.

Setting out this value unites the Labour left and right, not just with each other, but with the rest of Britain. In a 2010 survey, there was remarkable agreement across social groups that unemployment was the main issue affecting the country (16 per cent agreed in groups A and B; 19 per cent in C1; 28 per cent in C2; and 24 per cent in D and E). Our values are the country’s values, and policies flow from such a bold statement. In government, it would have led to us spending more money on skills training and further education colleges than on incapacity benefit. In opposition it should lead to us stressing that, for able-bodied adults, there is a duty to work and, for the government, there is a duty to provide work.

Policies are important but, for now, our policies are much less important than our values. Our values must say something of us that our opponents cannot match. They must chime throughout the party as much as they chime throughout the country. That has to include full employment – a value supported by the majority that the Lib Dems cannot match, and that the Tories will not match. All of which makes it not a bad place to start.

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Mark Rusling is a Labour and Cooperative councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest and writes the Changing to Survive column

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Photo: Surian Soosay