Sunder Katwala had a brilliant rant yesterday at the Fabian Society’s Question Time fringe (alongside Zoe Williams (Guardian), Jon Cruddas MP, Ed Balls MP, Gaby Hinsliff (Observer) and Fraser Nelson (Spectator)).

His point was this – there is little point in the government trying to attack the Tories at a time when their own credibility was at such a low ebb. This much is spot on – the approach underlined by Brown and even Prescott (who unveiled a GO4 campaign this weekend) is to try and win the next election by exposing Cameron’s Conservatives as the ‘same old Tories’. Given the electorate is already switching off New Labour – why should they take attacks on Tories seriously?

What the government should be doing, Sunder added forcefully, is laying out a positive new vision that contrasts with Cameron’s lame ‘broken society’ narrative. And this is the problem with the plotters and doubters of Brown – they know they want to get rid of their leader but have no alternative vision to push. Intellectually, they’re as much in the wilderness as Brown himself.

I agree with all this, though Sunder thinks my view that the story should be ‘Westminister isn’t Working‘, won’t work because its too negative. As a secondary narrative perhaps but not the primary one, he says.

I’m not convinced because you can say ‘WIW‘ and lay out a radical and postive vision of how the political system could be made more responsive to people, and acknowledging New Labour had made mistakes.

Will Progress go down with Brown
Who knows if Progress apparatchiks are really plotting against Gordon Brown – but one thing is clear, the ideological divide within the party is now clearly defined.

The Progress position has been for targetting swing voters and pushes the view that the problem isn’t with the New Labour project but in communicating the party’s messages across effectively. According to them, the Cameron Conservative modernisation project should not be taken seriously and an electoral strategy should be tightly disciplined, on message and focus on exposing the same ‘nasty old Tories’ in sheep’s clothing.

In contrast, Compass and Fabian Society advocate reaching out to core Labour supporters through initiatives (and taking full advantage of populist anger against reckless financial companies), re-building the grassroots, and taking the Tory modernisation project seriously – as an intellectual and re-packaging exercise (see Jonathan Rutherford’s recent piece).

Brown has staked everything on the Progress position. There will be no grand new vision – only discipline and ‘the message’. There will be no real attempt to reach out to core voters less New Labour look like Old Labour, and the aim is to make the opposition look like the same old Tories.

I said earlier that if and when Labour lose the next election, the ideological fight within Labour will be broadly between Progress and Compass. If Brown, or his successor of the same ilk goes down, then the battle is over before its started – it will be obvious that the Progress electoral strategy won’t bring back Labour once its out of power.

I’m back from the conference now. Sunder and his team are blogging the conference furiously over at Next Left. He’ll be posting some stuff here too.

1. Pickled Politics » Online Activism in the UK

   [...] Activism in the UK by Shariq on 7th October, 2008 at 8:00 am     Sunny has touched on the internal battle between the Progress (New Labour) and Compass (Progressive) [...]