Labour needs to rediscover its capacity for collective change from the ground up

By Jon Cruddas MP

As we approach the election, we are at a watershed in the life of our Party. We have lost many millions of voters since 1997. We have lost hundreds of thousands of members. We have become reviled by younger generations who view us as the party of the establishment, of war, and of insecurity. New Labour acted as if the electorate – or at least the section of it that counted – bordered on the misanthropic and would only respond to a sour, illiberal politics about consuming more. It kept up a deadening silence around deeper ideas of fraternity, of collective experience, and what it is we aspire to be as a nation. And at the end of that road lay an empty vision of centre-left politics.

Labour needs to rediscover its capacity for collective change. The best hope for Britain in the coming decade is a new kind of social democracy that draws on the tradition of ethical socialism and which grows upward from the people. The values of ethical socialism are equality, freedom and solidarity. Its politics is shaped by reciprocity – “do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you” – and guided by pragmatism. Not a pragmatism of “what works”, but one based around the question of what justice requires.

Whether Labour remains in government or returns to opposition, there has to be a fundamental re-assessment of its identity. Nothing is guaranteed, but the opportunities for a more ethical politics and economy in the decade ahead are real. A new social democracy means a strong, responsive and plural democracy, a restoration of trust in public life, and an ethical and ecologically sustainable economy for social justice and equality.

This post is published as part of the Guardian’s Citizen Ethics series.

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