Labour's new thinking: rather better than I feared.
| Author | Coates, David |
The Shape of Things to Come: Labour's New Thinking
Edited by John Denham
FABIAN SOCIETY/FEPS, 2012
The one advantage of being in opposition is that it gives political parties time to think. For parties of the centre-left, even more than for parties of the centre-right, that thinking time is vital. Parties of the centre-left need to come at their electorate promising change that is both progressive and relevant. So to make that promise work, centre-left parties need a very clear sense of what might be relevant and how the changes they propose can be progressive. It is rarely enough for such parties to get by simply by criticising the government. All opposition parties have to do that, of course, and if the government is as ineffectual as the present one, the temptation must always be there on the opposition front-bench to play safe, to emphasise the negative, and to give few detailed hostages to fortune. But the huge drawback of doing only that is that, in the wake of electoral victory, the incoming government will possess neither the progressive programme it needs nor the popular support to sustain that programme against the resistance it will inevitably meet. Power won in that manner tends to be both short-lived and unsatisfactory - ask the Callaghan Government - leaving its time in office as merely a precursor to the return of a yet more powerful conservatism. It is to Ed Miliband's credit that he is visibly not seeking an electoral victory of the Callaghan variety: that he is instead trying to put detailed flesh on his commitment to the creation of a 'responsible capitalism.'
So how good is the new thinking? On the evidence of this collection, it is rather better than I feared. The collection brings together valuable essays on both dimensions of the Labour Party's current needs: essays on the underlying value-sets that can sustain its progressive commitments when in power, and detailed proposals on how to put those progressive values into play in ways relevant to modern conditions. In regard to the first of these, Will Hutton's essay is particularly important, and Marc Stears's report on Ed Miliband's value-set is genuinely reassuring. On the second, Kate Green's chapter is partic-ularly telling: her willingness to anchor policy proposals on 'a new welfare bargain' is a clear recognition that the next Labour Government has to offer hard-pressed families the possibility of a new and less stressful work-life balance. So too is Rachel...
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