Five answers for Labour

Tony Blair is right. Labour can’t merely be an opposition crying foul at every move the coalition makes – however foul those moves are. If all we are pledged to do is reverse their damage to our institutions come the next election – with no sense of funding or ambition of our own – we will fail to be an alternative and fail to win the election that would even give us the chance to undo that damage.

Tony Blair is wrong in a number of his assumptions though. His binary view of politics – ironic for the man who campaigned on the dreadful slogan “forward – not back” sees only two alternatives – Labour of the 70s and 80s and Labour of the 90s and 00s. He (and many other critic of the Ed Miliband project) are fighting what they see as a rear guard action against old Labour incursion that doesn’t really exist.

But in doing so they are negating the chance to debate, mould and interact with the very real place that Labour is going: not back to either our old or new comfort zones but onto to more difficult and more contested terrain. Now is not the time for glib certainties – from left or right – but for the heavy lifting to be done to see how we really can move on from a consensus that has broken and how bold we can be when doing so.

Labour is moving towards a place where we are comfortable with state activism – while remaining sceptical of the state’s ability to deliver that activism centrally. That asks real questions of how we deliver the kind of changes we want to see. Below are a few answers to how Labour can make this work in areas which should form the key basis of our next manifesto.

1.     Work at the heart of all we do

The clue’s in the name – we’re the Labour Party. A Party set up to represent those who work and those who want to work. This doesn’t mean buying into the Tories divisive rhetoric, but as unemployment his 2.56 million, any strategy for dealing with the economy must include strategies to get more people working. This means job guarantees (and yes, that means an element of compulsion). It also means a massive change in the way we provide and promote apprenticeships. Government loans, use of procurement rules (all along the supply chain) and investment in industries that will bring with them long term employment (see points 2 and 3) will all be essential parts of any Labour full employment strategy.

But we cannot stop at getting people into work. We must be better at looking after them when they get there. A living wage economy – again encouraged through agile use of procurement and the supply chain – and a retention of workers’ rights will be essential to building a workforce of the future that has the kind of positive bonds to their Labour that enable a good economy to work for everyone.

2.     Investment in housing will repay itself

Thanks to Osborne’s continuing mismanagement of the economy, there is not going to be a bounteous economy in which everything can be fixed by further government investment. Labour must choose wisely how to arrest the cold fingers of austerity from its continual choking of our economy. But – while interest rates are at historic lows – it is insane not to invest in our economy now while we are on the downswing and do so in ways that maximise the return on that investment.

Housing is key to this. Labour should do everything they can to create a housing boom the likes of which we haven’t seen since after the war. For every pound invested in housing a further £2.4 are generated in the local economy. Well managed and well planned housing and communities bring money and jobs to an area like little else – and keep them there. Labour must pull every lever to ensure this happens – from restoring grants to social housing builders, bringing in measures like a Land Value Tax to counter land banking and taking housing out of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement to make it easier for councils to build.

3.     Support for technologies that work

In office – up until the post-crash period – Labour was far too timid about “picking winners”. We cannot be so shy again. The next Labour Government should invest heavily in making the UK the world leader in the manufacture and design of renewable energy technologies. That means Government investment – in grants and low interest loans – at every level. It means changing the focus in schools to cover much more science and engineering. It means investing in our centres of research such as our universities. It means working with the new businesses who will be the world leaders of the future to ensure that Britain is the basis of that industry.

But those world leaders do not have to be like the corporations that we have now nor the Government owned industries that came before them. Encouraging cooperatives and worker owned companies to be essential to the industries of the future help us build a future that is not only self-reliant when it comes to energy – helping us help consumers (see point 5) – but also one that creates the kind of industry with a satisfied workforce to essential to the rebuilding of our economy.

4.     Abandon technologies that don’t

I don’t have any ideological problem with carrying an ID card or a DNA database. I have a massive problem with the Government paying an enormous amount of money for any scheme that will not work. If Labour are to learn our lessons from our time in Government, one key one should be – stop trying to centralise everything and never, ever build another central Government database. Not because we’re all basically Big Brother coming to get you. I’m neither paranoid nor immature. But because they don’t work. They inevitably cause more problems than they were ever mooted to solve and they cost a fortune.

Instead go back to the kind of bottom up, people based approach which is so often missed from our addiction to technocratic solutions and encourage the correct sharing of information through relational workplaces. It may sound unrealistic – but have you heard what this Government thinks is going to work for Universal Credit? It could never, ever be worse than that.

5.     Put citizens at the heart of their consumption choices

We need to make people feel valued again. This is essential in their work but also in the way they are able to interact with the world around them. At present, most of the key areas of our lives – how we heat and light our homes, how we manage our money, how we communicate with each other, how we travel even how we get basic necessities like food and water – are controlled largely be a few extremely large companies. These companies purport to compete on price (and do so to the limits of their regulation) but offer no sense of customer control or service. They don’t have to. They run these cartels of disrespect, knowing as long as they’re all as bad as each other it isn’t something they have to invest in or compete on.

Labour must continue to break up these cartels and crack open the markets wherever possible and have started developing innovative ways of doing so in terms of the energy companies and encouraging local saving through credit unions. We need to see a great deal more of this as we progress.

In the past, we have confused “consumer choice” with choosing consumption. This is not the same thing. Consumers must be given real power over what they can choose in each area of their lives, but along with that power must come the responsibility of choosing wisely. A consumer should not be able to choose to harm others in order to save themselves money. So retention of the smoking ban and further moves to shift the tax burden from positives like work to negative behaviours must continue.

This isn’t a manifesto. It’s not even answers to all of Blair’s questions. Not all of Blair’s questions were – frankly – relevant in today’s society. I haven’t even touched on the NHS and Social Care (a doubly long essay all of its own). But it is a spine from which to build a vision of a Labour future. Not old, not new, but ours.