Labour are struggling to come up with a convincing alternative narrative to the one George Osborne is using to bulldoze his way through the public sector. That struggle is pulling the party apart into distinct factions.
Yet a big internal squabble might actually be, in the end, rejuvenating.
The factions in that fight a pretty familiar. There is the New Labour mainstream - a majority of which seem to be more Brownite than Blairite, following the school of Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband. These are the moderates and modernisers, represented by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper in the leadership race.
To the Right of the mainstream modernisers there is a faction that has gone under several names, Blue Labour and One Nation Labour in particular. This is the wing of the party, represented by Liz Kendall in the leadership race, that wants Labour to embrace working class conservatism, along with the Far-Right themes of anti-immigration and clampdowns on welfare.
It is also clear that there is a small but significant number of Labour MPs, at the moment with Jeremy Corbyn as their ringleader, who are significantly to the Left of the Labour mainstream. They have stood here against welfare cuts here and Corbyn's leadership campaign has firmly embraced the broader anti-austerity movement.
How this division is healed will depend upon a lot of factors, internal and external to the party. But it is a state of affairs that must ultimately be settled. Labour's determination to be a big tent has largely suppressed or alienated voters on the Left, driving many of them away - particularly in Scotland.
If the moderate or Right-wing faction wins out, how much longer will its Left-wing remain bottled? If the Left-wing wins out, will the mainstream fall in line?
In the face of these issues, there are predictions that Labour faces an extended stay in the wilderness (Moss, 2015). One of the few ways back would encompass a major change of direction: embracing the proposed progressive pact in England and embracing electoral reform that can ensure representative government, showing that Labour is finally working to work co-operatively with others on the Left.
Yet for many progressives, who would have been taking hope from Caroline Lucas' progressive alliance proposal (Lucas, 2015), there will have been an ironically collective sigh of despair when Labour's tendency to give in to populism struck again - this time in the form of Harriet Harman (Wintour, 2015):
"We cannot simply say to the public: you were wrong..."
Why not? What exactly is the point of an opposition party, many on the Left will be asking, is if it isn't going to oppose?
If the party are just going to argue for the same policies as the Tories, differing only on who is better equipped to administer them, then are Labour and the Conservatives anything more than two squabbling factions of essentially the same party?
And if the party is just going to be a reflection of popular opinion, then does it even stand for anything? Where is the belief, the ideology, the theory?
That only produces an image of a Labour Party more interested in power than standing for something. It wants to build trust through sycophancy, not through ideas, theory, facts and reason.
While in the US, Bernie Sanders is proposing a push of support for trade unions, worker-owned co-operatives and the living wage (O'Hara, 2015), Labour are getting themselves in a political twist over whether or not to support Conservative cuts to welfare set to have a disastrous effect on the poorest (White, 2015).
Labour's next leader has to find a way to navigate these splits, these contradictions and the party's overall idealistic emptiness (Hawkins, 2015). There are internal rifts to heal and the Centre-Left of the political spectrum filled with alternatives to navigate. The leadership race itself, with its warts and all exposure of the party's factions is a helpful start in the process of reconciliation.
For the external matters, co-operation is surely Labour and the Left's best hope of opposing the Conservatives on big progressive issues like human rights and electoral reform. For the party's internal struggle, the answer can only be found by digging deep. By looking for the roots of what unites Labour supporters of all stripes and all those allied to the socialist and democratic movement.
To, humbly, get the ball rolling, here one word that offers a place to start: Justice.
Liberals have liberty. Greens have sustainability. With these words, and the ideas they represent, they can construct coherent tests for any policy. Labour seem to lost their connection to a simple and fundamental idea that would underwrite social democratic and democratic socialist analysis, and so their ability to construct a meaningful and consistent narrative.
The new leader of the Labour Party, to be announced in September, has to reclaim a unifying idea - like Justice - if they are to lead the party back out of the fractious wilderness.
References
Frances Perraudin's 'Welfare bill: Labour is in emotional trauma after revolt, says David Blunkett'; in The Guardian; 21 July 2015.
Stephen Moss' 'Labour realists should embrace Jeremy Corbyn and enjoy their spell in the wilderness'; in The Guardian; 17 July 2015.
Caroline Lucas' 'My challenge to Labour: embrace a progressive, multiparty politics'; in The Guardian; 17 June 2015.
Patrick Wintour's 'Anger after Harriet Harman says Labour will not vote against welfare bill'; in The Guardian; 12 July 2015.
Mary O'Hara's 'As UK progressives run scared on welfare, the US left fights back'; in The Guardian; 21 July 2015.
Bernie Sanders' 'Agenda for America - 12 Steps Forward'.
Michael White's 'Labour’s welfare confusion mirrors society’s wider dilemmas'; in The Guardian; 21 July 2015.
Ross Hawkins' 'Labour welfare row underlines next leader's task'; on the BBC; 21 July 2015.
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