Labour must resist the temptation to return to the tactics of 1996 in order to fight the political battles of 2008. Like the comfort-eater lurching for the fridge in times of trouble, we are doomed to find only short-term solace in labelling the Tories as nasty salespeople devoid of policy. The public have moved on and demand a political narrative that speaks sincerely to them; it is imperative that we respond accordingly.
People don’t want a ‘since ‘97′ litany to chant, they want a vision that chimes with where our country needs to go, speaks to our values and inspires. And we need a new language for our politics. We have to become better at being more colloquial, better at ‘genuine article’ politics.

The real backdrop to this debate is the world’s pace of change. The internet; the scale of access to, and transfer of, information; immigration; international terrorism; the market – all these drivers of change are ever-more apparent to all of us. Suddenly the world is connected in a way that has crept up on most, and the credit crunch will surely be seen as the seminal moment where the numerous threads of what we might call globalisation are seen to be adversely connected to each and every one of our lives. As Tony Blair once said of one element of this – the post 9/11 order – the kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux and we must act swiftly to reorder them.

Against this backdrop Labour should stand for change, not for its own sake but in readying our country for the challenges it will face in the years to come.

The state must adapt and change, for example, to the scale of the challenge in public services needed to bring about the level of personalisation and control that people rightly expect and demand. This requires an acceptance – which the Tories have failed to demonstrate – of a role for the state which delivers progressive goals. It’s the same ambiguous story regarding the delivery of public services through the third sector, and lack of substance on truly delivering social justice and expanding opportunity within their positions on environmental policy, welfare and security.

The true fight in British politics over the coming months must be over the methods not the motives. We kid ourselves if we believe that David Cameron and his team are vacuous and policy-lite. The task must be to take every opportunity to root out the ‘how’ and take the focus off the ‘why’ in order to win the battle of these ideas. The ‘why’, after all, is our victory from the last battle: that of progressive politics defining Britain into the 21st century.

When he was prime minister, Blair once remarked that the one strategy John Major should have used before 1997 was to make Labour choose, week after week over the dispatch box and in the voting lobbies. This is a most valuable lesson and one which must define the coming period in Westminster: progressives must expose the true threat and numerous contradictions lying dormant within the nuanced but state-phobic Tory party and the consequences for Britain should they come to power.

This is the new politics. Only New Labour has the genuine heart for it, but only New Labour truly renewed can deliver on it.