Today's media is littered with reports of yesterday's Cabinet at which it was proclaimed the next Manifesto will be the most radical in recent times.
At about the same time a message went out from Head Office to Labour's beleaguered constituency National Policy Forum and National Executive Committee representatives setting out a process for further consultation with Constituency Labour Party members via their representatives.
Being a practical person, I have been wracking my brains about how members at this late stage can have any sense of ownership over the policies that might persuade the electorate to give Labour another term in office governing the United Kingdom. Remarks like these reported in the Times this morning are not helpful:
Mr Brown said there must be no repeat of last week’s botched coup. The campaign must be not “about us and the Labour Party” but about the public’s priorities. Sources said that the words amounted to an instruction.
No, Mr Brown if you have been correctly reported, in the first instance you need to remind yourself about what resources you have available to fight this General Election. If Labour is to win, it has to win over its Party pdq. Your Joint Policy Committee opted to abandon a further meeting of the National Policy Forum. There is no Spring Conference. Volunteer members of the Labour Party are not readily inclined to being told what to think (though that doesn't stop some of the NEC, too many Party staff, not to mention some Labour elected representatives from behaving as though they are the 'thought police'.) At least Labour local government understands the importance of rallying morale and is holding an event on the last weekend of February.
Instead of barking orders, some of us think reality checks are vital. Save the Labour Party is experimenting with a short survey on Labour loyalties. It is currently running in an open version on Labourhome and Facebook, and closed versions in Bury North, Weston and the City of London Branch, plus the Labour Party's own Membersnet. A report of responses on Labourhome to date is available here.
Reading between the lines, if this survey were representative, and I would be the last to claim it is on the basis of responses to date, then you would be thinking:
If your most with-it members don't think the party can win, policies are important, want a say, but they haven't one....then a further decline in membership not to mention a crushing defeat at the GE is inevitable.
That's the challenge, and it will not be altered by hand-me-downs from Downing Street. We, the members, have to want to change the zeitgeist and get on with it as part of Team Labour.