Thank you to all of you who helped us get on the Guardian’s front page!
Today 19 leading figures from groups including the Fabian Society, Compass, Policy Network and Progress told Miliband the policy review must be based on the values and principles that are transformative, not safe and transactional.
It was Compass members and supporters who helped write the suggested principles that the Labour policy review must place at its heart including accountability, devolution, prevention, co-production an empowerment.
A big thanks to everyone who made this happen!
Click here for the full article
The full letter and list of signatories:
Britain faces unprecedented challenges: a financial system still too big to fail or jail; austerity causing unnecessary hardship to those already at the bottom of a massively unequal society; climate change flooding people’s homes; and a democratic system that seems pretty irrelevant to any of these problems. To begin to tackle these challenges the country needs not just a change of government but a transformative change in direction.
That demands a Labour or Labour-led administration. But if Labour plays the next election safe, hoping to win on the basis of Tory unpopularity, it will not have earned a mandate for such change. It must take into the election a vision of a much more equal and sustainable society and the support of a wider movement if these formidable challenges are to be met.
As members of the progressive community that recognise the need for Labour to play a leading role after 2015 we would urge the party to adopt an approach to its manifesto that is based on the following principles:
- Accountability of all powerful institutions, whether the state or market, to all stakeholders.
- Devolution of state institutions, by giving away power and resources to our nations, regions, cities, localities and, where possible, directly to the people.
- Prevention of the causes of our social, environmental, physical and mental health problems, which requires a holistic and long-term approach to governance.
- Co-production of public services by workers, users and citizens, to make them more responsive and efficient.
- Empowerment of everybody, so they are equipped with the resources (time, money, support) to enable them to play a full role as active citizens.
National government has a continuing strategic role to play but the days of politicians doing things “to people” are over. The era of building the capacity and platforms for people to “do things for themselves, together” is now upon us.
Signed:
Neal Lawson Compass, Rob Philpot Progress, Patrick Diamond Policy Network, Anna Coote Nef, Andrew Harrop Fabian Society, David Clark Shifting Grounds, Mark Ferguson Labour List, Tim Roache Class, Maurice Glasman, Ruth Lister Compass, Robin Murray LSE, Anthony Barnett Opendemocracy, David Marquand Mansfield College, Oxford, Charles Secrett ACT! Alliance, Marcus Roberts Fabian Society, Cat Hobbs Director, We Own It, David Robinson Changing London, Colin Hines Convenor, Green New Deal Group, Professor Victor Anderson Global Sustainability Institute, Sue Goss, Compass, Cllr Sam Tarry, Barking and Dagenham, John Weeks, SOAS, John Ashton CBE, Andrew Percy, UK Life, Dr Alan O’Shea, Molly Conisbee, bread, print & roses, Ruth Potts, bread, print & roses, Andrew Worthly, City Law School, Dr Robin Wilson, Steven Reid, Rebecca Newsom, Matthew Sowemimo
If Labour is serious about tackling the issues, climate change and gross inequalities of power, income and well being it has to offer more than complaints about the Tories. It has to offer hope, by being bold. By pledging to shift economic and political power away from those now hogging it to the people, in their workplaces, marketplaces and communities. Nothing less will do.
I agree with the Guardian letter. Labour needs give a clear indication of the kind of society we are striving for in terms of equality, wealth distribution, dignity at work, the environment and sustainability and what this can mean for ordinary people. A priority should be capping rents in the private sector, the early introduction of a statutory living wage and the end of zero hour contracts. This would make a very real difference to ordinary peoples lives and reduce the benefits bill. A party that promises and delivers this would help restore some faith in the democratic system amongst many who are currently disaffected.
Well done to Neal Lawson and his co-writers for drawing attention to the current timid state of Labour’s policy proposals (even in the rare moments when they seem radical there is a complete absence of detail).
I am not so sure, however, about the so-called principles outlined in the letter as an alternative basis to Labour’s present approach.
(1) “Accountability of all powerful institutions, whether the state or market, to all stakeholders.”
What can this possibly mean? Accountable about what? Accountable how? And who are the stakeholders? If a company decides to switch is production out of the UK that impacts on us all. How exactly is the proposed accountability to work? Will I be asked? And will my opinion count for anything?
(2) “Devolution of state institutions, by giving away power and resources to our nations, regions, cities, localities and, where possible, directly to the people.”
Is that ALL state institutions? The Army? If it is not all then which is it? What does “giving away power and resources … where possible” to “the people” mean? It would be possible to give the resources of the NHS to people in each locality. Is that what is being proposed.
There are some functions that need to be centralised and others that don’t but this “principle” is so blunt that it allows for no evaluation. It would almost certainly do more harm than good.
(3) “Prevention of the causes of our social, environmental, physical and mental health problems, which requires a holistic and long-term approach to governance.”
That’s a big one! Prevent the causes of our physical health problems. What if the causes are genetic? What if the cause is old-age. Is it being proposed that we can prevent that? The letter writers obviously did not intend such ludicrous conclusions but their formulation is so loose that they allow them to be drawn.
And how is a “holistic and long-term approach to governance” possible if the resources that governance is meant to govern have all be given away to “the people”?
(4) “Co-production of public services by workers, users and citizens, to make them more responsive and efficient.”
I am tempted to say that in the new world proposed in this letter “academic will speak unto academic” and “political activist will speak unto political activist” but neither group will speak to anyone else. I can’t imagine how else it could be imagined that a phrase like “Co-production of public services by workers, users, and citizens could mean anything to anyone outside those groups. Come to think of it I am an academic and a political activist and it doesn’t mean much to me.
(5) “Empowerment of everybody, so they are equipped with the resources (time, money, support) to enable them to play a full role as active citizens.”
Just what is this supposed to mean? Everyone who takes their politics seriously knows that it is very difficult to understand many political problems. Many of us struggle over a period of years to understand single issues. So what exactly is being proposed here in terms of “time, money, support”?
Finally, we read in the letter: “the days of politicians doing things “to people” are over. The era of building the capacity and platforms for people to “do things for themselves, together” is now upon us.”
Can they be serious? Every politically active person knows how difficult it is even to get a tiny minority to take an interest in local and national politics. Fewer than 50% can be bothered to even vote in local elections, let alone participate in policy formation and its implementation.
I know that it is all well meant but I think that these five “principles” suffer from the vagueness to the point of meaningless (at best) which is one of the trade marks of the Labour policies to which they are intended to provide an alternative.
Is anybody in Compass a member of the Labour Party? Is anybody in Compass concerned about electing a Labour Government? To me Compass appears to be doing its best to ensure that the Tories and their hand puppets the Liberal Democrats form the next government and continue their Chicago school smash and grab on the NHS and the Welfare state. As an ordinary Labour party member I was outraged by your intervention, your implied attack on our leader and your gift to the Tory press. You obviously don’t seem to know what Labour’s policies are, or how radical they are. So to be helpful I’ll provide you with a link to the site where they are set out as part of a process of ongoing consultation. http://www.yourbritain.org.uk/agenda-2015/policy-commissions/health-and-care-policy-commission/health-and-care-policy-consultation
Ed Miliband is the most left leaning, Radical leader our party has had since Atlee. And I say that even though I never voted for him. All you are doing is undermining him. I have been delighted with his performance. Shame on you. Call yourselves Labour people?
I join in David Pavett’s congratulations of Compass and others for drawing attention to Labour’s policy timidity. I also agree that it is easier to state a set of abstract principles than to put detailed policies in place to implement them, whilst leaving no unanswered questions or unintended consequences.
However, I also support Ed Milliband’s view, as expressed in his Hugo Young Lecture, that Labour must have a “defining mission”, a set of guiding principles and values driving its policies. We cannot begin to give voters hope, never mind redress the grave damage caused by the dominant economic model of the last thirty years, without offering transformational change driven by defining principles and values – and not those of free market dominance and an unresponsive centralised state. Tinkering at the edges, focussing on the symptoms rather than the underlying causes, will not do.
David is also right about the difficulties of engaging most citizens in politics. Besides the apparent abstractions and complexities, public faith in politicians and politics is low; and the momentary excitements of the Westminster bubble and the commentariat often do little more than distract. However, the everyday pressures on most women and men in the street are the very stuff of politics; not just making a living and the cost of living, but also securing and fuelling a decent home, child raising and care, access to good public services, affordable public transport, having a safe and secure physical environment, the pushes to consume even more things, stereotyped negative prejudice, limited control over their own lives and communities, etc. Surely, therefore, it is around these real pressures that Labour should seek to engage “real people”? And in the context of defining principles and values addressed at underlying causes, rather than a loosely bound bunch of technocratic fixes addressed only at symptoms.
Certainly we need to go beyond abstracted principles to real policies based on those: and there are plenty of current suggestions to debate. For example, in Barry Leathwood’s piece here, from Sunny Hundal today and Luke Akehurst, when saying the Guardian letter was a mistake, yesterday, at labourlist.org.
@Michael Murray
Although I didn’t agree with the letter it was certainly not on your grounds – that the Party leader should not be encouraged to move in this direction or that. Have you not noticed that nearly everyone in the Labour party is doing it. I hope that Labour never comes to power on the basis that all its members were bound not to suggest that their leader should do anything in anyway different from what he is currently doing. No vibrant democracy can function on that basis.
The critics of the letter entirely miss the point of this exercise. It was not a response to Miliband’s budget speech or to Labour’s narrowing poll lead (the letter was drafted well before these events). Nor was it just a call for Miliband to be bolder or for a raft of radical new proposals to be included in Labour’s election manifesto.
Rather it was intended to convey some guiding principles for policy making in a Britain beset by unprecedented political, social, financial, economic and environmental problems. A Britain where business-as-usual will not work any more.
Far from being vague and meaningless as David Pavett claims,the message is clear and simple. We can only move forward on the basis of much greater all round accountability of all the main institutions, addressing the root causes of all our problems rather than the symptoms, devolving power from central government, making public services more responsive to those working in them and to those using them and equipping people with the resources needed to run their own lives.
Obviously we need specific policies to hang on to these principles (a shorter working week for example could help to address the root causes of some mental health problems while giving people more time to become active citizens) but we need the principles in the first place to give us a direction of travel away from the morass that we are in.