So, according to the Guardian we have a new overlord.  Well, consolidation on the left is always good so well done.

But please, purleeease, sort out web kit support asap.  I can't even type into the box on my iPhone.

So, I guess Obama has a narrative, he is 'change in Washington', against special interests, and bringing brains back to the White House, he is the anti-Bush.  Cameron's narrative is 'setting people free', liberating, lifting the yoke without hitting the poor.

Watching Question Time tonight, it struck me that there is actually a narrative for the Labour Government.  It goes like this: schools don't work, hospitals don't work, taxes are high and rising and we're not the 'free country' we used to be.  It's the context for Cameron's narrative.  He says 'government is the problem'.

I don't agree with this, but does it matter?  Government policy remains mostly unchanging and Blairite-conservative.  There'd be nothing wrong with that in principle if it worked, but it is the fundament to the narrative, and politically, it stopped delivering a few years ago.  

The narrative can't be changed if the policies don't change.  There's no point Milliband saying that taxes are falling if the narrative is that Labour is about stealth taxes.  When did Labour ever say taxes were rising in the first place?  And there's no point changing policies if we don't set out what sort of country we are trying create to counter the narrative, we just won't be believed - no change, no change to vote for.  Voters only vote for the status quo if they are content.

I think this is the problem for New Labour.  After 11 years, the vision for the country must be this one, as it is now.  We didn't nationalise/re-integrate the railways (Tom!) or sort out public transport, we didn't build enough social housing and we haven't solved the 'choice' problem in public services.  We haven't 'drawn a line in the sand' and we haven't set out a new direction.  We are 'status quo'.

What should our vision be then?  I was never a socialist, by that I mean I don't believe in a socialist utopia, or at best, I don't understand what that means (total state/public control, total economic equality?).  But I don't think we can ignore equality, people want to keep up, they don't want an enormous gulf and associated social division.  Wealth accumulated in property and passed on in inheritance does not help aspiration, you can't aspire to what you've already got.  Fat cats are already fat, should the state indulge them till they burst leaving nothing for the poor?

We're are rooted in the left not the right. We should be for meritocracy but against excessive inequality; for publicly owned and (at least) controlled services and institutions but against excessive state bureaucracy; for popular liberty and democracy and against excessive state authority; pro the environment; pro peace, and internationalist.

Looking at the blog title here, that 10-year old bad joke, the punchline being lack of guts to implement it, is there really nothing else Labour can say?

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/24/npoll124.xml

Well done Gordon, the Tony Blair policy continuum is going gangbusters!  Full steam to 2010!

 Holy Smokes!

What componds this for me, is the Labour MPs who come on TV and try to qualify and explain away what's happened.  This is a Black Tuesday moment.  Not good.