If Labour wants to stand, it will need a firmer platform

By Tom Miller / @tommilleruk

While the conservatives commendably set about forming a post-devastation policy platform, Labour has other things to think about.

One of the things becoming increasingly clear about their government is that neither party is honest enough to do what they said in their respective manifestos, and that in some circumstances neither of them are even honest enough to do what they said in their coalition agreement. Cameron’s capitulation to banking lobbyists hardly fits with the agreement’s claims that bonuses should be kept under control.

Likewise, the government’s reprehensible and regressive rise in VAT has been sold to the public under the ongoing ‘blame Labour’ mantra, as if somehow the Tories and the Lib Dems could not add or subtract when formulating the policies they actually put before the people, i.e. on the ‘pledge’ not to raise VAT, and one promise. Some compromise, they produced. What about ‘no top-down reorganisation of the health service’, and its famous ring-fenced budget? The list goes on.

If fact they could do the maths, and they are either being dishonest now, or they deceived the public then.

The point is that Labour are now faced with a range of policies that simply weren’t there when the people were entrusted with choosing a way forward for Britain. They are completely different and far more right-wing then the populace would ever accept.

Despite having no mandate for these policies as a party – or as a coalition – the Tories and their Liberal Doormat friends tend to fall back on a number of stock excuses for this outrage, hammering home the message. ‘Blame Labour’ has proven fruitful, but is breaking up against Ed Miliband’s strident defence of fiscal Brownism.

‘What is your alternative?’ is next, and Labour must deal with it.

The problem is this. Labour has a bunch of policies. They are policies from 6 months ago, under a different leader, without responses to some of the unexpected policies the current government has introduced. There is also a leadership platform which Ed has a mandate for and must protect. But that leadership platform was no manifesto, sticking to a few basic policy and organisational pledges. Good, but not enough.

This week’s edition of Tribune calls on Ed to formulate a set of provisional policies (or principles) for Ed’s next 100 days.

Miliband needs to do two things.

Firstly, the party which elected him would like to see him show where he has different solutions to Labour’s old establishment, which for all its selective virtues failed to build a movement, change the paradigm, or renew the Labour Party – despite frequent opportunities – and eventually lost us a general election.

Now he is leader, where does he move on from where Blair and Brown got it wrong?

Secondly, he needs to produce something the public can look to instead of Tory policies if he is to stop the Tories leading opinion and capitalise on Labour’s growing popularity.

It is fashionable to assert that the Tories had no policies in opposition, and that this model should be aped. That makes electoral sense, and it also makes sense to take time to get your platform right. The public understand the need for this.

But doesn’t anyone remember ‘sharing the proceeds of growth’? Does nobody remember at what stage the ‘big society’ was originally announced as a concept? It is not fair to dismiss these things as complete nonsense. They gave the public a sense of what the Tories stood for, even if they did not allow for full accountability.

Ed might not like fluff, but these acted as sanctuaries when the Tories were under attack, and though fluffy, they were more viable than resorting only to an election losing manifesto.

Our manifesto still has a place, but so does innovation.

We’re not expecting a manifesto yet, and we’re not expecting a full slate of policies before Liam Byrne’s review is complete. In the meantime we should be on the attack.

We need somewhere more up to date to attack from, and something more up to date to defend. Our leader has a fresh mandate, albeit a weak one. In lieu of an NPF process or a proper policy-making conference, Ed’s team should formulate a set of provisional policies, make some individual announcements, or create a statement of principles for Labour to stand on, until we have something more concrete. These need not be permanent.

Until we do that, charges of emptiness and opportunism will be much easier to stick whether they are true or not.

It is clear that while they develop their own policies, both in back rooms and across the dispatch box, this attack is what the Tories will be trying to bring to bear. If our attacks are to succeed in the minds of the public as well as our own insiders – and if Ed wants to gain some extra public kudos – we need an updated alternative. Otherwise, even the most ridiculous Tory attempts to blame us for their policies or to paint us as vacuous stand a decent chance of becoming successful in the public mind.