which debates does the Left need to win over the next 5 years?‘

if by that you mean, ‘so that there will be a Left-wing government’, the Left must have persuaded sufficient people by election time that it is better to trust the Left than the Right with the economy, education, law and order, health, and immigration (the first four are by far the most important).

Which are the big debates? ….

For example, I could choose three areas: tax avoidance, the environment and abortion rights.

Abortion rights are important but ISTM elections are not won and lost on them, so if they are a ‘big debate’, there must be bigger debates. See above.

Who would you like to hear?

People who are competent to talk about them (qualified, interesting and persuasive).

Oh, in five years energy might be a very important issue, too.

Food security. There’s currently a bubble growing in speculation on the value of farm land which is not justified by the returns. Should be just about bursting in five years (or less).

The restoration of the Welfare State as a service not a profit opportunity.

Regulation of the financial sector and decreasing the country’s reliance on that sector.

Power. Unless someone’s sitting on the way to make cold fusion work its soon going to be time to choose: import dirty coal, import insecure gas, build more nukes, try to make plasma fusion safe and viable or go all out for green.

I will suggest one topic: inequality.

Anyone who has read The Spirit Level will understand the crucial importance of this debate. Levels of inequality determine the extent to which a society is affected by a range of social ills, from violent crime to social immobility to a variety of public health problems. Win the argument over the importance of equality and we open the path to addressing a range of key social issues.

Aside from the empirically demonstrated importance of equality, it is also true that the language of equality appeals across the spectrum of “progressive” opinion, and directly to “common sense” conceptions of fairness that are held by the wider population. So not only is it the key battle in the fight for positive social change in this country, it is also one that is very winnable, which is a nice bonus.

Obviously your speakers for this are Richard Wilkinson and/or Kate Pickett.

The two other issues are breaking the power of The City and dealing with climate change. Their importance should be obvious.

David Wearing,

The two other issues are breaking the power of The City and dealing with climate change. Their importance should be obvious.

Maybe obvious, but politically are they important (or indeed even open enough debates)? As UKliberty points out, if this is about winning elections, for these issues to be important (because most anti-City types are firmly left-wing, and most of those really concerned with climate change are probably floating ex-Liberal Democrats or nicely rooted (sorry…) Greens, they have to convince people outside the wider left-wing coalition.

I could put a case for breaking the power of the city to be a good economic policy (and one I would possibly support at that) but I cannot see how climate change, to which every solution seems to be higher taxes and/or bills, can be a politically winning issue when every opinion poll suggests it is of relatively minor importance to voters (and indeed, increasingly considered not an issue by the electorate). Having to start a debate by persuading the country this is really still a problem might be the right thing to do (my personal views aside) but is a lot of political effort for little obvious gain (unless the ice caps should totally disappear or the like).

I would suggest that there are two choices for the conference – either an internally-focussed left-wing debate, which would seek to define a sensible position on key issues to the left such as David suggests and consider how to sell these eminently winnable debates to those outside the left-wing, or an externally-focussed view such as ukliberty suggested, about how to win power. I’d suggest that there is still time in the electoral cycle to do the first, produce a platform, and then build the second on to this, but you can only really do one at a time. Might be worth sorting out which you want to do – the title leaves both open.