Viva La Reformation

Reform isn't sexy, it isn't easy to explain, it is an oft abused word. But if this government is to be at all successful it is going to have to tell a story of reform that hits the public mood.

This is what happens when you ask Midjourney to imagine Keir Starmer as Martin Luthor!

Editors note: After a fairly exhausting run up to conference I was hoping to get straight back onto a weekly schedule. Sadly norovirus made sure that wasn’t to be. So sorry this is a few days later than hoped!)

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It is wholly fair to say that the Tories have left behind a deeply broken country. If there was any one single drumbeat behind their utter walloping at the general election it was a sense that absolutely nothing works. That fourteen years of deliberate degradation of public services and the bodies that deliver them - from the NHS to local government - had left the country on its knees and that those who had caused that state of our state were both unable and unwilling to fix it.

That desire to get rid of the Tories was by far the biggest driving factor in the election. I believe part of the reason for some of Labour’s missteps since then have been driven by that sense that they still haven’t closed the deal with the electorate and so have to continue carrying out their very specifically designed caution strategy. Ironically, it is that caution that helped in opposition that has hindered in government. That is a lesson that needs to be imbibed and understood quickly. But how it is understood will set out a lot of what this government will face and achieve over its lifespan.

‘No sticking plaster’ politics has been a consistent mantra of the Starmer years. The sese that what needs to change is not simply individual policies but the underpinning approach is something I fundamentally agree with.

But while this is absolutely right in theory it is also almost impossibly difficult to do in practice. I think it is right that Labour tries to not just fix the problems left behind by the Tories. If we are truly a party of ambition, then we need to leave changes so deeply embedded in the country that they cannot be easily overturned. But this is a long term project that does not fit well with the immediate improvements the country needs to see to allow for the possibility of longer term change. This is always the challenge of democratic cycles for any party and it is a particular challenge on the left which finds itself so frequently retreating in to reaction rather than proactivity.

This will have to change, but - like implementing true reform - it will have to do so gradually. So how can that be done?