Gerry Holtham

I would bet my last penny that Labour is about to embark on a sterile debate. It will be symptomatic of the disease that has afflicted the party ever since it lost four elections in a row between 1979 and 1992. The focus will be on what the Party needs to do to win election.

The focus groups and their manipulators will be central. A majority will conclude the party has to move to somewhere called the centre. A minority will assert that a more convinced and thorough going radicalism would have moved the electorate. The inevitable superficiality of this debate will rightly condemn the party to impotence, at least until the Tories contrive such a debacle as to put Labour back in business, despite its vacuousness.

Labour is like a company entirely dominated by its marketing department. Policies are assessed largely for the “message” they will send to the electorate. Will they work? Who knows and who cares so long as they ‘sell’? The public hears the slogans but senses the void behind them. The trouble is that an obsessive focus on marketing is not even good marketing. You’ve got to sell the product. But first of all you have to have a product to sell.

That would require a revolution in Labour’s approach. What are our aspirations for society; what urgent problems do we need to solve? On the basis of wide consultation and the evidence what policies would be required to achieve success? Having got that far, it is time enough to call in the spin doctor and focus group. Are the policies popular? If not, why not? And how do we sell them?

Only in that way can Labour achieve an image of authenticity – by actually being authentic. Thinking hard about real problems, working out solutions in a tough-minded unsentimental way, boiling them down for simple presentation and explanation, that is the way ahead.

In practice we are likely to get a discussion characterized in a stereotypical way as New Labour versus the Left. Like an unsuccessful football team debating whether it should play possession or counter-attacking football. In fact you can play either. But either way you only win if you play them well.

Labour in the last election played on public fears for the National Health Service but said nothing positive about how it would actually tackle the service’s manifold problems on a tight budget. It complained about poverty and inequality but presented no credible prospectus for their solution apart from a couple of patently, indeed risibly, inadequate tax changes. Let’s be frank, the public is uninterested and therefore fairly ignorant but it is not stupid. Show them a façade with nothing behind it but hope and do not be surprised if they don’t buy it.

There is little enough cause for New Labourites to crow. Thirteen years in power and vast majorities have left almost no imprint on society, the economy, or on public loyalties. The two policies of which they boast – devolution and the minimum wage – were hang-overs from the John Smith regime and were adopted without enthusiasm. What else was to be expected of a project whose principal aim was to take Labour to power and keep it there? Anything to be achieved was subsidiary to that. Power was won but achievements were predictably small.

The marketing department is important but needs to be brought back under control, to work with the designers and production engineers. Narratives are all-important but become tiresome and ultimately repulsive if you don’t have a real story to tell. If Labour approaches policy development as identifying problems and solutions rather than deciding what image it wishes to project, who knows where it will end up being positioned. Wherever, it will be in a more interesting and ultimately a more saleable place.