The Labour Party were last week offered an insight into their post-Blair future. In a Progress think-tank document, pro-reformers described Labour under Gordon Brown as an "out of touch statist leviathan". In the US, the analysis would have been summarised as "wake up and smell the coffee".
Although designed to stimulate debate inside Labour, Progress's analysis can be summed up as "Christ, the Tories could win!" But political discourse these days isn't as raw, or as honest, as would permit such a confession.
Instead, in what reads like a no-brainer bet, there's advice that the party can't win the next election if it fights it on its previous tactics. Oh, revelation! Clem Attlee knew that in 1945; Churchill didn't. Margaret Thatcher knew it in 1979; Jim Callaghan didn't. Tony Blair knew it in 1997; and the Tories didn't really comprehend it until 2005 and the election of David Cameron.
Labour's immediate problem, which Progress glosses over because there's no obvious answer, is that, like the post-Thatcher Tories, nobody inside Labour understands if there's safety looking back, or safety in trying to find a new direction.
Their route map, as bright as an underground sewer, has some ill-defined destinations. There's a post-Blair agenda, but it's not anti-Blair; there's building on the achievements of the past decade, and there's the narrative about the direction that needs to be followed. There's a desire to "resonate" with the voters and there is the planning for the "post-Blair fourth-term manifesto". The undercurrent than runs through everything is "Christ, the Tories could win!"
With Brown's message failing like a damp bonfire on a desert island, there's a hint from Progress that Labour's natives are restless. When Progress says "the public" need a clearer sense of the concrete priorities Labour are committed to, the translation reads "we want to know where the hell this is all going".
Commanders in a fix routinely look at past battles where the enemy screwed up. The Tories in 1997 thought "New Labour, New Danger" was enough. So next time, complacency must be banished.
Brown won't take kindly to Progress's assertion that Cameron's New Model Tories are no longer the "nasty party". Neither will he be comfortable that there's a whiff of civil war about Progress pinpointing the lack of progress.
So how will Labour's generals respond? Will they shoot the messenger, or run from the Cabinet Office shouting "Christ, the Tories could win!" Like any uncivil war, the answer depends entirely on which side you ask.
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