Recent days have been deeply traumatic for Labour. The predictable list of causes of our crisis have been rehearsed: poor leader, Brexit, right-wing press, the pandemic. Blame is apportioned and scapegoats called out. The most rancorous and ideologically intransigent dominate, crushing reasoned discussion. But these responses evade the reality that Labour’s crisis is deep and structural. The response to date from the party, including during the Corbyn period, has been to shrink from this reality and mistakenly believe that retail policy offers, or firmer ideological commitment, or trashing Boris Johnson and his personal life will make things better. 

It has been a repeated refrain that Labour has a mountain to climb before we contest the next election. In fact we must confront an absence at its heart. We have no shared understanding of Labour’s predicament and its causes, and so we have no politics to navigate the turbulent period we are living in. 

The party lacks an identity and purpose, and it lacks the intellectual and political resources to recover one. Faced with an existential crisis we have prioritised policy interventions, but these are interim measures to fill out local election leaflets. Without an analysis, without a political narrative and without a strategy Labour has relied on focus groups and Twitter for guidance. Each new culture war skirmish has blown the party further off course.

The party is listless and only seems energised by rancour. It looks stale and sounds tired. The tone and language of our communications are predictable, earnest and lacklustre. Having fallen out of relationship with the country we have forgotten how to speak to people. These limitations are aggravated by a tendency toward a patronising tone of ‘we know best’ born of a misplaced belief in the moral superiority of ‘Labour values’. Attempts to project a more patriotic, popular image are hampered by our cultural estrangement from the country and the absence of a wider story of Labour’s purpose.

And to deepen Labour’s crisis the Conservatives - more nimble, more focused on keeping power - are seizing traditional Labour policy areas. They are closing down Labour’s room for manoeuvre, leaving the party to try and catch up with its own politics – minimum wage, green industrial revolution, ‘levelling up’, skills, a new social covenant - while arguing that the Tories don’t really mean it, and Labour would do them better. 

Labour’s crisis

The origins of Labour’s crisis lie in the transformations in work, production and class relations underway since the 1960s. Margaret Thatcher’s political destruction of the labour interest accelerated the trend. The impact was profound. The model of economic growth that had built up Britain’s post-war national economy, driven by production and wage rises, ground to a halt. The electoral coalition that sustained it fell apart. 

Conservative hegemony was secured by a new model of growth driven by inflows of financial capital and household consumption increasingly supported by household debt. Underpinning the new liberal settlement was a cross-class electoral coalition of interests including the financial sector, and asset wealthy citizens concentrating over time amongst older generations. 

The Labour Party was reduced to a subaltern political force. Despite New Labour’s great success it accommodated itself to the liberal market growth model, civilising it rather than changing it. It was the 2008 financial crash that dealt it a hammer blow, but the Conservatives pinned blame for the crisis on Gordon Brown’s government. Electoral support in Labour’s heartlands was already leaching away and in 2010 Labour lost and has not won a General Election since.

Labour still retains the capacity to build a new national coalition around a model of inclusive and sustainable economic growth. But thinking up new policy offers or hyping up the anti-Tory rhetoric are distractions from the task of foundational change. Some will argue that Labour’s future now lies in a values-based progressive alliance. But it would only deepen the division between the broad meritocracy associated with Labour in the cities and university towns, and the rest of the country. Labour would be reduced to permanent political subordination. 

There is only one way to a Labour government and that is the hard way. The route out of Labour’s crisis lies in its name. It is the party of work and working people. Labour can make a start by committing to rebuilding the labour interest and restoring dignity to work. The labour interest has changed out of all recognition, but its function remains the same.

The party has to rediscover the art of politics – conciliating conflicts and differences – and build a new coalition of interests. It will mean building bridges to people and groups who will include those of a more conservative disposition and who do not necessarily share Labour’s values. 

To begin the long haul back to power the party needs to create a national story about what it stands for, what its purpose is and what kind of country we want to help create. Prioritising public services and welfare, a politics inherited from New Labour, will perpetuate failure. Labour’s core purpose is the reconstruction of the national economy geared to the diversity of the UK’s regional and local conditions and prioritising work and wages, families and households, and local places. The labour interest needs to be strengthened with a system of vocational education and skills training, workers on boards, trade union representation, and new forms of worker solidarity.

Rebalancing geographic power and wealth will require regional banking for investment, reshoring industries and supply chains, and an industrial policy which is built on partnerships between business, government, workers and local communities. And an economy that restores a better balance with the natural world recognises that human beings are a part of the living ecosystem and that we have become estranged from it and so are destroying it. We need a plan for the whole environment integrated into national, regional and local economic development.

The crucial assets of the national economy are strong local economies and cultures – the whole fabric of local histories, attachments, and inherited values that make up a familiar way of life and give meaning and a sense of belonging to individuals. And so the primary goal of public policy in a national economy is to secure the supply of basic goods and services which sustain the everyday life of all citizens. It begins with the everyday economy which includes the care of children and elders, health, education, transport, housing, utilities, renewable energy systems, broadband, retail, agriculture and food production.

The nation, its identity, its economy and its democratic polity are now central to politics in this new era. The nation state remains the best political unit for an effective popular democracy, for the management of globalisation and for international cooperation. Labour was once the party of the national economy, supporting the national interest of all citizens against unaccountable elites and private interests that work against the common good. We must become so again and in doing so learn from our recent electoral successes and build a new national coalition around a model of inclusive growth that creates national prosperity, good homes, and decent well-paid work that will sustain family life. 

A longer version of this article is published in the Summer issue of Renewal, www.renewal.org.uk