Purple prose and Labour’s double dilemma

The Paul Richards column

Labour faces a double dilemma. The first is the balance between opposition and support for the government. In a political battle where government and opposition parties are seeking to occupy similar chunks of territory, it is inevitable that frontbenchers on one side of the fence privately support some of the policies on the other side. Of course our system of government means they can’t say that out loud. So they must construct a set of reasons why they oppose it.

The problem for Labour is that in the last year we’ve amassed an impressive list of things we’re against. Off the top of my head it includes macro-economic policy, free schools, GP commissioning consortia, elected police chiefs, the parliamentary boundary review, welfare reform, reconfiguration of the armed services, parts of the ‘green deal’ to insulate people’s homes, and virtually every cut to every public sector budget. If Labour were to publish a manifesto next week, the voters would be in little doubt that we were against stuff. Labour has never won elections by being against stuff. Some of the policies we oppose are crass and ideological. They jar with our values. They harm the people we care about. We should fight them to the last man standing. But some of the policies may end up being popular or at least an accepted part of the landscape.

Take elected police chiefs. Yvette Cooper is battering the Tories and embarrassing the Lib Dems over this reform. But it will go through parliament and become law. In the spring, there will be elections. In those elections, we will need to select Labour candidates capable of giving leadership to local strategic policing. They will need a positive message and a strong campaign.

It will be a vital role, and it is important we don’t have a raft of joke candidates, Z-list celebrities and right-wing nutters elected across the nation. Labour candidates will not be helped by quotes from Labour’s leadership opposing elected commissioners being hurled at them across the hustings.

Tony Blair made the point that one of his biggest regrets was that New Labour spent much of its first term undoing things the Tories did, just because it was the Tories that had done them. Is the first term of an Ed Miliband government really going to be spent abolishing hundreds of popular local ‘free schools’ against the wishes of parents and teachers? Or reinstating primary care trusts in the NHS and repatriating commissioning powers from doctors? Or re-establishing the Audit Commission? It would be a strange first Queen’s Speech, with its centre-piece ‘Time Travel (back to 2010) Bill’.

This first dilemma then exposes the second: the judgement about how much leg to show, and when, during this parliament.

A policy review is a fine mechanism for the avoidance of having a policy programme. Cameron turned it into an art form. Any policies he had were junked in the Coalition Agreement negotiations. Kinnock’s policy review had a clear outcome in mind. It was designed to erase the albatrosses which hung round Labour’s neck like burning tyres. The one Labour is currently undergoing, ably managed by Liam Byrne, has a less obvious ideological destination. We can expect no more illumination from the party conference documents, which give new meaning to ‘bland’.

In this early part of the parliament, it is tactically right to avoid showing too much leg, not least because we have little idea what the world will look like in 2014/5. But soon, voters will need to know what we would do differently. Where Ed has offered a little policy nugget, for example on shaking up the energy market, it has gone down well. As Meg Hillier has been arguing for months, energy prices will become a major national scandal come January, and Labour needs something more to offer than solidarity and blankets.

The time is right for a richer policy debate. That’s why the Purple Book, published today, appears at the right time, and adopts the right approach for what Labour’s needs now. You’re going to read a great deal about the Purple Book if you follow politics. My only advice is to read the book, not the commentary, and make up your own mind.

If you believe there’s some kind of Blairite plot to undermine Ed Miliband (the thesis of the Daily Mail, amongst others) then fine. Don’t read the book, and carry on stewing in your stupid and erroneous assumptions. If you think Labour’s broad philosophical approach since the early 90s – that spending must be paid for by growth, that public services must respond to citizens, that individuals prosper only in strong communities, that social justice and economic efficiency are partners not rivals, that Britain has a role in the world beyond the White Cliffs – is wrong, then this book holds little more for you than possible heartburn.

If you think Labour’s three election victories and 13 years in office are shameful stains on the history of the Labour movement, or that Tony Blair is a Tory, then there are other books more to your taste. There were even scumbags, possibly on the party’s payroll, who used leaks of the Purple Book to attack individual authors, an especially cowardly and counter-productive thing to do.

If, on the other hand, you trust that the people writing for the Purple Book, from grizzled veterans to shiny new MPs, have the party’s best interests at heart; that they wish Ed well and want his leadership to succeed; and that their primary motivation is to elect a Labour government, then get down to your local independent bookshop (or Amazon).

A party that wants to capture the popular imagination must fizz with confidence, energy and new ideas. Few beyond SW1 will read the Purple Book, but that’s not the point. Its publication is a strong signal that the Labour Party is not just an opposition, but on the road to becoming a government-in-waiting, and that our political lexicon contains more than the word ‘no’.