What Labour needs to concentrate on are ends, not means

Posted on

I have a lot of sympathy with this comment by Sunder Katwala, the general secretary of the Fabian Society, writing on the Labour Uncut blog:

Labour needs a compelling political narrative and project again. It won't get back to power by the alphabet soup of electoral segmentation. Finding the argument and strategy that can build a broad enough electoral coalition to provide a coherent governing project is not going to be easy.

Still, that is the price of political power.

The one thing that is a recipe for permanent opposition is yet another debate about which voters Labour would be better off without.

The Tories must be delighted by three things right now. The first is Labour factionalism. The second is that the factionalism seems entirely process (or means) focussed. The third is that the narrative reason for engaging in the debate is missing.

At the end of the day, as the SNP proved, narrative matters.

New Labour had one, for better or worse, and I think worse. It can't be revived (although an attempt is being made). The need is for a new narrative.

A narrative that says the state is a good thing.

That only the state can get us out of the mess we're in.

That if we have full employment we can repay debt, easily.

And what's more we can supply all the services our changing demography demands.

That's a narrative in a nutshell, and I know it can work.

Labour has to believe it until it is red in the face.

Then  people will vote for it.

It's ends, not means, that matter in politics. And Labour's ends are all on the left.

 

 


Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here: