There’s a fascinating piece by James Purnell in this morning’s Guardian.  I haven’t made any secret of the fact that I think Purnell is one of the best thinkers in British politics today.  Today’s article does nothing to diminish that impression.  What he doesn’t acknowledge in this morning’s well crafted article is that a progressive Conservative government is more likely to achieve many of the goals he sets out than the Labour Party in its present mood.

It is interesting and notable that he points to Tawney as his Labour philosopher in chief throughout the article.  It’s anybody’s guess what the author of the Acquisitive Society and Equality would think of a Labour Government that presided over widening inequality and laid the groundwork for economic collapse with a catastrophic overdependence on the financial services sector in the South East of England.

Some of the ideas that Purnell puts forward in the piece would not be disagreed with by progressive Tories.  The belief that the state is too centralised is the cornerstone of so many progressive Conservative policies.  Or take the line on public services, “in public services, the lesson was that we should never be defenders of poor services…So we need to go further with reform in schools, for example, by having pupils apply to schools two or three years in advance, so oversubscribed schools can expand, undersubscribed ones be taken over, and new providers come in for pupils who don’t get a place at one of their chosen schools.”  Empowering parents and citizens is at the heart of a progressive Tory approach to public service reform.

Purnell is right when he talks about empowering society; empowering citizens; decentralising power; and tackling poverty.  Progressive goals are strongly held by progressive Conservatives – creating a fairer more equal society, in which power is less centralised and citizens are empowered are at the core of progressive Tory values.

Purnell must reflect that these progressive values have not moved closer after 13 years of ‘Labour’ Government.  During these 13 years, power has been relentlessly centralised; social mobility has stalled; inequality has widened; and citizens have never felt more disengaged or disempowered.  He should also reflect on the fact that there is no appetite in the Labour Party for the kind of reforms he advocates.

This morning, I listened to The Reunion on Radio 4 – today’s episode reunited the founders of Stonewall.

I have some very clear political memories of the 1980s – I remember the Falklands War, the miners’ strikes, the waves of privatisation (including the ‘Tell Sid’ ads), perestroika, the poll tax riots, the Berlin Wall coming down, Mrs Thatcher being deposed (even down to John Sergeant’s famous interview in the courtyard of the Paris embassy) but I have absolutely no recollection at all of anything to do with Section 28.  Maybe I have blanked that hideous prejudice in my party out of my mind – but I really don’t remember anything of it. I do remember Michael Cashman on Eastenders playing a gay character, but even then I don’t recall much of the detail.

I haven’t really thought about any of the issues discussed in Sue MacGregor’s excellent programme for a long time. For me and my generation, being gay is just normal. I have lots of gay friends, it’s not something I think about. But the fact that only twenty years ago, legislators were still trying to set gay people apart from everyone else shocked me.

Go and listen again. It’s a really good programme, it’s interesting and informative, and it shows just how far we have come – but also makes the point that there is much still to do.

I’ve just finished a fantastic book by Drew Westen, called ‘The Political Brain’.  Westen is a qualified psychologist, who draws from his clinical experience to give advice to people (particularly Democrats) engaged in political campaigns.   His analysis is based on the way the human brain works and how it processes information – using neurological ‘networks’ to help process information.  The brain is more likely to be stimulated by an appeal to human emotion than an appeal to detail.  Therefore, argues Westen, political campaigns should focus more on what is emotionally important to voters, rather than simply rolling out  shopping lists of issues.

He uses the Kerry, Gore, Dukakis and Mondale Presidential runs as examples of campaigns that failed to connect with voters on an emotional level and failed to fight back when their opponents successfully used emotional arguments against them (he cites the swift boat veterans and the Willie Horton case as examples).  

Reagan and Clinton are posited as excellent examples of politicians who understood the importance of appealing to emotion.   They successfully drew up a narrative based on emotions (in both cases, hope and expectation) and built an easy to relate to campaign around that.  During debates, they drew voters in by starting answers with easy to relate to anecdotes and then moved on to policy detail. 

The non emotional campaigners, however, bewildered the electorate with shopping lists of promises, as they were convinced that the ‘issues’ would be what elections are won on.  They used statistics as a crutch for a lack of emotion, losing any kind of empathy with voters in the process.   Pollsters and focus group ensured they stayed away from certain issues and let the opposition frame the debate.  In every election where the candidate focused purely on the ‘issues’, the candidate lost the election.

This gives us a very good idea of why Gordon Brown, with his obsessive lists and lack of any kind of narrative has been such a political disaster for the Labour Party.  It also illustrates why a Conservative Party that became too focused on dogma and not nearly focused enough on the real concerns of voters was left in the electoral wilderness for more than a decade.

It also shows us how we must continue to campaign for hearts AND minds.  We need to focus on how we understand, empathise and relate to voters’ problems and how we are going to ensure that voters and their families are better off.  We need to continue to remind voters that our concerns are their concerns.

Some fascinating opinion pieces in today’s papers.

In the Guardian, David Edgar, a former member of the editorial board of Marxism Today laments the failure of New Labour to help the working class.  In the article, he writes that:

“Since 1997, however, New Labour has cracked that alliance apart. It has presided over a growing economic divide between its two constituencies, abandoning its working-class supporters…  It has done nothing to reverse – indeed, it has continued to encourage – the emasculation of those institutions that working people built and through which they created a political alliance that created the welfare state.” 

The full article is worth reading.  Although his definition of progressivism is a pretty cliched and, dare I say it, unprogressive one.

David Aarnovitch is in typically top notch form in The Times today, pointing out the absurdity of the ‘compassionate’ release of al-Mehagri.  He points out the completely lack of repentance coming from the Lockerbie bomber and that the Scottish justice Minister would probably not extend his reasoning to allow the early release of other mass murderers. 

The full article can be found here and is well worth a read:

Rachel Sylvester’s Times column today is fascinating. Not for her views on the inner wranglings at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, so much as for her articulation of a clear dividing line between Left and Right.  Here’s the key section:

“The truth is that senior Labour figures disagree fundamentally about the role of the State in promoting fairness, the basic mission of any centre-left party.

“You see it in schools policy, where there is tension between those who want to encourage excellence and those who prefer to combat elitism. It applies to welfare, with questions about whether the benefits system should redistribute wealth or act as a safety net. There are implications in the debate about how much the Government should intervene on City bonuses. Even internships exemplify the divide: one week they are a middle-class ploy, the next they are exploitation of the young.”

This continues the theme of Michael Gove’s interview in the Telegraph yesterday, where he underlined Conservative aims to raise the quality of education for all, rather than just for a few.  I remember during the leadership campaign in 2005 having a discussion with a very nice man on the phone about what he saw as David Cameron’s failure to pledge to reverse tuition fees.  We eventually came to the conclusion that you could have fully state-funded university access for a very limited number of students; or if you charged fees (obviously with access to grants, scholarships and so on), you opened up access to everyone who wanted to go to university and could take the academic pace.

This is exactly the argument that we should be making in every area.  It’s not good enough for any government to abandon vast numbers to failure (see today’s SATs results for further evidence of Labour’s failings). But nor is it good enough for any government to simply level down in the hope that results will look better.

Levelling up, not down, is how to help people live better lives.