Fire up your laptop. Let’s build the big ideas for Labour to win

As we virtually arrive at conference, the call to action is clear. Your registration acceptance email reads: “Connected – bringing our movement together”. The explicit goal is aligned with Keir Starmer’s leadership pitch – unity and an ability to enable all sides to work together. Whether you’re Zooming, WhatsApping or hashtag-ing between conversations, we wish you and the party’s digital connection experiment well.

Along with relationship building, conference has always been about assessing the current leader’s performance, where we are on the road to government and exploring the policy ideas to drive us forward. So, let’s get down to business. How has Keir been doing? His personal leadership ratings are high – yes, higher than those of Boris. The party’s performance is following; we have drawn level in the polls, and Tory U-turns on school meals, A-Level results, masks and lockdowns have helped Keir’s narrative of incompetence start to stick.

Cue ‘A New Leadership’ – the billed slogan for the next part of the journey. Forensic lawyer Starmer versus buffoon journalist Johnson, the contrast could not be starker. The Prime Minister’s strengths, in relative terms: positive, tub-thumping, campaigning, but populism has descended into shambolic performances and vague waffle. Starmer, by contrast, exudes clarity, confidence and calm. The complexity of the Covid crisis is being processed, analysed and communicated in barristerial summaries that reassure and win over the jury of public opinion.

And when it comes to Johnson’s populist style – ‘I’ll U-turn if you (the public) want me to’ – Starmer is ruthlessly tacking a course where he makes clear and decisive judgement calls. Even when not universally popular, especially with the membership. Think, the swift sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey and the condemnation of Edward Colston statue protestors. His aim? To neutralise the key issues of antisemitism and the view that Labour doesn’t get what is great about Britain – areas where the electorate definitively rejected Jeremy Corbyn. His challenge will be to continue bringing party members closer to the wider public, reassuring both sides that they have values in common. In short, like Clement Attlee in the run-up to the 1945 Labour government, Keir is aiming to demonstrate that the party can regenerate the nation as we emerge from another global crisis that has changed our world.

But if perceived competence to govern is moving to green on the strategic plan, where are the big ideas and big campaigns to make them tangible to the nation as we respond to this most seismic of changes? Keir’s ten pledges look decidedly pre-Covid, and dare we say it… a bit predictable. He has offered no real vision for the future beyond Covid. Surely the public ask, where are you? Or perhaps, calm reassurance is enough – Starmer’s judgement call, we presume. And while we have started to hear of new policy emerging – alternatives to furlough and a timely call for care workers to be paid the living wage – the ideas of substance that will be needed to convince both the membership and the electorate that there’s a tangible vision behind his ‘Another Future is Possible’ slogan are still a little thin on the ground. The development of the big ideas for 2024 must start now. And those ideas shouldn’t just come from the top.

That’s why we’ve just launched Hard Labour, a new podcast to search our movement for the big ideas that will transform our country. Inspired by the galvanizing force that the Beveridge report provided for Attlee, we hope we can play a small role in slaying the evils of today and of course the Tories in 2024. What’s on the menu? Star guests are pitching plans for the self employed; a green recovery to tackle the climate and nature crises; a ‘Red Wall’ investment strategy; policy making through the lens of racial justice; a citizens’ assembly to remake the party; family policy for the 21st century; and Labour’s vision of the future city. These are just some of the ideas and areas we’ve been discussing with thinkers across our movement. There will be more to come, and of course we can’t do it alone. We need your ideas and suggestions.

Why not join us this Sunday to contribute to the search. Tune in at 6.30pm for a special video edition of the podcast where we will be joined by five star guests – echoing Beveridge’s five pledges – pitching their own ideas for Labour to win. We are recording the podcast live, so it’s a chance to come behind the scenes of our virtual studio and have your say. Get yourself a drink, fire up your laptop, ‘bring our movement together’ as your conference email suggests, and enjoy this virtual fringe by clicking here to register and using this Zoom link to join.

Hard Labour is released on the last Sunday of every month at 7pm. Check it out here.