The UK stands at a moment of decision. Globalisation is rapidly giving way to a new age of geopolitics. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine the politics of blood and iron returns to the European continent and with it the demand for a new politics of national security. Both Labour and the Conservative Party must now confront the UK’s long, slow slide into a chronic state of disrepair and dysfunction. Their failure to do so has left England in a state of deep disillusionment with parliamentary democracy.

 Over the last decade a series of events have signalled the end of an era and its forms of governance. The 2008 financial crash exposed a banking system that enriched itself rather than investing in the country. Globalisation and government policy concentrated economic power into rent seeking that extracted wealth from the economy and put little back in. Then Covid struck and the British state teetered on the point of collapse, hollowed out by decades of privatisation, market-based reforms, and austerity. The shameful flight from Afghanistan followed, a revelation, if it was still needed, of the UKs reduced geopolitical status. And now deep military cuts have left the country enfeebled in the face of the Russian attack on Ukraine.  

 Brexit called time on national failure. Rather than accept this challenge, Westminster consumed itself with attempts to avoid leaving the EU. Political inertia followed. It was overcome by the Conservative realignment in the 2019 election which mobilised a new coalition around the Leave vote. A new kind of Conservative politics - left on the economy and right on culture and social issues - flickered into life and this was expressed in the idea of levelling up. The Conservatives had broken out of the interregnum to shape a new political era. 

 But Boris Johnson jeopardised this project and a reassertion of market liberalism within the Conservative Party threatens to defeat those attempting to define a new Conservative politics. The Treasury already limits the ambitions of levelling up. New demands for military spending risk further retrenchment. 

 And what about Labour? Keir Starmer’s leadership has restored its electoral credibility. But Labour still suffers a chronic inability to grapple with its political limitations. It is repeatedly forced to adapt itself to political terrain determined by the Conservative Party. Unable to create a compelling narrative and strategy, it is unprepared for the resolution of the Tory leadership crisis. 

 The Covid pandemic disguised a harsh reality. Neither the Labour Party nor the Conservatives are equipped to get to grips with the state of national disrepair and lead the country into a new political era.  Both are dominated by politics that belong to the old liberal settlement. Both suffer intellectual stagnation and a failure to renew. There are those on both sides who hanker after pale imitations of the past. Hovering over Westminster and Whitehall are the ghosts of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair calling them back onto the familiar ground of the old liberal settlement. 

 This is not where the country is, and this is not what it needs. But this is where Britain’s governing class gained its worldview and learned its politics and where it is most comfortable. Julian Coman in The Guardian recognised its retreat. He argued that both parties, unable to chart the future, were rewinding back to a more familiar time: “The restorationist politics of the moment seem dispiritingly small and lacking in ambition, given the challenges of the age.”

 A new political era is now rapidly taking shape. National security and Britain’s geopolitical role in the world, once bottom of the priorities list, have moved to the top. There is now a more robust role for the nation state in the economy to concentrate on internal development and rebuild the relationship between government and citizen. The cities and their middle classes once dominant in English politics have lost their electoral advantage to the towns and provinces.

 In response to this new political era, Labour Together has published Labour’s Covenant a plan for national reconstruction. Its aim is to chart the way forward for a new kind of Labour politics based on its traditions, and to provide a comprehensive response to the Tories’ levelling up. 

 The plan sets out how Labour can repair and update the national economy to secure and spread more fairly the basic goods and services that sustain everyday life: the food we eat, the homes we live in, the energy we use, and the care we receive. It includes reforming the central state and the Union of the UK, and creating strong local economies and communities. Its environmental covenant recognises that human beings are both of nature and have responsibility for it. And it links together a strong, ready military capability and a continuing global pre-eminence in soft power with the plan for national reconstruction.

 The plan prioritises work and wages, families, and local places because they are the building blocks for a more secure and prosperous society. Covenant puts the practice of reciprocity at the centre of social and economic development that is both state led and from the bottom up.

 The Conservatives have stumbled in their ability to inaugurate a new political period. The invasion of Ukraine gives them a second chance but threatens the neglect of national reconstruction.  Labour’s Covenant sets out how Labour can take the lead by renewing itself politically, and drawing on its own history and traditions. At this turning point in European history, the country deserves a better future than the reheated politics of yesterday.