There are in fact very few people who have never made a mistake.
But if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.
On the same day that the group “Progress” announced that they were looking forward from ‘New Labour’, Alex Andreou gave a powerful first-hand account of why he wished to vote Green in the European Elections.
Yesterday, Labour revealed its latest PPB, “The Un-credible Shrinking Man”.
On the downside, it contain no details of policies about what Labour intends to do in the next parliament, and has been criticised for trivialising politics.
But arguably it has succeeded in ‘getting people talking’. And supporters of the Labour Party argue that the ‘schoolboy politics’ is no worse than the attack that Gordon Brown caused unilaterally a world recession.
There is less than one year until the General Election to be held in the UK on May 7th 2015. At this point in time, Labour is barely ahead in the opinion polls.
Whilst it’s felt that the ‘cost of living crisis’ is very important to Labour and Ed Miliband, there’s no doubt of the existence of groundswell of opinion which wants Labour to do something on the NHS.
Andy Burnham MP has made clear that the direction of the NHS currently is wrong – he wants more integration, less fragmentation. He says that Labour took the market approach too far, and specifically wishes to repeal the entire Health and Social Care Act (2012) and the clause 119 empowering fast closures of ‘failing’ NHS hospitals.
He has also laid out a vision for ‘whole person care’, where the NHS will take responsibility for the whole care of a person, including social care. Local authorities could be well placed to make commissioning decisions, linking up to community leisure clubs, education or housing.
But there’s a feeling that Labour needs yet further a ‘big idea’ which could give them a sustainable margin of a few points ahead of all the other major political parties.
It is quite unlikely that the minimum pricing of alcohol or standard packaging of cigarettes are the hugely populist policies Labour can introduce, not least because of Labour’s dense phobia of offending libertarian sensitivities.
There’s always enough money for an allegedly illegal war, the Chilcot Inquiry or high speed 2. Possibly at the back of the mind of Labour’s voters is a commitment for a well funded NHS and social care system. Paying off PFI loans may not be an enforceable manifesto pledge, but an intention to do something significant about PFI might be hugely popular.
It seems likely too that the general public hate sudden closure of local A&Es and hospital facilities. The public need to be reassured that redesigning of services is not out of a overzealous drive to cut the welfare state, but there are proper mechanisms in place to listen to what patients in the NHS in their locality want.
They say the greatest asset of any organisation are the people within it. Labour can do no harm in listening to nurses, doctors, other healthcare professionals, or even other political parties who might be sympathetic to a socialist approach.
At the moment, it seems that the general public feel that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, with a keenness to bend over backwards for the benefit of corporates including the pharmaceutical industry.
Labour of course needs space to get its message across, which is difficult with the current media, and it will inevitably need some time. A concerning issue is whether Ed Miliband has left this too late, and what rabbit is pulled out of the hat is a bit anaemic-looking in the event.
Above all, it’s not entirely clear what Labour stands for. Andy Burnham MP and his entire team are undoubtedly doing their best, but being in opposition means that they are not able to get their way on certain issues fully, such as negotiation of the investor protection clauses in the EU-US free trade treaty.
But there are some aspects of policy which Labour does need to distance itself from, such as running the NHS to profit private shareholders rather than providing a comprehensive health service. It needs to lay down markers that it believes the protagonists of competition in the NHS overplayed their hand.
In an ideological vacuum for the Labour Party, many socialists are genuinely concerned that the Labour Party will plump for off-the-shelf corporate policy ‘ready meals’, instead of putting due attention into a carefuly-designed homegrown recipe.
It may have to go as far as forming a spirit of ’45, but this will not be easy. But surviving the last Con-Dem government shouldn’t be in principle worse than surviving the Second World War.
