The more he talks, the less he says: Labour must build a positive alternative

By Joshua Genner

It’s been a good week for Gordon. The best for a while. He’s managed to hit the media with a smile, and a convincing one at that.

Does this mean the Labour Party can still show itself to be the party of the people, for the people; is there life on the dark side of The Sun?

Yes, there is. Keith Rupert Murdoch’s Sun will always be there doing its best, its worst and the rest to slow the Labour Party from helping this country to be all it can be. But Gordon just has to – and I mean this in the nicest way – get his vision and stick it where The Sun don’t shine. And not just Gordon, all of us.

We can all sit around crying bloody Murdoch…or we can think about what we’re fighting for, organise and get our message out.

Thinking about what we’re fighting for can’t just be about keeping the Conservatives out, or stopping the hollow man Cameron floating into office in a puff of thin PR smoke and steering this country straight into a hole in a dark corner of the earth. It has to be about more than that.

I was at a Young Fabian event recently where Stella Creasey, Stephen Twigg, Rachel Reeves and Chris Ostrowski spoke for an hour of the importance of remembering what we’re fighting for, of setting out a vision of the future and not just relying on our record.

The Chair Steve Richards then flipped a coin by asking “What is it the Labour party is fighting for in the next election?” Heads; each candidate says something which inspires hope. Heads; everybody wins. Tails; bad answers, or worse, no answers. Tails; everybody loses.

What followed was a painful silence. Tails. A silence so long even the Chair got uncomfortable and had to second guess himself. “Perhaps that’s an unfair question”, one PPC interrupted him, thankfully, and came out with “A fairer economy for Britain”. Not bad. Another jumped in with “Which is certainly not something the Conservatives would create…” and within five seconds the panel were Tory bashing… again.

This isn’t good enough. Each of us must know – in a sentence – what we’re fighting for in the next general election, so we can tell our friends, our neighbours, our communities. Because whilst the Conservatives, their hollow man and their “pinprick” policies bask in The Sun, it’s our job just to ignore the pricks, get out in the rain and get on with it.

Related posts:

1. “Labour is camped out in Middle England, drinking Liebfraumilch in a Holiday Inn in Watford”: Cruddas talks to the Fabians
2. We can’t win by labelling the opposition – we need a positive message for what we will do
3. New Diplomas are a positive step forward
4. The Equalities Bill is an extremely positive one
5. Gordon talks about family and the future