Labour needs to start playing a long game

By Laurie Penny

On Wednesday I attended a press conference for John Cruddas’ and Andrea Nahles’ ‘Good Society’, a directive launched yesterday in Berlin and London, timed for the 10th anniversary year of the Blair-Schroeder joint declaration of European social democracy. The document itself is billed as a direct response to ‘The Third Way’ and ‘Neue Mitte’, fitted up for a new decade: inclusive, bottom-up and fully digitised, in contrast to what Cruddas yesterday described as ‘the tablets of stone handed down from on high’. The substance of the directive is available here.

‘The Good Society’ is exactly as idealistic as it sounds, and it manages to avoid sounding self-satisfied by a narrow margin, and I like it. The promo document, which we are assured will be followed up with detailed tax plans, is presented in charming green, orange and bold, with lovely shots of variously-hued hands and arms clutching each other, since presumably in a Good Society we’ll all also be naked and in close-up. It looks, not unpleasantly, like an advert for The Body Shop. Given the choice between ‘reasserting the interests of the common good, such as education, health and welfare, over the market’ and some more dewberry scented bubble bath, I know what I’d spend my £7.99 on.

More interesting, to me, was the way in which the incredibly energising ideas contained in the initial document represent a clear break from those in the Labour party who, as Cruddas said, ‘want it all to be business as usual, the comfortable Third Way with a few tweaks’, and those who feel that politics can never return to what it was. ‘I don’t think anyone in this room would believe me if I said there were no divisions in the Labour party at the moment,’ Cruddas observed.

There were those both during and after the event who expressed deep disappointment at what seem to be dramatic faults in the party line, and criticised both the message of ‘The Good Society’ and the attitude of the party as a whole for its incoherence. And yes: it’s pretty clear that ‘The Good Society’ isn’t going to get the blessing of absolutely everyone on floor 5 of Portcullis House. But I don’t think that’s something we should be necessarily be bemoaning. At this point, Labour has gone beyond ‘on message’ – and it has the chance to actually do a rethink. For once. In 12 years.

In fact, right now, the lack of one clear, consistent message coming from the Labour party is refreshing. It’s refreshing because it suggests that there are those in the party who are actually rethinking its politics beyond a desperate and futile scramble to claw back seats at the next election. Earlier this week, Labour List’s editor asked me what Labour would have to do to win back my vote. Well, it’s this: forget, just for a moment, about closing ranks and denying everything. Return to some of the core principles of fairness, social justice and, yes, redistribution that informed the party’s paradigm in previous decades, and incorporate the logic and urgencies of the new century. In short: stop trying so bloody hard to win all the time.

That might sound counter-intuitive, but look at this from my point of view: I’m twenty-two years old. Hopefully, I’ve got a great deal of my life left to live. I’m concerned for what’s going to happen to the politics of this country way beyond 2010. If absolutely pressed I’d still probably prefer this Labour party to be in power at the next election over the current Tories, but actually, given the nature of the draconian welfare laws the party has currently passed and given the very real consequences of stagnation after four, let alone three, terms, that’s only a marginal preference right now

Labour has to offer something more than ‘not the Tories’. ‘Not the Tories’ is a terrible slogan. Girls Aloud are not the Tories. The Real IRA are not the Tories. The BNP, for that matter, are not the Tories. None of this explains to me why I should vote Labour, now or ever again. This is a party that used to have concrete , long-term plans to create a better world. To create – well, to create a good society.. Of course, I want to vote for a party that can win – but not just to win, now, next year, once. I want a party that’s playing a long game.

And the more the recession drives politicians paranoid, the more Labour has stopped playing the long game of social justice. And now it has the chance to do so again. I am convinced that, even if I do vote Labour in 2010, Labour will not win the next general election. Moreover, I suspect that many others, even within the Labour party, are thinking along similar lines. So why do these men- and it is still mostly men – refuse to admit the mere possibility of defeat, like little boys on the football field? Why not actually step back and plan, now, for the possibility of opposition? What the party has been trying to staple together for the past three terms is a consistent, coherent, sterilised narrative , a narrative that will alienate as few voters as possible as the country ambles towards the centre-right. What it needs to be putting into place now, in its final year in power, is the groundwork for a new, generous and subtle politics of social justice.

The more desperate Labour’s scuffles to present a united front and a simple message appear, the more they sound like a certain leery ex boyfriend in the middle of the night – sending increasingly frantic texts telling me that they still fancy me and that everything can be like it was if I just come back, this time they almost certainly won’t screw thousands of Iraqis, and anyway I couldn’t do better if I tried. But things can never be just like they were. It’s time to grow up, time to move on. 1997 is gone. 2001 and 2005 are gone. The Labour party needs to step back and do some radical rethinking, take the time it needs for considered political self-orientation, and truly fit itself for purpose if it is ever to win back the heart of this country.