Ten years to save the Labour Party

Labour would do well to accept that it will be out of power for at least the next ten years. This may prove to be a blessing in disguise if it handles this reality properly. The upcoming May series of elections may help the party to understand its predicament (predicament is a kind word). It seems to me it must now take a number of steps to survive in the long term: 1. The party will have to split. The new left, ’Corbynite’ grouping must be uncoupled from mainstream centre-left Labour. 2. The new centre-left party (probably called Social Democrats, leaving the title ‘Labour’ for the left wing rump of the party) must amalgamate with the Liberal Democrats. It would be ridiculous to have two parties with an almost identical ideological stance competing against one another. 3. This new Social (Liberal) Democrat party will have to make common cause with the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP, stopping short of amalgamation, as these other three parties need to retain their identity. This would prevent them allying with the old Labour left. 4. The new party will have to identify early those people who are potential future leaders. The discredited ‘not so old guard’ of the likes of Burnham, Cooper, Watson etc. must be marginalised in favour of a new cohort, perhaps the likes of Jarvis and Kinnock. 5. The new party would have to accept all the errors made by Labour under Blair and Brown and simply state it will not repeat them. 6. It should concentrate on a few absolutely key issues for the electorate. Among them should be : • Saving the NHS – its principles and its funding. • Increasing spending on education, especially to improve opportunities for school leavers. • Tackling effectively the inequalities in the tax system, especially the affairs of large companies and wealthy individuals. • Reducing taxes, local and national, on small and medium sized businesses. • Introduce the ‘citizens’ income’ now being trialled in Finland • Guaranteeing a generous living wage for all. • Outlawing most zero hours contracts. • Investing in infrastructure, especially outside the South-East, using quantitative easing. • Locking itself into fiscal restraints • Guaranteeing more effective controls over non-EU immigration, while accepting a fair share of asylum seekers and genuine refugees. • Taking steps to disengage the UK from the affairs of the Middle East and North Africa. • Restore spending on policing to pre 2010 levels. • Preserve the BBC as a high quality public service broadcaster • Dedicate more resources to care of the elderly That’s fourteen policies that conform to Labour’s traditional ideology and which can be supported by the vast majority of the people of the UK. There are trickier issues on constitutional reform, defence and welfare, for example, but a clear message on these core key issues would restore much confidence in the party that should occupy the centre ground of politics in the UK. The Beckett approach – keep on with the old policies but present them more effectively - will not do. Nor will burying the party’s head in the sand over its past errors. Whatever one’s own political preferences, it is vital that the UK returns to having an effective second party both to ensure government is accountable and to provide a realistic alternative.