On comfort zones and moving on

There are five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Just a week ago, we were expected as a party to go through them all immediately and be psychologically ready to move on. Move on with the news cycle already hungry for the next story. Am I ready to move on? I don’t know. But here is me trying.

It is the obvious temptation of a columnist like myself – having been so utterly electorally rejected – to point out where I had already illuminated  the failings of my project, its messaging and how it didn’t fail – it just failed me. The temptation to litter than last sentence with hyper links is almost overwhelming. But to do so would be dishonest. I can’t claim not to have been a fully paid up believer in the Ed Miliband project. It may be that I am still bargaining. if you want to find my frustration with Ed and the project much of it is out there. But I won’t point you to it in a way of de-facto proving myself to be right. My advice and concerns were reasonable but my commitment to Ed and to the party was total. I bear my part in the failure we have endured and the impact that will have on the people of this country.

I stand by my initial angst-ridden assessment that we were too far into our comfort zone during this campaign. But I don’t believe mine is the only comfort zone that exists in the Labour party. That was my attempt at immediately trying to process the first few stages; to move on. But in doing so we can’t move either further into the comfort zone I bemoan or into those more recently electorally successful but equally irrelevant to the moment we find ourselves in.

I was not always comfortable over the last five years, but I too often shut myself off from the discomfort felt both by my left and my right. I was too willing to believe that having the right policies (and on the whole I do believe we had the right policies) was enough and that the narrative was secondary. Or could be added by secondary players like me.

Maybe the comfort zones of those I have argued against over the years is where the sweet spot of the electorate is. I don’t now know what I can and should reject and what I can and should hold on to. I am willing to question this, but I know there is only so far I and the Party can and will go. But when Tony Blair is saying we got it right on inequality but wrong on the election – and a non-Blairite like me finds that hard to disagree with – I have to ask: are we right about policy and wrong about messaging or wrong about everything and wrong too that a different approach could help? Could we listen to each other, test each other, learn from each other before we retreat into the inevitable silos this long leadership contest will force us into?

I worry that we will now reject everything that the Miliband project tried to do. Responsible capitalism should not be discounted- it is the best understanding of how a project of social democracy has resonance in a post-crash era.  But we have not come close to articulating what that means for everyone. What it means for the self-employed, for the small businessperson, for the socially aware home owners as well as the perilously employed. We had a vision of the doom that many are now going to suffer under Cameron’s government. But we spoke to nobody’s  joy. Until we can interpret our vision beyond sufferers and those stiffing us we will never win this argument. We cannot mistake wooing those who would like to be comfortable with taking down the one percent. Equally we cannot reject a narrative that asks us all to contribute to a stronger positive future. Our comfort zone cannot ignore those we lost to UKIP and the SNP any more than those we failed to win back from the Tories.

I don’t personally intend to take a stand over the leadership and deputy leadership of my party. I take my role as Contributing Editor of LabourList very seriously. I want to keep this a space where all of our Party feel free to debate our future without editorial dictation. So as long as I hold as official part of this website it will be its readers I  listen to.

This debate matters. How we conduct it matters and how we conclude it matters. Ironically – given they just rejected us so firmly – the public are watching. They deserve to hear a good account of what we as a Party have to say. That now is the fight our leadership and deputy leadership candidates have to deliver.

Good luck to you all.