News from the New Party

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

A new narrative

This email from Alan Milburn and Charles Clarke to their fellow Labour MPs has elicited this interesting comment from Daniel Finkelstein:

Milburn and Clarke say that they believe that Labour's deficiency is the lack of fresh policy thinking and the lack of debate about the future...

But the real problem for Labour, and particularly for Gordon Brown, is not a lack of policy ideas. It is the lack of a narrative, of a story that links who they are to what they will do.

And this will not emerge out of a debate organised by two former ministers. It will be forged by a leader who understands how to relate his or own story to their ambitions in office.

We will all have to wait for the launch of the Milburn-Clarke website to find out what is really going on, but regardless of the motivation of these two former ministers, Daniel Finkelstein has a point - but it is of rather wider application than just to the current Labour Party.

It is true that New Labour, on the brink of losing its founding father, is all at sea. It has been in power so long now that it is no longer so new. The problem is not the lack of policy, but the lack of vision - and the inability of the current government to inspire. That is why Finkelstein talks about narrative: the old story is tired - the British people are ready for a new one.

The trouble is, they are not going to get it from the official Opposition either. David Cameron's Conservatives are busy creating the image but the substance is lacking. All the Conservative Party has to declare is its lack of resemblance to the Conservative Party prior to December 2005. The Conservative Party has no story to tell - no credible means with which to inspire the British people either to vote Conservative or to turn the country around. And the less said about the Liberal Democrats the better.

No wonder that the British people are increasingly disengaged from mainstream politics. The increasing proportion of people prepared to support parties other than the big three is a testimony to the search for an alternative way forward, which mainstream politics in this country increasingly looks incapable of delivering. The fact that all three main parties now locate themselves in such a small area of ideological terrain, and the real possibility of a hung parliament at the next election and coalition government thereafter, means that the ability of the democratic process to deliver meaningful change in response to the will of the people is in real doubt.

The New Party is entering the fray in order to deliver the fresh new perspective that is lacking in British politics today. We seek to present a meaningful, coherent alternative that does not rely on the quick fixes and false solutions offered by the political extremes of right and left, but which will face up to the real problems that Britain faces, and which the political mainstream either cannot or will not address. The New Party exists to provide the new narrative that is lacking in British politics. There is another story to tell. It doesn't have to be like this.

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