It’s refreshing to see Ed Miliband insisting that Labour can still win the battle of ideas. It shouldn’t be too difficult since the Tories haven’t produced any – apart from confirming (as Cameron did again today) that they would make much bigger spending cuts much quicker. But I was disappointed the Miliband article didn’t actually offer any new ideas, merely a set of aspirations that nobody would disagree with. It really isn’t good enough to say, as Ed Miliband does:
“Nor is it easy to find anyone in our party who believes we should be just for Labour’s heartlands or only for middle England”. Absolutely, but what exactly are the fresh and striking new ideas that are going to enthuse Labour’s working class and middle class base? Is it making the bankers pay for the economic crash they caused rather than the victims, our voters, and if so, how? Is it reducing the unfairness in society which now grates on so many now that inequality has gone stratospheric, and if so, how? Is it building the affordable housing that 1.8 million on the council waiting lists are crying out for? Is it creating a million jobs – a Green New Deal – to shorten the jobless queues, and if so, how? That’s just a sample of the questions that need answering. People need specifics.

There are lots of ideas that would go down very well across the Labour Movement:
* the introduction of a PostBank as the People’s Bank,
* commit to retain public services in the public arena and to end the costly and disruptive marketisation programme,
* clear assurances on public sector pensions,
* bringing forward the directive on protection for agency workers,
* making blacklisting of workers a statutory offence,
* providing pensioners with a preferential tariff gas and electricity tariff,
* using the proceeds from a 50% tax on incomes over £100,000 to increase the State pension and minimum wage,
* increase social house building to an annual level of 100,000 within 5 years,
* reform the Carer’s Allowance to support low/middle income people providing more than 35 hours caring a week,
* provide a statutory short time working compensation scheme to allow companies to retain skills,
* commit to maintaining Royal Mail fully in the public sector,
* link the basic State pension to earnings,
* impose a windfall tax on bank profits and on excessive utility and energy companies’ profits,
* introduce a general anti-avoidance-tax law to recover most of the £25bn lost each year via tax havens.
Clearly whatever is chosen has to be carefully crafted and properly funded, but equally clearly it has to be sexy enough to galvanise the voting base. Any other ideas, anyone?

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