Labour’s Plan A has failed

Labour’s plan A has failed. The strategy of attacking each and every Tory announcement and cut whilst hoping voters will be swept away by Ed Miliband’s charisma is clearly not working. If Labour wants the electorate to take us seriously in 2012, we need to start being serious about what our alternative for government is.

Somebody needs to remind Ed that he is the leader of the Labour Party. The party that created the NHS. The party that introduced a national minimum wage. The party that decriminalised homosexuality and created civil partnerships. The party that passed legislation allowing a devolved Scottish parliament and an elected London mayor. The party that introduced child tax credits, sure start and the winter fuel allowance. The party that is at its best when it is at its boldest.

In comparison to this list: our current policy pledges to decrease VAT on home improvements to 5% and regulate peak time railway fares seem to fall a bit flat. Ed is at the wheel of the most significant democratic socialist party in the English speaking world. Why on earth should voters listen to us when we are saying so little?

Opposition leaders get noticed by doing something notable. Blair promised a national minimum wage, promised to stick to Tory spending projections and scrapped the Labour Party’s clause 4. Cameron promised a cut in inheritance tax, a finite cap on non EU immigration and huge cuts to public spending. There is nothing notable about Labour’s current platform. Instead of discussing our policies, the media ignores us at best, and focuses on minute, insignificant evidence of disunity at worst.

No other Labour figure could cut through to the public without policies to back them up. Yvette Cooper, David Miliband and even Adrian Chiles would face exactly the same problem. Liam Byrne managed to create a twitter storm with his comment on welfare reform, but with no solid proposals to back the piece up, the public took no notice. General elections are won with popular policies. Guardian comment pieces reflecting on 1940s intellectuals won’t cut it.

Our activists are dispirited because we have no means of explaining Labours alternative on doorsteps. Our shadow ministers appear impotent and irrelevant every time they criticise a government policy with no suggestion of what they’d do instead. Ed gets beaten, deservedly, week after week at PMQs because he is left with weak jokes and bland platitudes in the place of policies that will appeal to ordinary Britons.

There is no lack idea of ideas about what we should be doing. Andrew Harrop’s suggestion of income tax cuts would be radical, economically beneficial and popular. Our shadow cabinet is full of experienced, clever and talented ex-ministers who are aching to be allowed to do their job. We have an elected National Policy Forum which is embarrassingly underused.

The pointless and bland oppositionalism we have displayed in the last year simply isn’t working. It’s time for us to start talking about the bold agenda of the next Labour government.

Gus Baker is a member of the NPF for South West CLPs