The first King’s Speech of a Labour government since Clement Attlee will produce a firework display of plans, ideas and consequent journalism. Whizz! Bang! Crack and… splutter. But there is a prior question, below the eye-catching activity on all sides, which is belief. What are the fundamental ideas – what’s the faith – linking the activity together? To use a famous Tony Blair phrase, what is the irreducible core? Indeed, in 2024, is there one; is there a faith?
This is such an obvious question – what in Scotland we’d call a “daft laddie” question – that it is striking the answer isn’t immediately clear. Ministers slide away from the word socialism and clutch for “social democratic” without explaining what it means. Ideological tags such as “old Labour”, or “technocratic centrism”, turn out to be only a lazy way of relabelling the confusion. Thinkers such as Jon Cruddas have tried to archaeologise their way back through the layers of Labour history – through the soil of community-focused “blue Labour”, Crosland and Tawney – but have struggled to find a clear connection to modern times.
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