This blog is a bit late I'm afraid, but this week is production week for the Progress Magazine and it always throws us a little.
On Saturday I went to the annual ‘must be at’ event of the political New Year aka the Fabian’s one-day conference. Having been part of organising conferences for Progress for the last two years, I always like to look at how others put together their programmes since we’re always trying to break out of the perennial format of keynote, seminar, lunch, seminar, panel debate. The Fabians have opted for the (relatively) new innovation of the Dragon’s Den for their final session. The challenge this year for conference delegates was to come up with one idea to make Britain fairer, and five individuals had the unenviable task of trying to get their idea past the judges and audience and into the (hypothetical) Labour manifesto.
As a format goes, it can’t be faulted and makes for a lively wrapping up session. But I couldn’t help feel rather depressed by the five ideas that were finally presented. It wasn’t that the ideas were completely merit-less, just that most of them sounded like the sorts of propositions I came up against as a student debater around ten years ago. Things like maximum salaries, shaming rich tax avoiders, capping private school entry to Oxbridge, giving free childcare to parents made unemployed in the downturn, and abolishing the means test for pensions while uprating the amounts to Germanic levels.
All of these could be argued as ways of making Britain fairer, (though some seemed a little under-ambitious – why free childcare for the newly employed when a full rollout of universal childcare might have had more oomph?) But they were all characterised by a real lack of political nous. Would the public really think we were a party bent on serious change if we went around spending public money on adverts in Tatler in an attempt to shame rich people into bringing their money back from offshore havens? And actually, how fairer would it really make Britain? Yes the extra billions could be ploughed back into relieving child poverty, but only if Labour were in power would this be a priority.
And this is my main point – these policies aren’t ones which look like Labour’s gunning for a fourth term or would be likely to help Labour win that historic fourth term. It’s as if Labour had never been in government for 11 years, and we’d simply remained in opposition with the luxury of coming up with uncosted, unworkable and publicly unappealing ideas, but which nevertheless made us feel righteous and revolutionary. Or maybe it’s a reflection of being in government for so long that we want to take the easy options. It’s too sensible and world-wearying to admit that there aren’t quick fixes, or silver bullets, or any of those dreadful clichés, if we want to get working class young people into Oxbridge or increase social mobility for the least well off.
Having said that, there are still good ideas in government. Liam Byrne’s recent white paper on social mobility shows that by combining support throughout an individual’s life cycle the state can start to help shift disadvantage. And some of the recent evidence suggests that Labour’s extra investment has perhaps helped to increase social mobility since 2000. But I have to admit that wouldn't sound particularly sexy enough to get the votes in the Dragon’s Den…
It's not ideas as such that Labour's lacking it's a sense of purpose. The white paper is full of ideas of this or that scheme or programme, but who believes it?
Labour MPs and ministers don't believe their own education policy at least when it comes to their own children - just ask Diane Abbot, Harriet Harman.
Posted by: Tim from London | Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 06:14 PM