Peter Mandelson: Labour needs to ‘turn up the volume’ on its policy missions

Former Labour cabinet minister Peter Mandelson has argued that to counter Tory attack lines, Labour needs to “turn up the volume” when talking about its policy offer.

Mandelson said at a policy event on Wednesday: “Number one in Conservative campaign HQ’s talking points is that Labour doesn’t have a plan. That Labour says everything is broken, but then doesn’t propose to do anything about it.”

The Labour party have got to “recognise that this is number one” and while they shouldn’t “over-do it”, they should “turn up the volume” and “amend the communications plan”, the Labour peer told an audience in east London this morning.

“There’s an awful lot that … the Labour Party wants to do”, Mandelson said, citing the party’s growth mission, plans for cheaper clean energy, health service reform, and boosting educational opportunity.

“These missions are very important, but they’ve got to turn up the volume in how they talk about them and describe them.”

Mandelson was speaking at a one-day conference entitled “Britain Renewed”, hosted by the UCL Policy Lab, Power to Change, The Future Governance Forum and Citizens UK.

Last year Keir Starmer announced the missions, five “key pillars” which the Labour leader said said will form the “backbone” of Labour’s manifesto and plans for government.

Discussing them on Wednesday, Mandelson said the missions were a long-term project: “What a Labour government would be embarking on in my view is genuinely a ten-year programme of national renewal.

“You are not going to be able to get half of those missions done, let alone completed in a [single] term of a Labour government.”

He went on to argue that Labour should not “pretend that this is about turning a dial or pressing a button or throwing a switch… it’s really long drawn out, complicated stuff”.