Labour changes track – and now it can win

Labour has not generated many headlines this week. There haven’t been game-changers. David Cameron wasn’t trounced in Prime Minister’s Questions. The polls haven’t shifted. The meeting with a post-stardust Obama passed by without significant benefit or incident. Yet, this has been Labour’s best week for some considerable time – certainly in this Parliament.
 
Heading into the final furlong of the election race, Labour has three strategic weaknesses: its perceived weaknesses on leadership, an absence of a strong governing story and a perceived lack of competence in managing the national economy. Up until this week little has been done to address these weaknesses besides trying to push the same message harder and failing even more as a consequence. To be fair to Ed Balls, he has been pushing a consistent fiscal responsibility argument for some time but it hasn’t resonated. This week Labour decided to properly address all three weaknesses. It is now moving more decisively towards battle readiness.  
 
After the local and European elections, I argued on this site that Labour’s strategy wasn’t working and it needed to change tracks. It has now done so.
 
First, came the policy review which has shifted Labour towards a stronger statecraft. The next Labour Government will devolve power, encourage local innovation, and work more openly with others to confront chronic national challenges such as youth unemployment, skewed economic growth, insecurity, low pay, inadequate social care, and poor skills in work. The importance of what Jon Cruddas MP has achieved should not be understated. This is not just an exciting programme for Government; it is a fundamental change in way that Labour thinks about power and social justice.

It is as big as reform of Clause Four – if not bigger.

Secondly, there was a vote on reversing austerity at the National Policy Forum. It was spectacularly defeated. This marks the moment when Ed Balls’s argument about fiscal consolidation has now been internalised by a party facing the real choices of Government rather the fanciful economics and protest policies of opposition. This was a major change of direction. Ed Miliband has been clear in underlining this message also.

Finally, today’s speech on leadership  embraced Miliband’s own perceived weaknesses. This cannot be unstated in its importance. It was a profoundly decent speech that speaks beyond a corrosive relationship of our political culture with just one man’s leadership. It is about our political and public culture more widely. 
 
As a nation, we cannot afford to cast away leadership on the basis that it doesn’t look and sound like the perceived ideal-type alpha male leader of men. We are a society that is fragmented, confused and in many ways angry. We need new forms of leadership – and many new types of leader – to help us face our many and serious collective challenges. Miliband’s argument was a bigger one about us as a society. He’s done us a service. And, in so doing, he presented himself with honesty, authenticity and decency to a nation unsure of where it’s heading. 
 
This is real change. It feels as though Labour is now on a firmer foundation to face what is to come – from the Conservatives or in Government. A new style of authentic leadership, fiscal responsibility, and an imaginative statecraft to face chronic collective challenges will not in themselves lead to an election victory. However, without them, an election victory is far more difficult if not impossible. A new course has been set. The question is how quickly Labour and Ed Miliband can travel along it. But at least Labour now looks like a party that wants to win in 2015 – and can do so as long as it sticks to this course without fail.