There’s a new blog launching today which it says is devoted to “discussing and advocating a new politics of the common good”.
Led by former Robin Cook special adviser David Clark, Shifting Grounds will argue that “the political and economic settlement of the last three decades is broken beyond repair and the defining task of the age must be to create a new settlement based on stronger foundations and better values.” Clark went even further in a blog for Comment is Free this morning, arguing that:
“Labour didn’t lose in 2010 because it moved an inch or two from New Labour. It lost because New Labour was fundamentally misconceived in its embrace of an economic model that was not just unstable and unfair, but unstable because it was unfair.”
The agenda of Shifting Grounds seems broadly in line with much of what Ed Miliband has argued since his conference speech last September, and the site is also thought to be supported by many Ed Miliband backers, including shadow cabinet members Chuka Umunna and Rachel Reeves, and Miliband’s close friend (and Blue Labour thinker) Marc Stears – all of whom look set to write for the site this week.
Speaking to LabourList this morning Clark to us that:
“Launching a new blog is an exciting and daunting task. With so many good, established blogs already out there, we know that we have to bring something new to the table to make an impact. For us it is based on the conviction that we have reached a once in a generation turning point and that established assumptions about politics and economics are holding Britain back.
Many of us involved in the project support Ed Miliband’s call for a more ambitious politics that moves beyond the stale orthodoxies of the last thirty years. But we are also struck by the extent to which concern about the moral and financial ruin caused by the elite’s addiction to free market fundamentalism is increasingly shared by people on the centre and right of British politics.
A major part of our objective is to make common cause with people from all sections of democratic opinion who share a vision of Britain based on the common good. Overturning a failed consensus is one thing. But we also need to shape a positive consensus to put in its place. That is the challenge Shifting Grounds is happy to accept.”
That’s a big task – we’ll be watching their progress with interest.
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