21st century Policy and Rebuttal

What does a 21st century party look like for…Policy and Rebuttal?

In the past 20 months, Labour has had to make the difficult transition from making effective policy in government to making effective policy in opposition.  We’re still in transition, relying on a mix of both how we made policy in government, and finding our way around policy making from the opposition benches.

In opposition, Labour needs different kinds of policy making:

• Attack policy and day to day rebuttal
• Illustrative policy which gives advance indications of manifesto commitments
• Political policy aimed to reassure and bring back voters
• Government preparation policy including examples of how the next Labour government will achieve policy objectives

All of this requires a clear framework of values.  However, this does not mean that the policy process should be dominated by a philosophical conversation about the nature of social democracy.  Policy making must also be centred on ‘comms and messaging’, and should ultimately be about winning elections.

It is not be possible for Labour to make policy in an entirely (internally) democratic way.  But this does not mean that policy making need be disconnected from the party’s grassroots – if the party has well-established and widely-shared political and policy values which frame policy, and if final policy decisions come out of more wide-ranging and deliberative processes, then the leadership will have the tools to make policy that resonates with the party even if it is not drawn directly from it.

This post is part of a series produced by LabourList and Labour Values.