Labour is doomed if its leadership can’t convey the message

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/06/labour-ed-miliband-leadership-team-message

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The question I keep being asked is: “Can Labour win the next election?” My answer is “yes, but …”. Not the best answer for an opposition facing a Tory party with deep internal divisions. The “but” is indicative of our problems. We could win but only because the Tories are split and could lose. That is certainly a possibility but even if it does happen, we won’t achieve a significant Labour majority. It is more likely to be a minority government struggling to survive.

Clearly, a more desirable option would be to win because we are capable of providing a sense of direction – a vision of where we want to take the country and how we intend to get there.

Waiting for the Tories to lose is a bad option. They could yet turn things around. They have a survival instinct, and even if we won on the basis that their divisions were too great for them to win, that still leaves an uncomfortable feeling that a Labour government would not have a sense of direction.

Labour’s problem is not so much its individual policies as the lack of an overall vision and a sense of direction for the country. This is combined with the problem that it is not clear where the responsibility for leadership in the leader’s office lies. Who is in control, who is directing the strategy and ensuring that everyone (including Ed Miliband) follows it? The media leadership is crucial and those in charge of it need to put up front our best communicators – that is vital.

Obviously, the vision and sense of direction has to come from the party leader, but it cannot be a one-man band because as Ed Miliband himself acknowledges, he is not seen as a charismatic potential prime minister. So there has to be a general strategy run both by the leader’s office and the key members of the shadow cabinet. In other words, “Team Labour” has to take a much higher profile. And that requires a media and policy promotion strategy. But beyond that, Miliband needs to enable the team to challenge him on content and presentation when appropriate.

Is it helpful to the party to speak openly about these deficiencies now? The answer to that is that we have no choice but to discuss them now because where we are in the polls is not in a winning position.

So what vision can we offer the country? Ed has tried a “fairer” Britain. Great! The trouble is everyone can sign up to that but without very clear – and difficult – economic policy statements it doesn’t ring any bells with the general public. He has tried Disraeli’s One Nation approach – a daring raid into Tory history that he would do well to repeat. Neat slogan though it is, it doesn’t answer the question about how it links to policy.

The “vision” I would advocate is Britain leading the argument for growth in the UK economy and promoting that growth-led agenda in Europe. Without growth, economic policy will always be led by cuts. And without an active growth and jobs policy for the EU, we will struggle to maintain growth in the UK. We can argue that Labour will “cut” spending more fairly, but unless we get more growth in the economy we will have to continue with cuts.

This means we have to be outspoken and unequivocal in our support for the EU. Reform, yes, but any talk of withdrawal a strong no. Europe is not the biggest issue in people’s minds but like Scotland, while they might grumble about the union they will hesitate at withdrawal. So we should strongly go on the attack over Tory wrangling about Britain’s future in the EU. We should emphasise that Britain has led in Europe before and has been popular in Europe. Not any more. So Labour’s vision should be for Britain to lead Europe out of recession and into growth.

What are our policies for growth in Europe? They have to be about reform. Any economist will tell you that the EU is not fit to take on the other major trading blocks in the world. Labour could lead the debate on reform.

If we are challenged on immigration, we do have to say that Ukip is wrong – but that doesn’t mean we have nothing to say about reforming the benefits system within the single market.

We should then project into this vision the argument for science and technology – not in those precise words, but remember Harold Wilson’s “white heat of the technological revolution”? How about our 21st-century version, to make Britain the best country in the world to do science? We are already in a strong position, but how about making the apprenticeship argument in more user-friendly terms. We should be making a virtue of building “a skilled manual workforce”. We are saying the right things about apprenticeships but the language needs to be better. That is why our media strategy needs boosting.

None of this means that we drop the NHS or education, but there has to be more than that. Odd statements about abolishing the Lords only make sense in the context of reforming the constitution – not a big vote winner but put in the language of “our government system has been failing”, it does strike a chord. There is no reason why we shouldn’t say that and say that we want a constitutional convention as we have done since the Scottish referendum.

There is a vision for a better Britain – it needs to be articulated clearly, and simply piling up lots of individual policies doesn’t do it. Governments without vision tend to drift and be at the mercy of events. And events, dear boy, as Harold Macmillan noted, are what destroy governments.