Labour’s Last Best Hope

Posted: September 17th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Britain, Politics | Tags: , , | No Comments »

I’m a guest blogger today at one of my favorite sites, Brit political blog Fast Talk Express. The occasion is the one year anniversary and 100th post. (Full disclosure: the Fast Talker is a good friend). In my post I offer up some advice for Labour as it navigates, and looks beyond, the upcoming 2010 elections.


“The conventional wisdom on the failure of Blairite Labour is that, in trying to attract centrists on the old political spectrum, it alienated its traditional base and split the party into sectarian feuds. I believe the failure is better seen along the new political spectrum—Blair positioned Labour in the middle of this new axis, trying to retain the old coalition of economic statists and social progresives, while courting simultaneously defense hawks and free-marketeers. The result was just incoherence.

Instead, Labour should wear its roots proudly as the party of institutions, making the offensive, not the defensive economic and social case for big government as well as big defense when needed. It should not abandon social progressives but it should outshine Cameron in his own professed quest to leave the culture wars be. Instead, Labour should fold social issues under the mantle of government institutions, making the economic arguments in favor of expanding rights, for example, and accepting that conservative social institutions–including big business–sometimes have meaningful contributions to make.”

Read the rest of the post here.

Leave a Reply