We need a new generation of change makers and modernisers

TO: Labour’s next Leader

FROM: Gareth Thomas

RE: Party renewal

The one thing you can start to change now is the Labour Party. We need a new generation of change makers and modernisers to help you take the party forward.

You should:

– launch an open and fundamental policy review,

– create an economic advisory council,

– encourage a commission on the future of trade unions,

– embrace a new mutualism agenda, and

– adopt primaries for candidate selection in 50 key seats.

An open and fundamental policy review

Whilst criticism of the length and format of the leadership election has been overdone, we need to do much more to demonstrate that Labour is changing and moving beyond our record in government. As you will recognise, particularly in London and the South of England, more fundamental change than just your election as our new leader will be needed.

We should therefore launch a review of our policy to build not only on the best of our record but also to address the weaknesses in brand Labour. The review must include an open conversation with voters that encourages their participation and avoids a closed process focused only on party members and affiliates.

The review needs to look beyond the immediate reactions that frontbenchers will have to offer in response to coalition proposals. It also needs to avoid being trapped by the rigid lines of particular portfolios.

A fundamental policy review could for example cover:

– the impact of an ageing and growing population

– the next environmental challenges

– inequality

– the rise of Asia

– the changing nature of working lives

– our housing crisis, and

– the future of our cities.

There are clearly other themes that could be chosen, such themes should be cross cutting with implications for clusters of Whitehall departments and beyond to help encourage longer term thinking in our party policy debates.

Review groups should be chaired by people from outside the party, albeit with strong frontbench and Parliamentary Party involvement. We shouldn’t be frightened of listening to and involving those helping on the fringes of the coalition government. Not everything the coalition does will be wrong headed. The commission on banking’s work and emerging thinking on social mobility will be worth considering in particular. You will of course need to reserve judgment before conclusions appear and ensure the party has the proper opportunity to debate the conclusions.

An economic advisory council

Secondly, you should establish an economic advisory council to support the party in preparing our future economic thinking. Chaired by someone not on the frontbench, bringing together academics, economists and policy thinkers on business, future growth, the deficit and many other key areas would play a powerful role in helping us to attack the all too evident weaknesses in the government’s economic strategy and developing our own analysis and proposals

A commission on the future of trade unions

The Labour Party has always itself been at the centre of a broad ‘coalition’ of the centre left. Other parts of that coalition such as trade unions are either under pressure themselves or, as in the case of co-operatives, deserve greater attention. Helping their growth and expansion is not a diversion of your time. Instead, it will help to widen our appeal and grow our electoral base.

Trade unions have with some notable exceptions, been in decline across the industrialised world and are seen by many, including many of those we need to win back, as less relevant in jobs beyond the public sector or industries where union activity has a history. We need to support those in the union movement who see the potential for trade unions to be agents of community organisation offering not only a greater range of services such as legal support and financial insurance but also using trade union organising skills differently.

We need to use those organising skills in ways to help strengthen communities for example by building new social capital and reaching out to those who would benefit from the services unions can offer but who for many reasons currently don’t see unions as part of the answer to their or their community’s needs. Whilst there are already individual examples of such approaches, a commission on the future of trade unions, which you could initiate, could help to tie together a range of new ideas for the future of trade unions.

A ‘new’ mutualism agenda

The Co-op movement has seen a recent revival in its fortunes; back in the premier division of retail businesses, the Co-op Bank going from strength to strength and the last government championing a new legislative agenda that has helped spawn a host of new co-operatives and mutuals from energy co-ops and foundation hospitals to football supporters trusts. The potential for mutuals, co-ops and social enterprises still feels only partly tapped. Whilst a lack of substance and its use as an ideological shield have already stripped David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ of its credibility we should recognise that there is more local and national government could do to help the ‘third’ sector expand and flourish.

The drive and energy for such organisations has to come from individuals but Labour should be building on the interest in community organisation to develop ideas for a new mutualism; support to expand, enhance and extend the reach of the co-operative movement. Credit unions do not yet cover the whole country, building societies need cherishing and other co-ops and mutuals like football supporters trusts with Labour support could significantly expand their reach.

By the time of the next election the size and role of the state, given the ideological attack underway from the new government, will look very different. We will have to have our own debates about the nature and role of the state but we will need trade unions and the co-op movement to help not only articulate our vision for the state but also to step up to play bigger roles themselves in those areas the state for whatever reason cannot or should not fill.

Primaries for candidate selection in 50 key seats

Lastly, we will soon need another generation of parliamentary candidates. We should embrace primaries to help us select some of those candidates. They offer the chance to reach out to electorates in seats where our active membership is small and where the recent history of party campaigning is limited. Whilst primaries have the potential to be as controversial as all-women shortlists; tough spending limits and preparation of a shortlist will ensure local parties still have a key role to play. We need to be seen to go the extra mile to reach out beyond the 29% who voted for us in May and you should consider initially primaries in 50 key seats we need to win back.

——————

We need to root our plans in the values, principles and traditions that have motivated and mobilised our Party down the decades but we have to show we have heard, and understood, the message the electorate delivered to us on May 6^th.

These five ideas; a policy review, an economic advisory council, a commission on the future of trade unions, developing a new mutualism for the party to champion and adopting primaries for candidate selection will face many challenges and questions from across the party.

Carefully developed, they offer Labour Party members and supporters the chance to begin to chart a new direction for the left and to put together a new offer to those we need to convince.

This memo, and the others in the series, were first published by the Open Left project at Demos