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.WHO WINS DARES PAMPHLET 579 

W
W
ithin a matter of weeks Labour will be in 
government and Tony Blair will be Prime 
Minister. All the evidence suggests that 
people made up their minds about this a long time 
ago and are waiting only to convert this settled 
judgement into votes. They want the Tories out and 
they are prepared to give New Labour a chance. The 
'time for a change' theme that failed'to work in 1992 
will work in spades this time. We are not supposed to 
tempt providence by saying it, but I would not be at 
all surprised if Labour won by a mile. 

This view is now so unexceptional that it requires a real effort to register 
how extraordinary it is. In the whole post-war period there has never been 
another moment when a change of government was so confidently and universally 
expected. Not in 1945, or 1951, or 1964, or 1970, or 1974, or 1979: only in 
1997 will there be a real shock if it does not happen. It is an event that has 
already entered the thinking and .shaped the assumptions of mandarins and 
markets alike. 

· Yet what is even more extraordinary is that it was only yesterday, in the 
wake of the 1992 defeat, that Labour's final obituaries were being written. The 
future was to be found in Basildon; and just down the road at the University of 
Essex the clever analysts explained why Labour was finished. Texts were hastily 
produced on the emergence of a political system in Britain that was dominated 
by one party. Yet here is New Labour now making a plausible bid to 
become that dominant party. Those with a taste for such language might even 
describe this as a hegemonic project, as the party endeavours to become the 
new commonsense. The combination of Conservative disintegration and Labour 
renewal has transformed the landscape of British politics in dramatic and 
unexpected fashion. Itis a moment of quite exceptional opportunity for the centre 
left. 


It is seen as such by social democrats elsewhere. After years of intellectual · 

and political retreat, New Labour suggests the promise of a turning tide that 

may reach well beyond these shores. Whereas Labour once looked to social 

d~mocrats in Germany or Sweden for modernising models, the gaze is now 

firmly in the opposite direction. The hope is that 'new' Labour offers a model 

for a new social democracy. As well as a moment of opportunity, this also makes 

it a moment of exceptional responsibility. 

For if Labour does not win after all, or if victory is merely the prelude to 

further defeat, then the implications for social democratic politics are dire. If, 

having renewed itself so comprehensively, Labour still does not win, then it is 

difficult to know what else it can do or where else it can go. But if, having won, 

its project turns out to be a chimera, then it is difficult to know what social 

democracy as a whole can still do. It is as well to be clear about how high the 

stakes are. 

It is also as well to be clear about how unusual the position is in which Labour 
now finds itself. In its entire history the party has governed with a secure 
majority for only nine years. That fact should be repeated every day by those 
who think it is easy for Labour to win elections and re-elections. One of the fatal 
delusions of the old ultras on the left was to believe that the behaviour of Labour 
in power was the problem, instead of the failure of Labour to secure power 
over a continuing period. The present moment should not be confused with a 
permanent condition. 

Nor should the luxuries of opposition be confused with the tribulations of 
government. There has probably never been a more professional opposition 
anywhere than the current Labour Party. It has had lots of practice of course. 
But it is awesome nevertheless. The trouble is that it provides little real preparation 
for government. Opposing an unpopular Government is an unreliable 
guide to the politics of power in a world of fickle electorates and thin allegiances. 
The former invites professional spinners; the latter requires a political project. 

A Governing Project? 

Does New Labour have one? This has always been the key question. The answer 
to it >vill determine whether we are on the eve of a new progressive period 
in British politics or merely entering an interlude in Conservative rule. It is a 
question about whether the Blairite project for the Labour Party, including the 
audacious revision of Clause IV, is to be matched by an equally audacious project 
for the countr y. In my view it has to be, if it' is to fulfil its promise rather than 


ending in tears. Who dares wins certainly; but, in this case, it has to be who 

wins dares too. 

The danger is that the business of winning an election has inevitably preoc


cupied Labour's outlook for so long, subordinating everything else to it, that 

the even more difficult business of preparing a strategy for government has 

received less attention than it should have. Yet governments need bold themes 

and strong narratives if they are to sustain their purpose and win popular sup


port and understanding over a protracted period. The Thatcherite narrative, 

first told in the late 1970s, managed to endure until the early 1990s. New La


bour's needs no less force and reach. 

This suggests a further danger, of a critical and pivotal kind, to which atten


tion now needs to be paid and a response established. There may be those who 

think that a governing project can be assembled an~ sustained within the pa


rameters of spin-doctoring, media-managing, polling and focus-grouping. Itcan 

not. I am prepared to believe that these black arts are indispensable to the 

conduct of modern politics; but I am not prepared to accept that they provide a 

substitute for a governing vision. In this respect the example of the Clinton 

White House, now chronicled in all its unappealing detail, is a model to be avoided 

rather than emulated. An obsession with keeping the ship afloat can too easily 

diyert attention from where it is supposed to be going-at least until it hits the 

rocks. 

But enough of dangers. It is more important to grasp the opportunities. The 
fact is that we simply do not know what New Labour in office will turn out to be 
like. What we do know is that there is now an opening for the left centre in 
Britain of a historically significant kind. Whether we take advantage of it, and 
how we do so, is up to us. 

In crucial respects we are in uncharted territory. The old ideological paradigms 
have collapsed, along with the old allegiances that sustained them. New 
issues have appeared that confound the traditional categories of left and right. 
We are forced to think in new ways on a whole range of fronts. The immediate 
post-1989 atmosphere of market triumphalism has proved short-lived, but the 
succeeding atmosphere remains cloudy and confusing. Social democracy has 
finally been liberated from the guilt-by-association of communist tyranny; but 
it is not yet clear what this liberation will bring with it. 

This new environment can seem threatening and unsettling. The fashionable 
rhetoric of globalisation seems to promise, or threaten, an end to politics, as 
choices are dissolved and imperatives are asserted. That is precisely what is 
intended in some quarters, allowing the forces of global capital to roll back the 
social democratic gains of the second half of the twentieth century and claim an 


untrammelled sway. For those who want to feel gloomy; there is no shortage of 

material to feed on. But this is an abdication, not a response. 

The same is true, to come nearer home, of some of those on the self-styled 

left who affect a scornful disdain for the renewal of Labour. This kind of atti


tude is so ingrained in the traditional culture of the left that it should perhaps 

no longer surprise us. It is disabling nevertheless. Above all, it misses the na


ture of the moment and fails to engage with the opening that has been created. 

It has the great advantage of course that it dispenses with the need for any 

fresh thinking and can luxuriate in the mind-set of permanent opposition. Yet 

this is precisely the· moment when fresh thinking is most urgently required. 

It may be comfortable for some to believe that New Labour simply represents 
an accommodation to the New Right world that has been created since 
1979. Comfortable, but wrong. When business leaders line up to endorse the 
social chapter and the minimum wage, it suggests that arguments have not 
been abandoned but won, and that the limitations of the New Right project are 
increasingly apparent. The terms of political debate are changing, and Labour's 
renewal has been central to this. A new language of public interest, community; 
stakeholding and security has already succeeded in puncturing the airy certainties 
of market individualism. Of course the task now is to carry this project 
into government; but it is also necessary to acknowledge the importance of what 
has already been achieved. 

What can be said with certainty is that if Labour in government did turn out 
to be merely an accommodation with what went before then its days would soon 
be numbered. It would be conservative where it should be radical. Sooner or 
later, people would opt for the true believers again. What is distinctive about 
the New Labour project, which is why it terrifies the life out of the Conservatives, 
is that it is neither a return to old labourism nor an embrace of neo-liberalism. 
It offers a new synthesis -of market and state, public and private, 
individual and collective, rights and responsibilities-that opens up a distinctive 
political direction. 

But it is a project still in the making. Nor does it have a ready name (though 
elsewhere I have described it in a revived language of 'liberal socialism'). Tony 
Blair has frankly acknowledged its open and evolving character and issued a 
standing invitation to those with ideas to contribute to its further development. 
If only we dare say so, this is a time of intellectual and political excitement. The 
centre left has begun to win the battle of ideas again, after a long period of 
demoralisation and retreat, and is poised to translate this into political victories. 


The importance of the internal changes in the party is that they are the pre



condition for the party's ability to change the country. The former does not 
substitute for the latter, but instead enables it to happen. Far from removing 
the party's ideological underpinning, the translation of Clause IV into a statement 
of core beliefs and values provides a serious reference point against which 
to measure policies and achievement. The old statement, in all its irrelevance, 
could be safely ignored; the new one is a discipline and a challenge. And the 
biggest challenge of all is to develop the political project that connects beliefs 
and programmes. The old axiom about the left needing always to combine a 
fundamentalism about aims with a permanent revisionism about means has never 
been more appropriate. 

The Radical Centre 

It is becoming usual to describe what is being embarked upon in the language 
of a 'radical centre'. This captures the crucial sense in which it is not an accommodative 
consensus of lowest common denominators but a radical new departure. 
We may talk of synthesis and balance in describing it; but the product is 
something different and distinctive from its parts. Instead of state or market 
(the basis for the post-war 'mixed' economy), the radical centre thinks in terms 
of state and market. It deals similarly with a whole range of other fal se opposites. 
The left's critique of markets and the right's critique of states have usually 
been lost in a sterile dialogue of the ideologically deaf. Once combined, new 
possibilities are immediately opened up. Instead of merely thinking about intervening 
in, substituting for and regulating markets (the approach of the traditional 
left), the radical centre will also explore ways in which a clever state 
can frame and shape markets for public purposes. 

There is also the need to think radically about the state itself. For too long 
the left's approach to the state has seemed only to consist of an ambition to 
make it bigger. Not only this, but there has been a curious neglect of how well 
the state actually performs the public services with which it is charged. Itmight 
be imagined that those people who most believed in public services would also 
be those who were most energetic in ensuring that such services performed 
effectively and efficiently on behalf of those for whom they are provided. Yet, 
for a variety of reasons, this has often not been the case. It now needs to be. 

This means thinking about what the state should do and how it should do it. 
The radical right wants to 'shrink' the state as its central ideological mission, 
with public spending cut to an ever-diminishing share of GDP There is no evidence 
to suggest that this will contribute to economic growth, but it will produce 
a drastic erosion of public services and the principles upon which they are 


based. The radical centre must emphatically oppose this project with its own. 

However, if this is seen in merely defensive and reactive terms, it will eventu


ally fail. 

The central truth of traditional collectivism, that it is both sensible and equitable 
for a range of services to be provided through common rather than individual 
provision, remains as· relevant as ever. For most people the only way to 
get better health or education is to pay more into the common pot and it is a 
basic duty of the centre left to provide them with this choice. But this does not 
mean that old-style collectivism should be defended. People want more control 
over where their money is going, new mixes of public and private provision, 
and more diversity in what is provided. A new collective individualism will take 
seriously the task of enabling and empowering people to achieve their own purposes 
in their own way No single model or approach flows from this, but many 
should be tried. Forms of hypothecated taxation (with the NHS as a prime candidate) 
could reconnect what people pay into public services with what they get 
out of them. New mutual institutions could be sponsored to undertake a range 
of activities, nourishing a sense of direct ownership and breaking the individual 
I state dichotomy. The state could franchise out provision (including, perhaps, 
schools which are under-performing or failing) to new suppliers. As with the 
current discussions about the future financing of pensions and continuing care, 
opportunities for new forms of collective provision present themselves in relation 
to developing needs. The public service 'charters' need to guarantee enforceable 
rights rather than managerial aspirations. 

Only those who have come to believe that higher public spending (and higher 
taxes) is the hallmark of progressive politics will be troubled by this sort of 
agenda. Decent public services require decent taxes. Paying your taxes is a 
duty of citizenship. Those who have most should pay most. The battle to ensure 
that public spending gets its proper share of the proceeds of a growing economy 
is an important one. However, when all this is rightly said (and part of a growing 
confidence on the centre left should involve· feeling able to say these things 
without the constant fear of being misunderstood) it is no longer enough to 
define centre left politics, even if only-implicitly, in terms of a belief in more 
public spending and higher taxes. Ifit was, then the Conservative Government 
could be enlisted as supporters. The truth is that a bigger state is not necessarily 
a better state. To say this is not a retreat but an advance. 

The real retreat, and abdication, is not to be prepared to think our way 
through the situation in which we now find ourselves, The fact that Western 
electorates want ever better public services but seem ever more reluctant-to 
pay for them is not an invention of the right. Nor is the fact that states are 



constantly besieged by a mass of interest groups (not the least of which are 

state employees) demanding more money for their own causes. In the past La


bour has too often been content to construct its policies out of such interests, 

which. is why it has frequently ended so badly and with such disillusionment. 

The honest course is to acknowledge that Labour has access to no magic money 

and that spending more on one thing usually means spending less on something 

else. Then we may at last ge.t a serious discussion on the famous 'language of 

priorities' and decide what we would like the state to do more, and less, of and 

how we would like it to do it. 

Not to engage with this task is to ensure that the right's agenda will win. An 

old kind of social democratic collectivism had run into the sands. Unless a new 

kind of social democracy is now developed, the pass will have been sold. But 

this implies a commitment to radical imagination anti policy innovation. Having 

declared that a new kind of social democratic project of the radical· centre is 

available, Labour will have to demonstrate that it can be delivered. The tough 

issues -welfare reform, pathways into work, education and training, crime 


will yield to nothing less than radical approaches. 

This is why a project of the radical centre can not be merely a matter of 
trimming and tacking in search of some centrist middle ground. There may 
well be pressures for Labour to proceed in this deracinated way, both from 
within and from without; but to succumb to such pressures would soon prove 
fatal to the enterprise that has been embarked upon. There is a new consensus 
in the making, and Labour is its midwife. But it is a consensus for radicals: it 
must be actively delivered, not passively inherited. 

The same is true of the stakeholding argument that has already opened up 
much interesting new territory. It is an argument whose applications are still 
being explored, both in relation to business and social inclusion, but it is a tool 
for radicals. The fact that we have, for the first time ever, the prospect of Labour 
and business in constructive partnership is a matter of historic significance 
and much to be welcomed. But if it is not to be merely a passive partnership 
it needs to be seen as the basis for an active programme that combines economic 
dynamism and social decency, making British capitalism both more suc-
Gessful and more responsible. Only conservatives, in each party, will resist such 
a programme. 

New Labour, New Politics 

The argument so far has been that New Labour's project is distinctively new 
and inescapably radical. Although its outlines are now clear, the filling in is still 


going on. It represents the most serious and ambitious attempt anywhere to 
construct a viable basis for a centre left politics in the intractable and uncertain 
conditions of the modern world. It is full of risks and its success can not be 
guaranteed. But it has turned the intellectual and political tide in a way that 
seemed inconceivable only a few short years ago. In doing so, it has opened up 
exciting new spaces in the tired old landscape of British politics. How these 
spaces will be exploited, and what a new landscape will come to look like, is still 
unclear. What is clear, though, is that politics 1n Britain is on the move. 

It needs to be. Labour's new project implies and requires a new kind of politics. 
These are indissolubly linked. It is not just that it is hard to make new 
models with old tools, but that we have inherited tools that are wholly unfit for 
our purpose. Reinventing social democracy means reinventing politics too. This 
involves a mixture of styles and structures, with some elements that are common 
to contemporary political life elsewhere and some that are particularly 
relevant to Britain. There is a disengagement from traditional politics, with 
some people turning to specific issues and causes but many more simply giving 
up on politics and politicia~s altogether. Clever people announce the 'end' of 
politics, as a world out of control makes a mockery of those who pretend to be 
able to control it. A strategy ofsauve qui peut can easily come to be regarded as 
the only sensible life plan. 

This should be seen as an urgent challenge by everyone who clings to the 
classical ideal of politics as the activity through which free citizens engage with 
their common concerns in the public interest under procedural rules. Ifwe give 
up on this, or allow it to be subverted, then we really are in trouble. It means 
that politics is more than the swamp of particular interest and pressures; but it 
also means that conventional politics has to find new ways to connect with the 
vibrant world of groups and causes. A fundamental requirement is that the 
political process itself is not felt to be corrupted, or people will turn away in 
revulsion and contempt. Not the least of Labour's obligations will be to repair 
the real damage done on this front by the Conservative sleaze merchants. 

But the style of politics needs to change too. New Labour's project is designed 
for a world of radical uncertainty and flux. If it is to engage people honestly 
with it, it needs a vocabulary and style to match. The normal language of 
politicians is one of glib certainties, yet there is a disjuncture between this kind 
of language and the realities of the world in which people know they now live. 
The effect of this is that people simply stop listening. It is all too easy for the 
casual listener or viewer to spot a politician -the leaden blocks of words, the 
truculent certainties; the routine swipe at opponents -and the effect is instant 
disengagement. The sound-bite is the enemy of the conversation; yet it is a con


8 



tinuing conversation between politicians and people that is needed. The pres


sures to feed the daily media machine are intense and genuine conversation is 

difficult when words are reported not as contributions to a debate but as devia


tions from the utterances of somebody else. But a political project has to break 

through this if it is to keep its narrative going in a way that people will under


stand and identify with. The big themes and the middle distance should not be 

obscured by the myopia of the daily spats. Instead of being enslaved by these 

new restraints, new politicians should walk through them. They may well be 

pleasantly surprised by the results. 

The British case is particularly dire. Yah-boo adversarialism is a political 

model that is wholly inappropriate to the kind of world in which we now live. It 

would be thought to be outrageous if it was applied to other areas of life-such 

as running businesses or governing schools-yet it dominates the whole culture 

and structure of Westminster politics. It has a bias against political learning 

built into it and makes sensible co-operation almost impossible. It is embedded 

in the electoral system and expressed in the ritualised conflict that structures 

the House of Commons. Itpolarises every issue and inhibits independent think


ing. It is a model for a world that has gone. Labour should have no hesitation in 

saying that it wants to break it and replace it. 

Only in Britain does it come as a revelation or a heresy to suggest that it is 
quite possible for parties and politicians to cooperate and compete at the same 
time. The current discussions between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, following 
the example of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, are significant 
precisely because they break a sterile mould. The sky does not fall in and it 
looks like politics for grown-ups. Some in both parties may prefer the old games, 
but most know that there is a new politics in the making. It is long overdue. 

This also responds to the unique nature of the opportunity now available to 
the centre left in Britain. Ifthis opportunity is not seized with imagination and 
vigour, then history will rightly be unforgiving. New Labour's project requires 
for its implementation the building of a progressive majority and alliance that 
can sustain it for a generation. The means of putting this together are within 
our grasp. The collapse of old ideological and sectarian dividing lines has created 
a new political mansion with many rooms. A new progressivism taps into 
the early century inheritance of ew Liberalism and ethical socialism that represents 
our most fertile political tradition. The opportunity is glimpsed not just 
to win an election and end a long period of Conservative rule, but to construct a 
governing majority on the centre left that can finally end the much longer Conservative 
hegemony in British politics. This is not a moment for those without 
historical imagination or with an aversion to risks. 


It may seem that this is just a covert way of talking about electoral reform. 

In part (but only in part) it is. This will not be understood by those who are 

hostile to such change on the grounds that it will simply give excessive power to 

small parties, with sundry examples easily plucked from assorted places to make 

the point. This is a perfectly sound argument, and there are other equally sound 

arguments that can be called in aid too in defence of the status quo. The prob


lem with them is that they miss the moment that is now confronting us. For this 

is the moment when we are called upon to decide whether we want to make a 

serious bid to construct a governing majority on the centre left that will dish 

the Tories for as long as we can see. We may, of course, decide that we do not 

want to attempt this, that it is too risky, that we would rather go on hoping to 

get a turn from time to time at winner-takes-all politics. But if we do decide on 

this course, we should be honest in acknowledging the choice that has been 

made. It is a time for boldness, but if timidity is chosen instead we should at 

least know what we have done. 

Labour's referendum commitment forces the issue. Again, boldness demands 
early action on this front from a new Government, before the window of opportunity 
closes and politics-as-usual sets in. 'If it were done when 'tis done, then 
t'were well it were done quickly.' The signs are that this will not happen. But 
just as remaking Clause IV was generally thought to be impossible to do until it 
was done, so too with electoral reform. Both involve imagination and audacity, 
the former for the party, the latter for the country. 

Doing Politics Differently 

It is because it is for the country that the argument can only partly be cast in 
terms of electoral calculations. Electoral reform matters primarily because of 
its contribution to a new way of doing politics in Britain, in which voters have 

more choice and are more engaged as citizens in electoral participation. Likewise, 
the referendum commitment (on this issue as on o.thers) is important not 
just in itself but because of what it signals about a desire to explore new forms 
of democracy. It is odd that, while there is so much attention to the way in which 
economic and social change is forcing us to rethink our approach to whole tracts 
of policy, there is not yet the same attention to the way in which political life is 
also part of the same process of change. Inherited political structures, and the 
assumptions behind them, demand no less radical revision than we know we 
have to bring to other areas. More than that, it may well be that the ability to 
make enduring change in these areas will depend upon the extent to which the 
political process can be refashioned. 


It is from this perspective that Labour's programme of constitutional re


form should be approached. Ifit is seen simply as a shopping list of institutional 

fixes it v.rill come to grief. However, the importance of this programme should 

not be underestimated. It marks a historic advance in Labour thinking and its 

implementation v.rill almost certainly come to be seen as the most enduringly 

significant achievement of a Blair Government. Even those Tory defenders of 

the 'ancient constitution' must sense that the moment for reform has come, as 

their familiar song fails to elicit its traditional chorus. We are on the brink of a 

period of reform of our political system unmatched since the early years of the 

century. 

But the way in which this is approached is crucial, and v.rill determine its 

fate. Here, too, audacity is essential. As Labour is committed to a big programme 

of political reform, the only sensible approach is to talk and act big in relation to 

it. People need to feel that they are living through, ~nd are part of, a process of 

political renewal. Its elements have to sit together and form p_art of the v.rider 

enterprise. The practical questions of delivery and detail are real enough, but if 

Labour's boldest programme is approached mainly in a spirit of political man


agement it v.rill soon run into trouble. It can only be managed successfully if it 

feels like a democratic crusade. 

The issue of the House of Lords offers a good example here. The sensible 
approach for radical reformers is not to pretend that only modest adjustment is 
intended, or that deals can be brokered on the removal of the hereditary element, 
but to make sure that the issue is clearly seen as one of People versus 
Privilege. Only then v.rill it acquire the political momentum to see it through. A 
similar consideration applies to the proposed freedom of information legislation, 
on which early action is essential (not least because it would be an excellent 
'union' measure to balance the early preoccupation v.rith Scotland). This 
should not be presented as a straightforward piece of tidying up, converting 
voluntary codes into statutes on the basis of Bills that have been in draft form 
for many years, but as a historic moment when information ceases to be a grant 
from government and becomes a right of citizenship. 

The whole political reform agenda is so central to Labour's programme that 
it v.rill require strong focus and leadership of both a political and administrative 
kind. The diffusion of responsibility in this area needs to be overcome and a 
political and administrative structure put in place that is committed to the enterprise 
and its delivery. However I believe it needs two further ingredients, if 
the show is to be kept on the road. First, a bold declaratory (or paving) Bill 
setting out in general terms the new Government's reforming ambitions on this 
front would be of huge symbolic significance. Such a Governance of Britain Bill 

11 


would connect the disparate parts of the programme, raise its puhlic profile 

and provide a landmark reference point for an unfolding process of political 

reform. Second, the Nolan Committee on standards in public life should be con


verted into a proper Constitutional Commission, with new membership and 

terms of reference, able (like the Law Commission) to provide authoritative 

advice and recommendations on the mechanics of reform. Nolan has demon


strated that an authoritative standing commission can prevent politicians los


ing issues in the long grass. A Constitutional Commission would not only fill a 

gaping hole in British political arrangements, but would ensure that a reform 

process would be sustained over the long term. Once such a body existed, it 

would soon be impossible to imagine how we managed without it. 

What is essential in all this is to ensure that Labo.ur's constitutional reforms, 
important though they are in their own terms, are seen as part of a much wider 
ambition to revive civic life and reconnect people to the political process. This 
requires, paradoxically, both boldness and modesty. The boldness involves reasserting 
a belief in public action and public purposes after a period in which 
these have been systematically undermined. Stakeholding applies as much to 
politics as it does to other areas. But the modesty is a proper response to a 
world in which electorates have learned to have diminished expectations of politics 
and politicians and are wary of rhetorical guff. It may have been more exciting 
to promise a generation ago that a Labour government would deliver an 
'irreversible shift of wealth and power in favour of working people and their 
families', but it is more honest to promise what you have some realistic chance 
of delivering -and that is what people want. It is called serious politics. This 
does not mean a world fit for policy wonks, but a world ready for honest politicians. 


Of course reinventing politics means much more than this. The Conservative 
claim to have 'reinvented' government needs to be matched by a reinvention of 
politics. Both Old Labour and the New Right, in their different ways, set their 
face against any such enterprise. The former preferred a bureaucratic, top-
down collectivism; the latter prefers to replace politics with m~rkets. The recent 
leak of a document setting out the Government's approach to public services 
is particularly interesting in this respect. The headline reports focused on its 
plan to find cheerleaders (or the Government's policies from within public services, 
but the rest of the document is even more interesting. After recording its 
belief that 'the best way to improve public service is to put delivery in the hands 
of the private sector', it rejects alternative approaches that involve new forms 
of community or user representation: 'We were not attracted by the idea of new 
democratic bodies, on the model of community health councils. They attract the 


enthusiastic ... Options for establishing national users' panels or Citizens' Juries 
were not attractive'. In taking this line, the Conservatives are deliberately 
dismissing some of the most interesting developments currently taking place 
aimed at finding new ways to involve people in the making of public policy at 
different levels. 

It will be for Labour to sponsor and nourish such initiatives. The false dichotomy 
between 'consumer' and 'political' democracy peddled by theNew Right 
must be rejected. Both are important and need to be strengthened. Individuals-
as-consumers need to be equipped with what they require to make choic·es, ask 
questions, exercise influence and assert rights. Individuals-as-citizens need to 
have a role in shaping the provision that they receive as consumers. The field is 
wide open for a whole range of new initiatives on both fronts. In education, for 
example, parents still lack an effective complaints mechanism in relation to 
schools, while it would be possible to have elected !;ea! education commissions 
that could contract with schools for quality provision (whereas the Conservatives, 
in their desire to break anything resembling an education system, have 
revealingly failed to explore a purchaser I provider model here). 

Civics For Socialists 

The main point is that Labour in government should demonstrate an innovative 
zeal in its approach to institutional reform and democratic renewal. There 
is a real opportunity to rescue civic life from its moribund and cynical condition 
and equip it for the tasks it confronts. There could scarcely be a more important 
project. Unless we improve the process of governing, we are unlikely to 
get its product right. This means a more open and grown-up relationship between 
politicians and the people they claim to represent, sharing information 
and being honest about choices. For example, it is difficult to see how Labour 
can change spending priorities in the way it wants, reforming welfare and shifting 
the balance between social security and education, unless it first finds a new 
way of doing politics. 

Perhaps the best example of all is provided by the environmental agenda, 
that Labour claims will be at the heart of government. Unless we (and others) 
get this right, there may be no next millennium. Yet it positively demands a new 
kind of politics, because it is a new kind of problem. It is big, messy, complex, 
inescapable, cross-cutting. It demands political creativity and cooperation in a 
context where there are rarely straightforward 'answers' and with daunting 
competing pressures. It compels fundamental changes, yet for these to happen 
(and to stick) they must be indisputably legitimate. This in turn requires an 


open, learning mode of democratic politics, with a constant testing of 'expert' 
opinion as other perspectives are brought to bear. 

But tackling environmental issues in government requires even more than 
this. It demands 'wide-angle' policy making, explicitly building in complex 
choices over different time-frames, challenging traditional measurements of 
'costs' and 'benefits' and forcing redefinitions of the goals (quality of life?) towards 
which public policy is directed. It also challenges the conventional functional 
structures of government, demanding both separations (food from 
agriculture) and integrations (food and health, land use and transport) that 
reconfigure government in new ways. A green audit of government, with new 
mechanisms of the kind that Labour is proposing, forces change right through 
the system. The public trust in government that has been so eroded by food and 
health scares can only be rebuilt through new structures of trust of a conspicuously 
independent kind, with proper information rights as their cornerstone. 
This approach to government -strategic, intelligent, learning -needs to operate 
at a range of levels, respecting the principle of subsidiarity. The flowering of 
small-scale experimentation around Local Agenda 21 is an indication of what 
the right kind of stimulus can generate. More ambitious programmes will only 
get off the ground if initiatives are supported at every level, from grassroots 
explorations of educative and participatory mechanisms to concerted attempts 
to forge a new politics for Europe. 

Itis not just green issues that demand a response of this kind. They merely 
make the point most forcibly. New approaches to politics, and to governing, are 
required by the nature of the problems we face, the people we now are, and the 
world in which we live. A narrow departmentalism is wholly inappropriate in 
relation to the central issues that confront us; we desperately need structures 
that are capable of getting hold of problems in the round. The fragile status of 
all intermediate and independent institutions in a political system which is hostile 
to institutional pluralism and formal checks and balances has to be remedied 
if the policy process is to be opened up and made more intelligent. The 
lone example of the existing standing Royal Commission on Environmental 
Pollution could usefully be built on here, with standing commissions of broad 
(and less predictable) membership in a range of policy areas. Similarly, if a new 
version of the old central government think-tank is to be created, it must not be 
the secretive operation we had in the past, whose inevitably leaked thoughts 
were seen as a problem whenever they threatened to frighten the political horses, 
but an open forum for strategic and intelligent policy debate. 

There is no shortage of sites and opportunities to develop new ways of governing 
-and new forms of politics. Reforming the Commons and redesigning a 



second chamber offer ample scope for democratic inventiveness. The new communication 
technologies open up opportunities for civic interaction of an exciting 
kind. The conspicuous need to renew local government after 'the Tory 
nationalisation of Britain' (in Simon Jenkins's phrase) is a challenge to develop 
innovative democratic models and techniques at the local level (which provides 
the most fertile terrain). Reforming the quango state should be seen as an invitation 
to explore a whole variety of new ways in which efficiency, effectiveness 
and accountability can be combined. In all of this the emphasis should be on 
diversity and experimentation, trying things out in different ways in different 
places. This is why decentralisation is not a nice slogan but a prerequisite for a 
learning politics. Centralisation and uniformity are the enemy of experiment 
and innovation. A messy and untidy world requires a messy and untidy kind of 
politics. This may once have been a heresy on the [.eft, but it is a heresy that 
Labour now needs to convert into its governing orthodoxy 

This returns the argument to its beginning. As Labour approaches government, 
it is offering the prospec~ of a renewed centre left project and of a transformation 
in the way that Britain is governed. The success of Labour in 
government will depend upon the extent to which these prospects are turned 
into achievements. The argument here is that the two enterprises are intimately 
connected; and that both are radical in their implications. Out of the contradictions 
of market individualism, there is the promise of a new politics of community 
Out of an antique constitution, there is the promise of a new way of 
governing. But for promise to become achievement, political creativity and audacity 
are essential. Labour is about to road-test a prototype in a territory 
without reliable maps. Those who think they are in for a quiet ride should prepare 
themselves for a surprise e 

IS 


Tony Wright is Labour MP for Cannock and Burntwood and a member of the Fa 
Society Executive Committee. His recent books include Citizens and Subjects andSocia/i 
Old and New , and his Why Vote Labour ? has just been published by Penguin. 

This pamphlet, like all Published by the ISBN 0 7163 OS 79 8 
publicatio ns of the Fab ian 
So ci ery, represents not the 
Fabian Sodecy 
I I Dartmouth Street, ISS N 0307 7523 
collective vi ews o( the Society, 
but only the vi ew s of the 
author. The respons•biliry of the 
Society is limited to approving 
its pu blication a.s worthy of 
London SW I H 9BN 
Printed by the College H ill 
Press (TU) Ltd, London & 
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Design: Tony Garrett 
March 1997 
consideration w ithin' the Labour 
movement. 

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