With its historical range and intellectual clarity, Gordon Brown’s speech on 16 August showed why he is one of Labour’s greatest sons. At its core was a lesson that his party has learned before and may have to learn again: “Making what we want – the desirable – possible means making the desirable popular and electable.” Late in the day, perhaps too late, he warned Labour not to let its epitaph be “pure but impotent”.
The Labour Party is in crisis. It has been destroyed in Scotland and routed in England and is threatened by insurgents of the left and the right. In common with many other social-democratic parties in Europe, it is struggling to adapt to the challenges, as well as the opportunities, of globalisation, mass migration, slimmer public sectors and strained government finances. After two successive general election defeats, Labour is in danger once again of becoming the natural party of opposition. Worse still, it could become irrelevant.
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