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New Labour is now reaping what it has itself sown: a cumulative weakening of the values of social solidarity, public service and altruism, which provide the invisible bedrock on which the electoral fortunes of the Labour Party ultimately depend.

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The belief in values of social solidarity and in the possibility of bringing state institutions, international as well as national and local, under active democratic control – along with addressing the problem of corporate power – is still there and generating new kinds of political initiatives on the ground. How can they be strengthened and built on?

At times like this, when all the mainstream focus is on Westminster politics, the left (especially the English left) has to guard against attacks of “phantom limb syndrome” – the pervasive assumption that the old labour movement levers of power connecting local activists with national politics are still effective or could become so. It’s a syndrome reflected in the endless debates about what to do about Gordon Brown, the calls on the party to do this or that, and so on. The truth is that New Labour (and the global economy) has all but destroyed these traditional levers, weak as they already were.

The left needs to attach new limbs by looking beyond its existing, inbred networks and engage in the variety of new (and often local) struggles and initiatives. These are organized through communities, geographical or otherwise, as well as (and more often than) workplaces. They relate to cultural symbols and identities more than narrowly political ones.

Many socialists are already working in this way to considerable local or issue-specific effect. There is a need to strengthen the exchange between them to give innovative content to the long-term political vision of a new kind of political force – and I consciously do not use the word “party,” for now.

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