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Tonight the Discrimination Law Association will be holding its second annual fundraising debate in Central London. Entitled Who's Afraid of the New Far Right?: A Challenge for Democracy, it promises to be an evening of engaging and stimulating debate.

This week I heard two Labour Prime Ministers, Gordon Brown and Kevin Rudd, admit that the balance between individual enterprise and the common good has been eroded. The world economic system, they now agree, must be reshaped to reflect the values we would apply to our own families. But how is this to be achieved?

The Ramblers Association - 140,000 members, Amnesty International UK - 195,000 members, Greenpeace - more than 200,000, the RSPB has over a million members, including over 170,000 youth members. Our fellow citizens are involved in more civic organisations or Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) than ever before because they care about changing their society. So why is it that the Labour party shrinks and ages every year?

Media misrepresentations of the scale and nature of childhood crime is leading to the demonization of an entire generation of young people.

The description of the terrible death of baby P in Haringey might leave you with the assumption that failures in services designed to protect vulnerable children were unique to this part of London with its acute social problems. This is not the case.

The battle to create a sensible financial system for our country is just beginning. But the moment won't last for ever- in the words of one observer, "This crisis is too good an opportunity to waste".

Ministers in the current Labour government have famously found it difficult to talk about economic redistribution. While the Blair-Brown administration has consciously set about engineering significant improvements in the incomes of the working poor, it has struggled to communicate this commitment to the electorate.

Labour is looking into the abyss, frozen into immobility. The plotters gather. But the problem cannot be reduced to the leader, nor solved by changes in personalities. The New Labour project is exhausted. There are vague plans by Blairites to resurrect it. But this is not the 1990s: the New Labour brand is now toxic.

It is time for the left to take on the New Conservatives. This challenge cannot be separated from the need to address the problems facing post-New Labour social democracy. By critically engaging with Cameron's Conservatives the left can rethink its principles and renew itself.