There is currently much speculation and excitement around the Labour leadership election and what vision or platform each candidate is offering. Jeremy Corbyn, for instance, will reheat Michael Foot’s ‘longest suicide note in history’ manifesto of 1983 or offer an inclusive message of hope depending on whether you listen to opponents or supporters. What is certain, however, is that whoever becomes the next Labour leader will need to win the battle of ideas with the Conservatives if they have any chance of winning the general election in 2020. The party has been outfoxed on this front so often in the past by the Tories.

David Cameron, like Margaret Thatcher before him, makes a consistent – usually negative – argument as to why the Conservatives are the only party to be trusted in government. They both presented, in opposition, sweeping narratives of decline and crisis. In the 1970s Thatcher’s Conservative party identified stagflation, trade union power, Keynesianism and declining state authority as key issues that had to be confronted. This utilised the work of a number of free market intellectuals, writers and thinktanks that articulated post-war British decline and – to use Thatcher’s mentor Keith Joseph’s phrase – gradually implemented the ‘ratchet effect of socialism’. Britain’s economy was performing relatively poorly – the ‘sick man of Europe’ – and in hoc to extremists in the trade unions. To what extent all this true has been endlessly debated. More to the point it was clearly believed by many British people. That Labour was economically inept and too close to the unions continued to be accepted well into the 1990s.

After the 2008 crisis the Tories returned to this tried-and-tested method. Again the Conservative crisis narrative focused on ballooning national debt and deficits, economic incompetence and a bloated state. Both Thatcher and David Cameron needed to persuade the public that their viewpoints were credible, and a vote for them was to tackle and reverse – with some economic pain – these urgent problems. Admittedly the circumstances of the recent financial crisis were different, as the economic slump was obviously global. The 1970s crises had a more British and by implication self-inflicted dimension. Nevertheless, the doomsday scenarios were remarkably similar.

Cameron and George Osborne, like Thatcher, justify every policy with linkage to their master narrative of decline and previous Labour economic ineptitude. Add in the usual Tory fare of anti-immigration and anti-trade union rhetoric and many voters clearly do not trust Labour.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown countered this, for a time. In government their progressive or third way policies were driven by the changing realities of Britain in the 1990s and 2000s, and new approaches to providing social justice. Brown was known for his ‘dividing lines’ that framed Labour as investors in public goods compared to the nasty, stingy, Tories. As prime minister, however, Brown failed to get on top of day-to-day events (as Blair and Alastair Campbell had done), and could not provide an overarching strategy. This left his government a hostage to events, which rapidly turned against him. If New Labour had its triumphs, by 2010 the electorate had been persuaded that the party was driving the country down the road to ruin. The Tories had been skilfully shifting the public debate in this direction since the 2008 crisis. Labour politicians, then as now, had no effective response.

Labour needs to construct its own narrative that explains the past and offers hope for the future. What did New Labour get right? Where did it go wrong? How does it intend to improve the economy – as well as reducing inequality – without rehashing discredited ideas? How can the left govern in the 21^st century in straitened times, with less sources of revenue? It needs to be both positive (what it can achieve) and critical (why voters should return to them at the expense of the Conservatives). The left needs to counter the agenda-setting of the populist press and the Tories and get its values out in front. This might be more of a challenge if Corbyn is elected but the principle remains: without winning the battle of ideas, Labour has no chance of election victory in 2020

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Robert Ledger is a political writer and researcher

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Photo: Alan in Belfast