Tidings of comfort and joy

I’ve had an idea for a new laundry product. It’s called “Discomfort”. It’s like a fabric softener, only it works in reverse. It makes your clothes feel rougher and more uncomfortable. God forbid that anyone should spend a second longer in anything like a comfort zone.

It is a curious view of leadership, whether in the context of business or politics, which holds that the organisation you lead should be more or less permanently uncomfortable. Twenty years ago a concept called “business process re-engineering” (BPR) became very popular among certain chief executives and their advisers. The idea was that bosses needed to be radical with their companies. It might even be necessary to dismantle much of what you had inherited, and start again. Change was bound to hurt. But that was not your problem, as the leader. Indeed, unrest and, yes, discomfort among the workforce was a sign that things were changing in the right way. People’s unhappiness was a good indication that you were making progress.

This BPR theory was pretty misguided, and shown in time to be an unreliable guide for leaders. It did not increase your chances of success. It often did at least as much harm as good. But the idea that, in order to succeed, your organisation needs to be given a hard time, has survived.

Labour is being criticised by some for, supposedly, choosing to stay safely in its comfort zone. A rejectionist stance has been adopted, it is said – on benefits cuts, on NHS reform, on the need for a vigorous private sector. Labour is refusing to step out of its comfortable ghetto to try and win back the support of people who voted Conservative at the last election.

How unlike New Labour, the critics might say. “Where’s the row?” was said to be a question frequently asked by Tony Blair – not a row with the opposition, you understand. He wanted there to be a row with his own party, so that the public would see that Labour was still changing and casting off the old thinking.

Ed Miliband, you sense, does not see much virtue, or advantage, in rowing with his party. The three and a bit years of his leadership have not been marked by a series of internal party bust-ups. He speaks softly, and carries, usually, only a medium-sized stick.

Now, comfort zones could be a dangerous place for political parties to reside. If by comfort we mean complacency, a kind of nodding off, then I would join the critics. Societies change, the political context changes, and so parties who want to win support have to change too. And that change might indeed prove uncomfortable at times.

But equally, there is nothing wrong with cohesion if it also allows for civilised, constructive policy development. The announcements – on energy prices, on the bedroom tax, on childcare – made by Ed Miliband at Brighton, and which have thrown the Conservatives into some disarray, seem to have the support of the vast majority of the party. Is that a comfort zone? Or is it a sign of strength and unity? There has been a significant post-conference bounce in some opinion polls, which now has to be maintained.

Leadership involves making trade-offs. There may be no one right way of doing things, merely a series of practical compromises and least bad options. You cannot please all of the people all of the time. And as Tony Blair rightly observed, saying yes can be easy, and saying no to people much harder.

But beware the commentators who tell you that Labour is snoozing in a gutless, unprincipled comfort zone. Leadership is a practical business. It means doing stuff, making progress, avoiding disasters, and sticking to a strategy that works. And commentators? Well, they are the people up in the stands looking down, not the ones actually having to take decisions on the field of play.