The focus of Labour’s campaign has been on ensuring the Conservatives face the scrutiny of a would-be government in waiting.

What a sh*tty strategy. You’re acting like you’re already the opposition. Govern, do stuff – anything other than trying to scare people into not voting for the Tories, or “pointing out how bad their policies are” – the former has been tried too many times, and the latter just doesn’t wash with the public, Sunder.

Nothing wrong with forcing the media to ensure Tories face scrutiny, but you’re completely right about this:
That the Conservatives are ahead in framing the election year can be seen in how often Ministers seem forced to contest Tory narratives – a debt crisis, the broken society, or the (ludicrous) idea that Labour has declared ‘class war’.

Part of the problem is that Labour don’t seem to have an alternative frame for debate. Eventually they always fall back to trying to defend themselves from right-wing frames.

The media has a part to play in that – they keep pushing right-wing narratives, but so do Labour MPs like Tom Harris and Frank Field.

My suggestion is of course to play the ‘privileged’ card continuously.

Sunny, have you read Danny Finkelstein’s take on this?

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2010/01/i-should-have-posted-before-now-on-one-of-the-interesting-features-of-our-poll—-50-of-people-think-cameron-is-more-on-the.html

Essentially, a poll that finds that Cameron is seen as being on the side of the rich, but that also gives him a thumping great lead over Brown suggests either that people don’t care that he’s on the side of the rich, or that those who do care are already supporting Labour.

Does Labour have a winning argument – are you mad?

Sunny is right – no swing voter is going to swing back to Labour.
So your only hope is to make sure the core collapses as little as possible.
I don’t know whether the “privileged” card will achiveve that, but it might.

Sunny, don’t you see that after 13 years of growing inequality, stalling social mobility and bailouts for bankers instead of workers, Labour are incapable of playing the ‘privileged’ card?

“part of the task of rebuilding the broad electoral coalition which won it three election victories.”

From memory that broad electoral coalition was built by swinging right and telling all the socialists to shut the heck up.

Swinging left now isn’t quite the same thing.

If you want something for the left to fight for then you have to have an answer to the question, what can a plausible amount of collective action achieve for you that you couldn’t achieve for yourself given the chance?

There are lots of perfectly straightforward answers to that question but, in order for them to seem plausible in the mouth of Labour politicians, voters have to trust Labour’s designated agent of collective action – the state.

Many policies of the last decade have made people’s relationship with the state ambiguous at best. As often as not, it’s the little things – endless vile scare campaigns against benefit fraud (that fell silent as soon as the MPs expenses scandal broke), the increasingly draconian measures taken against parents desperate to get their kids into decent schools, ID cards, the increasing use of fixed penalty notices, ASBOs, legitimate protesters being stopped under anti-terrorism powers and so on. These are aspects of the idea that the state doesn’t trust its citizens.

If the left wants to fight for something, it needs to repair the relationship between citizen and state. I see little evidence of that happening just now.

I have said it around here before, but lets say it again. Labour needs a philosophy in what it believes (Mr Brown getting on with the job is not a philosophy). This may or may not work – it failed spectacularly in 1983, when voters chose an alternative philosophy for example, but the recent election victories have been by a party with no clear message over another party with no clear message (with a party with no clear identity or message in third place). Now the pendulum has turned (and the metaphor has been mixed) and the other party with no clear message is more popular.

Unfortunately the only clear messages on offer in Labour nowadays are from the left, which basically hark back to a different age, or from the likes of Messrs Harris and Field, who the party seem to have problems with. Those in power have put down the philosophers and thinkers to secure their own positions and left an intellectual void. Find something to fill the void (and not just straight socialism – this was rejected through the 80s) and you will have a message which people can judge, not just Gordon Brown.

Tim@6

Certainly, there needs to be a broad electoral coalition. The piece is about the re-engagement with Labour identifying liberal-left people who feel disillusioned, which is only one part of that.

But there is often a caricaturing of electoral strategy debates, with a good pinch of rewriting history too.

In 1997, there was certainly a strong pitch to the centre-ground. But that did not veto Blair and Brown making policy commitments including the minimum wage, signing the European social chapter and attacking youth unemployment through a windfall tax on the privatised utilities, which helped to bolster trade union support for Labour, beyond getting the Tories out.

We were rather louder in our attacks on ‘rewards for failure’ and ‘fat cats’ under Blair than any current language used about the bankers in 2009, for which we are ludicrously accused of a “class war”.

We were also very much on a pluralism Lib-Lab and constitutional reform ticket.

@1 … yes, I was making the point to ensure there is scrutiny and a positive case.

Yes it does but there is little sign its going to use it. I think Labour is best served by enlisting the like of David Blanchflower and saying as opposed to the Conservatives they will invest to grow. It should make a positive case for the state and promise radical reforms to capitalism as well as sweeping constitutional reform; instead of tokenism in taxation it should promise a sweeping redistributive program. Taken together this probably would not be enough to win it an absolute majority but it would provide a basis for a coalition with the Lib Dems.

However, it looks like this is what it will promise the election after next….not this one.

There are good points in comment number 7. A big part of the difficulty of rebuilding relations between the citizen and the State is played out every day at the Chilcot Inquiry.

I can’t believe that people see the scarily marxist concept of “rebuilding the relationship between the citizen and the state” as part of the solution, when it is clearly part of the problem – citizens dont want a “relationship” with the state, they just want it to grit the roads, empty the bins, provide the hospitals, the police and the prisons. You still don’t get it do you guys………….

Look, Sunder, you can go on about narrative all you like, and the possibility to telling the disillusioned, but when those spinning the narrative are the same old neo-liberal New lab suspects (inc bloody Purnell, now trying to make out he’s of the left, and trying to erase workfare from our minds:won’t work,Jimmy) who are proven liars and traitors, then the ‘narrative’ won’t wash. It’s about trust as much as the message. Those of us disillusioned, and of the liberal-left persuasion won’t be fooled again by the same bloody figures and their cronies.What’s to say that if I were to vote Lab this year, it won’t be a case of thanks for your vote and back to the neo-liberal agenda, more flogging off of public services, more witless top-down technocracy, more erosion of civil liberties. They can’t exactly fight on their track record for reliability or competence,can they?,.
Apologies and genuine contrition are in short supply from New Lab, and they simply float the Tory bogey-man, which is not good enough reason to vote for their tory-lite position. John McDonnell was very good in the Guardian on Wednesday, and pinpointed the trouble: Labour’s most prominent ‘young guns’ are all tainted, out of touch and treacherous, and most definitely not to be trusted.

“fairness doesn’t happen by chance” – but for New Labour it somehow happens by stealth. Or osmosis – whichever is cheaper and doesn’t upset the powerful.

(In the case of the Tories, just remove the words ‘by chance’ from the above quote.)

“back to the neo-liberal agenda, more flogging off of public services, more witless top-down technocracy, more erosion of civil liberties.”

Only one of those is actually part of the neo-liberal agenda. The public services bit.

“Top down” is the opposite of neo-liberal….we bastard neoliberals believe in markets rather than instruction from the centre, remember (you know, Haykek and all that)? As for civil liberties, we’re all for them. Certainly I’ve been shouting about the erosions of them…..

Tim the technocracy and civ libs bit wasn’t meant to be read as a subordinate section implying they are neo-liberal policies (though dispersed technocracy often accompanies neo-liberalism). It’s the unspeakableness of the New Lab hybrid, cherrypicking the worst policies from across the spectrum.

[14] “Labour’s most prominent ‘young guns’ are all tainted, out of touch and treacherous, and most definitely not to be trusted”.

Yes, this was all too evident when Hoon & Hewitt tried to drum up support for their abortive coup.
The initial (lack of) response from the likes of the Millibands, for example, was apposite?

Presumably they hesitated to calculate which way the wind was blowing?

“It’s the unspeakableness of the New Lab hybrid, cherrypicking the worst policies from across the spectrum.”

On that we agree….

here here, matt…or should it be Hear hear!

SK: ” I looked at the particular challenges for Labour in reconnecting to disillusioned liberal-left voters as part of the task of rebuilding the broad electoral coalition which won it three election victories.”

It wasn’t just Labour “swinging right” that won those elections but also, sad to say, Blair’s (waning) charisma, the prospect of better public services and a Conservative Party without a vision.

William Hague in the 2001 election was clear on what he was against – bogus asylum seekers, higher taxes and joining the Euro – but it was never clear on what he was “for”. The dog whistle strategy of Michael Howard in 2005, after the IDS leadership debacle, was just an insult to the electorate.

Even so, Blair lost 4 million votes between the 1997 and 2005 elections while the latter had the second lowest turnout since 1918, hardly a ringing endorsement of New Labour with Tony Blair at the helm.

I fear that old adage is correct: Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose elections.

Labour has to disown Blair – a challenging task before the Chilcot inquiry has reported – and paint Cameron as another Blair in the making.

Matt,

To be clear, I wasn’t saying that citizens wanted to have a relationship with the state but such a relationship undoubtedly exists – it takes your taxes and provides your services. If the left wants to win it has to make the case that the state is working on your behalf and can get better value for your money than you can on your own behalf. That’s not impossible in principle but I think it might be impossible for this government whose reforms have often made the state seem mistrustful of its citizens.

If the right wants to get in the narrative is, necessarily, different.

Labour need only point to the success of Operaion Brace!

Surely fast-tracking 350,000 immigrants into Britain was an accomplishmnt which deserves to be shouted at the sheeple on every council-estate doorstep!

Can’t a Labour selection committee find it in their hearts to award a safe seat to this deserving fellow?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1243385/Senior-figure-hardline-Islamist-group-preaching-London-university.html

He’d be just the ticket!