Evolve or die: moving Labour back to electoral success

By Matthew Turmaine / @turmaine

If politicians can take an agreed set of principles and apply them to circumstances they are faced with, achieving a positive outcome or the potential for such, they might be said to be successful. The general election result suggests that Labour needs to evolve and adapt to the circumstances it now faces if it is to achieve electoral success. Here are ten areas where it could improve.

1. The Economy: We Dropped the Baton
Accept that we lost the debate on the economy. We can argue till the cows come home about how our proposals would have been different and better but the public bought the Tory argument that our national debt is like an overpowering credit card bill rather than an investment for the future. Certainly, we should oppose the cuts every inch of the way because they are wrong and won’t work, but start doing some serious thinking about how we’ll clear up the mess the Coalition leaves for the unemployed, the wasted opportunities and the dispossessed. This is where we will gain ground.

2. Immigration: The Multi-coloured Elephant in the Room
Deal with the immigration debate. Like it or not, the public didn’t buy our arguments on immigration. Too late we realised that establishing limits, having previously been positive and open about immigration was contradictory and shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted (not to mention wrong). It’s a subtle and complex debate but there are areas of clarity. Explain where and why it’s good and acknowledge where it’s just driving blue collar salaries down and propose to do something about it – the ‘living wage’, perhaps. Asylum seeking should be a trigger for compassion, not a dirty word.
3. Education: We Need a Level Playing Field
Barely a week goes by without media reporting on how middle class parents pretend to be religious to get little Tarquinius into a state school that delivers results and doesn’t require them to re-mortgage to pay fees. Working class parents simply pray their kids will be able to read and write well enough to get a job. We need to properly empower teachers and create a genuinely nationwide secular system of state school excellence. This constant fracturing engenders unfairness and deceit. Re-establish the link between child behaviour and parental responsibility.

4. New Internationalism: Friend or Foe?
Surely this is one of the founding principles of the Labour Party? We need to start working better with the UN so that, for example, having the latest bristling nukes isn’t the only route onto the Security Council. We’re never going to give them up unilaterally and we’ll never get a proper international consensus to prevent additional states developing or acquiring them unless we move much, much faster in this area. Time is of the essence here. We should also take our leading role in overseas aid and export it, if you’ll excuse the expression.

5. Stop the War on Public Services:
We have got to do much better at making the case for public services in the light of economic hardship. The Coalition attacks, seemingly on the basis that if the private sector can’t have something then neither should the public, will devastate people’s engagement with front line public services. We all understand the economics of this but we need to get across that we’re not proposing to rob Peter to pay Paula but to build growth that will benefit all. The State is a brand and we have to address why it has such bad PR at the moment, from the Film Council to giving people a helping hand.

6. Fairness: Looking Up, Looking Down
The Coalition has broadcast the word ‘fairness’ to an even greater extent than its claims to be ‘progressive’. But there’s something very wrong in our country in terms of fairness at the moment. Disadvantaged people often don’t realise how unfair their deal is in society. If we are to properly address these issues, we need to proclaim that inspiration is as important as aspiration, for without the former we’ll struggle to achieve the latter. We need to be prepared to say that the luxury of being loaded means you pay more. And we need to have an answer to why most people feel short-changed on tax and salaries while the bankers we saved are getting bonuses again.

7. You Can’t Get Me; I’m Part of the Union:
Our politicians and leaders have become timid in the face of expanding global capitalism. Labour has been guilty of this in government too. It is not to suggest that we don’t want globalisation or that we don’t want economic growth – we need both. However, we have to find a way to be able to better manage being open for business while expecting companies and business leaders to play fair. We should address the perception of Unions in our economy. A better integrated industrial philosophy would surely help avoid the conflict we’ve seen of late. Put a Union rep on the board and reform how really ‘we’re all in this together’.

8. Europe: The Final Countdown
Europe is such a thorny issue in the UK, especially if you believe our popular media’s presentation of it. But we need to build our willingness to engage properly and appropriately. In terms of trade alone it’s astounding that the popular view is so negative. We will be building a rod for our own back if we don’t reform our attitude to Europe. As the scales rebalance in terms of global economic power, Europe presents us with a positive way forward. It will take guts, determination and persistence to do it but we have to argue that the family of European nations needs to be more familiar than it currently is. Even the IMF has started to consider this.

9 Electoral Reform: I’d Like Some Democracy, Please
The debate over electoral reform has become a mess. Tied as it is to the Coalition’s attempts to reduce the number of MPs and change the boundaries, the AV proposals, to which we became supportive prior to the general election, look as if they’ll collapse. It should be so much better. If I live in a safe Tory seat, why should a lifetime of participation in the electoral process count for nothing? Every election, every vote wasted. Whoever wins the leadership of our party needs to show strength and propose properly reforming our electoral system. Remember, it only means an end to majority government if you can’t win the argument.

10. Let the Punishment Fit the Crime:
Many people in our country live in fear of crime. Statistics indicate that we dealt well with crime while in government. But people don’t believe it. It’s also costing us a fortune to lock up so many people. We need to look at new ways of reducing and dealing with crime. We should talk to the kids carrying the knives being used in street crime. We should also seriously consider not locking up non-violent criminals. Sure, fine them to the hilt, tag them, make them clear up dog shit for a couple of years in the name of community service but we have to find better ways to punish people and much better ways to rehabilitate people. People want to see violent criminals locked up, that’s fair enough but we need to find a way to make the rest of the system work better so people stop ending up there in the first place.