It is both interesting and heartening that the most fruitful and constructive strands of debate taking place within Labour about the party’s future in large part concur in the view that the state must and can change by becoming more open, with greater involvement by the public and more power to professionals. The debate is characterised by far more overlap and agreement than many assume and the following two extracts are a case in point. One is a quote from a recent Fabian Society pamphlet Letting Go, while the other is from James Purnell – associated with New Labour but writing about the value of exploring blue Labour. The former argues, ‘If you get people in a room together, if people have the freedom to meet, talk and argue, they’ll make better decisions … Labour needs to become a movement rooted in people’s experience, not be the party of the central manager’, while Purnell describes the building block of the blue Labour approach, the ‘one-to-one’: ‘Two people who do not know each other sit down together and talk about what inspires, shapes and hurts them … they can start a relationship … They remind us that we can win a common sense argument for Labour.’
They could be pretty much interchangeable. In considering our record it is possible to look back on it both with dispassion, to really understand what happened, and with passion to learn from the past and turn to the future. This is largely true of blue Labour thinkers, Purple Book authors and Fabian contributions such as the aforementioned pamphlet. While Letting Go perhaps strays a little too much into use of the passive voice and assigns blame to faceless and unnamed Labour people – ‘Too often Labour policymakers get the argument the wrong way round’ and ‘Our politicians and senior government officials have been infected with … managerial language’ are fairly typical phrases – it too identifies the need to devolve power to communities and individuals with the state as guarantor, not safety net. As it reminds us, ‘This doesn’t mean Labour should abandon its faith in the state.’ There may be a debate to be had about whether the core tenet of the Labour faith is a thing – the state – or cooperation – a practice and approach – and some of the pamphlet’s policy ideas feel at once familiar and out-there, from the introduction of national guarantees for public services (New Labour targets 2.0?) to the proposal that local public leaders be elected annually by public assembly (shades of Chartism?).
But there is a broader tale being told here. Ed Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ speech to Labour party conference did not set out a string of policies, instead laying down the ‘tramlines’ (to borrow his brother’s metaphor when he analysed the speech), for future policy formulation. In the same way, whatever the particular policy suggestions, the clear direction of travel that Purple, blue and Fabianista are moving in is one of renewed public services and state institutions, responsive to straitened times and determined to involve people more. No more top-down organisations, never mind reorganisations. And it might well be that One Nation is the headline under which the various authors of whichever colour denomination will write the text of Labour’s detailed future plans.
Even the right is starting to take notice of ideas associated with blue Labour – perhaps attracted by something positive rather than the intentional withering of the state that the stillborn ‘big society’ represented. The Centre for Social Justice, founded by Iain Duncan Smith, is running a lecture series named The Good Society Lectures 2012. Labour MPs Graham Allen, Jon Cruddas and David Lammy are delivering the lectures throughout the autumn and winter.
Finally to the Fabian Women’s Network which recently published its magazine Fabiana. In it, Stephen Twigg singles out the Scandinavian childcare model (as against Tory MP Liz Truss’ version, which follows the deregulated Dutch model recently lambasted by IPPR). Indeed, universal, properly funded childcare appears to be another area of rapidly converging agreement in Labour circles and could form one arm of the new welfare state, sitting at the heart of communities, restoring something in them that the blue analysis feels has been lost in modern times, and that the Purple stance believes, and IPPR analysis shows, will free women to work as much as they choose, coming full circle to strengthen equality and provide the best start in life for children.
—————————————————————————————