LabourLeft is a rapidly evolving movement within Labour. Labour was privileged to be in government between 1997-2010, with some massive achievements under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for which we can feel very grateful.

Unlike the Big Society, LabourLeft is liked as an entity, and has both credibility and respect amongst members of the general public. Individually,  Andy Shaw, Darrell Goodliffe, David Harney, Dr Tristan Learoy, Gary Sanders, Grahame Morris MP, Professor Beverley Clack, Rhiannon Lockley, and Richard Murphy and The Green Benches (Dr Eoin Clarke) represent powerful contributors, but the gestalt of the whole is even greater than that. They all believe passionately in ethical socialism, and more importantly the country, partly in response to a deep revulsion at how certain corporates have conducted their business from alleged phone hacking to employing vulnerable citizens in workfare, are desperate for a society where people do not feel threatened.

Some time ago, I was very kindly invited by Eoin to the launch of GEER, its forerunner. I remember the talk given by Eoin vividly, explaining some of the background of where we’d got to and how, and Grahame gave an excellent presentation on the inconsistencies in the implementation of ‘Nudge’ which I enjoyed enormously. Here are some pictures which I have never published before. Zeph/James was really nice, and I met ‘Paul St Pancras’ and Sunny Hundal for the first time. It was a very nice afternoon.

Now that the dust is settling, and, hopefully strengthened in our morale by a catacylsmically incompetent Tory-led government, I hope Labour will not squander an opportunity which might be offered in May 2015 for Ed Miliband to be asked by HM The Queen to lead a Government. There is no doubt that the economic policy of austerity has been a spectacular failure, with the Government increasing deficit faster and borrowing deeper than even they expected. It has been a disaster all round, with a powerfully catastrophic effect on the infrastructure of this country, include police, legal aid, support for disabled citizens, and, last but not least, the naked privatisation of the NHS. I strongly urge you to think about how you can contribute to piecing together a new agenda which is ‘fit-for-purpose'; here is more information about the new ‘Red Book’.

I hope Labour can go back to its roots. That is to represent workers, who actually are the wealth generators. Without them, this country would fall apart. They need employment protection to prevent them being exploited, that’s why we have unions. An agenda based purely on maximisation of shareholder dividend can lead to ‘wilful blindness’, and it’s no longer acceptable for Government to pit one section of society against another (e.g. public vs private, Unions vs non-Unions).

Labour has to govern for the whole country, value immigrants for what they contribute to life in the UK, seek an optimal quality-of-life for all citizens, ensure that all citizens are fairly rewarded with a living wage at least, and nobody is overly rewarded disproportionate to the amount they contribute. Labour made a massive mess of explaining why it had decided to recapitalise the banking system thus making the deficit worse, but the Keynesians have been utterly vindicated. If LabourLeft can put people above profit, it will at last have a lasting legacy. Personally, I think the greatest disaster of the Blair/Brown era was the commodification of public sector services, which put more emphasis on cost than value. Labour’s modern economic policy must be firmly embedded in value and behavioural economics, but should not be so over intellectual so as to disenfranchise the very people it seeks to represent.