Paul; your key argument I couldn’t have done justice to. When it comes up here, I rarely give a categorical opinion as it is still something I’m divided upon myself. I suspect it is something we’ll revisit again in the future – and perhaps Chapters 2 through 6 will provide the occasion.

As a point of general note, isn’t there a Labour History Group? Perhaps we should petition them for research on an issue like the statistical ones we have been discussing.

Paul, one problem with Labour revival as a party for working people is as I said in my comment above “New Labour’s gleeful embrace of neoliberalism has meant that the Party will find it harder to appeal amongst traditionally supportive groups”. You mention the Greens as a rival for leftwing support – though not a vocally socialist or working class party the democratic nature of policy-making & pro-worker policies make it that much easier to endorse.

In my own post there are certainly some rough edges, both because it’s one of those that have been hanging around for a while, getting a bit stale, so I just got it battered out on the train to get it out of the way. As you note, the more substantive issues of what we do are still to come, but I felt a where we’ve come from post was needed first (and chapter 3 will be another one). As such, and as part of a series, it falls between two stools – between rigour in analysis and the ‘call to arms’ I’m seeking to make.

Given this, the structure-agency aspect is, as you’ve seen, somewhat underdeveloped, and you’re right to pick up that the structural explanation I seek to give for why the government has failed is actually agential in its assessment of collective left failure, and would benefit from the analysis you then provide of the structural constraints the left itself suffered. This though risks providing an excuse for the left, on the basis that the powers were against them, and is not in keeping with the call to arms, and the call not to forget how we got it wrong 15 years ago (in fact I was abroad, but I’ll stay with the collective ‘we’).

Yes, certainly the cards were stacked against the left, but I think Duncan’s agential assessment of how they were stacked is useful, not least re: chapter 4 on how we might ‘unstack’ them.

As regards the membership type and numbers, I think both you and Duncan are again right. The last in the series of three studies of membership in fact takes as its title ‘the transformation’ of the Labour membership in the early/mid 90s. However, as Duncan suggests, many of these treated Labour membership as a disco, and left when the bright lights came on. I think what the study fails to see that the ‘real’ membership’s core values and beliefs remained pretty constant, though their profile and way of expressing it was suppressed.

Yes, some of them voted for Clause IV removal because they were hoodwinked into thinking a more open debate had emerged (or else they just didn’t vote), but the vote was swayed by large numbers of newer members then along for the ride, especially in constituencies like Oxford, where indeed the brash wannabbees saw their chance to shine in NL, irrespective of any core beleifs they might have had, or not.

I’m interested that you didn’t feel the need to review in depth my key argument that Labour is still the place to be to effect change from the left, as opposed say to the Socialist Party, given the ‘in or out’ of Labour arguments that have raged at TCF. Perhaps you’re just a bit fed up with the repetition?.

I’ve seen and commented on speeches of Cruddas which read like a Blairite manifesto – a lot of hot air with a sidehelping of windbaggery. Yet what has Cruddas done? He’s not a Trotskyite advocating that we’re in a period where the minimum programme will serve us more effectively, he’s a career politician who built that career off the back of a Party machine which viscerally hates dissent. The ‘minimum programme’ (if what Cruddas wants even amounts to such) and pseudo-Gramscian babble with which you seem to rejoice in couching his policy is no different to the game Brown and Blair played with the whole electorate prior to 1997.

He’s not going to save the Left; if he ever becomes leader, he won’t even be part of the Left. It is worrying that so many Leftists have talked themselves into thinking of Cruddas as anything other than what he actually is – and what he doesn’t mind appearing to be when not speaking to Left activists – Blair Mk II.

We can see the same thing happening with Obama in the US. On both sides of the Atlantic, the capitalists have worked out how to prevent workers’ anger bringing a pro-worker leadership to power – offer up something messianic.

Neither Obama or Blair had much substance during their campaigns (hope, change, etc.) and as Duncan points out, what often holds people back is that if in the media the chosen ones are given little criticism, you risk damaging the party as a whole by speaking out or asking awkward questions.

It strikes me that Cameron is having a problem with the UK’s doting population – so many people have seen his shtick before with Blair and can’t forget where it’s led. When I was growing up under the Tories we learnt from our family and community the necessity of kicking them out, of voting Labour. New Labour’s gleeful embrace of neoliberalism has meant that the Party will find it harder to appeal amongst traditionally supportive groups – even Cabinet members are unconvinced Brown’s rhetoric on Tory cuts will salvage a minority government after the general election.

A lot of Labour activists forget the essential difference between the party that brought in the NHS and the party that brought us a minimum wage. Labour then was a party led by people committed to reforms out of belief – now we have a party that when it carries out progressive measures its out of necessity, like nationalising the east coast rail route.

With regards Cruddas, I feel we can forgive the past without forgetting it. The reason he continues to subordinate his stated beliefs to party loyalty is because he lacks confidence in his own ability to challenge the leadership – he says Labour should be bold, but finds it difficult to act on this. Consider, he was very good defending the Lindsay strikers in the media – pointing out the issue was neoliberal EU laws. But this was reactive rather than proactive.