Recreating society

As we enter into the inevitable leadership challenge in the Labour Party, it’s about time Labour members, supporters and the general public were given a vision for the future. For too long, indeed since the middle of the last decade, the Labour Party hasn’t had a plan of action – hasn’t had a vision of Britain that can capture the nation. To call for a vision is not to call for yet more platitudes. It seems that ephemeral and grand statements have won over any form of policy in the past few years. This is not the difference between being practical and being principled – far from it. It is about saying that principles, if they are to be enacted, need concrete policies attached. A principle that doesn’t live through a policy is not living – it’s an interesting idea, to be debated and discussed, but not to be lived. The party, and more importantly the voters, needs policies to stand behind, and those policies have to be formulated and communicated now, and have to proactively approach the future and not constantly provide a reaction. It is through a set of policies that a vision is really believed, not through talking about abstract ideas. Abstract ideas don’t save lives – the medicine produced through their application does. The Labour Party needs to start making that medicine again.

Theresa May has, today, stated that she has ‘a positive vision for the future of our country. A vision of a country that works not for the privileged few but works for every one of us.’ A vision we can all buy into, surely, if that’s all the vision is – nice-sounding words. But we know that what we might see as the fruits of this vision are very different from those idealized by the new Prime Minister and her party. Yet we can’t even enunciate those differences. Angela Eagle refused to state a single policy on Andrew Marr this weekend. Jeremy Corbyn seems to be policy-light too, not least because his main policies (such as they are) seem to be relatively niche concerns when compared to what is going on in the world at large. Even his big opposition to Trident is silent, despite the vote in seven days time. Where has Labour gone?

All this policy-light politics began a while back, and the common response is that the opposition is supposed to oppose, and can’t possibly have a set of policies at this stage of the electoral cycle. It wasn’t that long ago that Labour were lampooning this ridiculous idea when David Cameron posited it back when he was Leader of the Opposition. Why have we now bought into this so-called conventional wisdom? And indeed, even if it were true, where were the impressive, big-deal policies to win over the electorate? It’s not Corbyn’s principles that have pushed so many MPs over the edge – it’s his inability to lead, and that requires policies. Labour’s Britain would have the following concrete policy changes and the following contract with the people... But we don’t have that, and whilst we don’t have that, how can we possibly expect people to vote for or even want change. Goodness knows that life under the current Conservative government is miserable for thousands of natural Labour voters. But we aren’t offering them anything, and we aren’t listening to them. No wonder we are losing.

We are currently in one of the greatest identity crises this country has known. We are about to leave the EU under the protest of almost 50% of our electorate, and yet Labour has singularly failed to give any serious vision of what Britain outside the EU would look like, now that we are inevitably on the way out, other than one that would ‘protect’ people. In what way? How might we convince those needing protection that we can do it, and how might we convince the electorate at large that we are competent to do so? With concrete policy pledges that offer, in demonstrable terms, a grand vision – and we have none.

Labour needs to do several things. Firstly, the party must accept the modern need for leadership – it is not enough for us to have someone at the helm that has strong principles. They need to be able to take those principles and make them into something. Corbyn should go, not just because he’s failed to produce an engaging policy narrative but because he quite clearly cannot lead.  There are people who can enunciate his ideas who would be better leaders, and if this was really about a better and new kind of politics, he should put one of them up as a challenger in this leadership election. He, the man, has lost the PLP’s confidence, and he, the man, should recognize that he’s now just damaging the party.

Secondly, the party needs to stop talking about winning elections and having principled policies as though they are different things. A party that doesn’t believe in what it’s selling is not going to win – it’s quite clear and obvious. ‘The public won’t believe this’ or ‘the public will never buy this’ is not the right response to something that the party believes is right, based on evidence. The party needs to take that evidence and make plain the reasons behind any policy. Take economic stewardship, anti-austerity or very-anti-austerity. The party needs to back up their position not through dreadful sound-bites or Tory-baiting, but by seriously explaining why their alternative policies would work. Economic credibility does not come from shouting at the opposing side or talking about realism versus theory. For the leadership, it comes from convincing the public that your policy would work – and if you can’t do that, indeed if you can’t persuade even your own party, you shouldn’t be supporting the policy in the first place. And likewise, for the membership and MPs, it comes from actually listening to the economic arguments, and judging them on merit and evidence, not on electability. If we want to be elected tomorrow, we should just adopt Tory policies – it’s that easy. And it’s clearly not how to create a Labour Britain.

Labour has been in the wilderness now for a while, and it’s time to put our own house in order before going to the people. We need to care less about short-termism and opinion polls, and stop destroying political positions or leaders on the back of poll ratings. At the same time, our leaders need to start making decisions and policies for the long-run, that over time will gain traction and belief from the general public because they can resolutely be shown to work. Rather than forcing the leader out after a general election (where we might be talking a few percentage points between the loser and the winner in an election), how about looking at whether our policies have teeth. If people don’t believe our policies or vote for them, we need to find out why, not jettison them immediately. If it’s about money, then we need to provide a grand policy agenda for the future that people can buy into, where they believe their money is better spent – a far bigger piece of work than simply arguing the pros and cons of a particular policy. The policy needs to fit into a wider narrative, based on a whole host of concrete “things”. Some people will always oppose spending extra money on those less fortunate than themselves, but many won’t – we need to convince them that we would be competent with their money, and that we’d be creating a “future fair for all”, as the 2010 manifesto stated. At the moment, it seems that we’re not planning to produce a future at all.

It perhaps sounds naïve and impossible to do – but it’s not. The Conservatives made it very clear what kind of Britain they wanted to produce, and it is that which keeps them in government. We need to do the same, and just because we’re the opposition doesn’t mean we can’t do it. Maybe it requires us to do things differently, to create a policy-making division that has high ranking in the PLP, that produces an ongoing, evolving manifesto for Labour’s Britain. Maybe we need to accept that our goal is to produce a viable vision for the country, rather than simply winning the next election (not least, because we won’t if we don’t). We need to win, but we need to win in order to change Britain. There’s simply no clear evidence for the public (and precious little for members) as to what our parliamentary representatives think that country should look like. Labour’s Britain being ‘not Tory’ is simply not enough. We woefully failed during the EU referendum to give our vision of a positive future in the EU. To refuse to acknowledge our fault on that and do something about it is to lose the next election and the next.

There are several things that Labour could put at the heart of Labour’s Britain, and they are things which might unite the different factions of the party who, we must accept, are generally fighting for the same thing – and if they are not, then split is not only inevitable but essential. Labour’s Britain could put a huge focus on reform of public services, and not buy into the lie that private sector companies will inevitably do it cheaper and better. We should streamline and improve efficiency, but also tell people exactly what their money will provide in public services – and challenge them for more (yes, taxes) if they want more. Public services should be the default, not the option people go to if they can’t afford anything better – universal benefits are the key to a social democratic future, and it works.

This means fully funded investment – buildings, frontline staff, infrastructure. It means cutting useless targets and listening to expert staff who understand the environment in which they work. It means promising the public honest promises, rather than impossible-to-achieve promises that will always fall short and which destroy the morale of public servants. I can speak from the NHS point of view – morale is at rock bottom. There are efficiencies to be made, but that doesn’t mean more work for less pay with fewer staff. It means taking pre-emptive action, investing in infrastructure, IT and technology, and pre-emptive measures.

For the NHS, this means hospitals that are fit for purpose, computer systems that work, operating theatres that are cutting edge, and investment in social care. The latter is essential, and we continue to ignore it at our peril – the appalling number of people in hospital when they should be in care is costly, over and above anything else. For schools, this means schools fit for purpose and oversight that works based on evidence, not on the latest political fad. For homelessness and foodbanks, it means tackling the root causes and the symptoms – doing both is essential. And this could work across all our public sector – as we become less of a political force in the world, we could focus on those at home – not least those who feel utterly let down by all the main political parties when they see on a daily basis how poor our public services are for those who really need them.

There are a whole host of other things that could spring from such a central vision – building more, and more affordable, housing, democratic reform of the House of Lords (let’s not pretend that it’s irrelevant, it’s an aberration and must be rectified), the necessity or otherwise for nuclear weapons, racism, sexism and homophobia, pre-distribution of wages, tuition fees, higher education and apprenticeships and the role of UK science to name a few. We need to be both pre-emptive and deal with the situation on the ground. And we need to tell people why we’re going to do it, based on evidence. The vision of a Labour Britain is one where people can make the most of themselves, and those who need help aren’t seen as a hindrance but simply as part of society – and as society’s responsibility as much as anybody else. We need to say there is such a thing as society – and encourage people to be part of it. And being part of the society that is Labour’s Britain comes with it responsibilities for others and responsibility to contribute as we can. No more scapegoats, no more deserving and underserving, no more treating only symptoms or root causes.

The Labour Party has the people, the ability and the means to make Britain a society again. It’s time we made that our vision, and told people exactly how we’d do it.