The Observer's Gaby Hinsliff is chairing the opening event of the Labour party conference this year with a Question Time event. The panel consists of Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP, Ed Balls MP, Angela Eagle MP and Sunder Katwala, General Secretary of the Fabian Society.
So if you can't make it to Brighton but want to ask any of those people a question, post it here and the blog will pass them on to the chair. We might even post the answers ...
Meanwhile, the greatest minds in the land, and a few lesser ones in the Observer, are pondering what on earth the Labour party is to do in its third term. The options look narrow for various reasons. First, there is the succession. The Treasury would rather have ownership of any big flagship projects on the assumption that Gordon will be in charge before too long. No. 10, meanwhile, wants flagships galore, if for no other reason than to secure Tony's legacy. Net result: flagships in dry dock, unbuilt.
Plus, there is the broader startegic dilemma: to forge onward down the Blairite path at teh risk of further alienating core support, or to take the third term as a mandate to do bolder things on social justice and equality that New Labour was too timid to do in 1997. Which of those options you take rather depends on how you interpret May's election result. Did Labour win despite or because of its unbowed Blairite agenda.
There is a fine distinction between those who think Labour must regroup around its core principles and those that think it must embrace permanent Blair revolution. Roughly speaking this dilemma is reflected in the nuanced differences between Polly Toynbee's piece in today's Guardian and Liam Byrne MP's new pamphlet for the Fabian society. Byrne also summarised his view in the Guardian earlier this week. His is a hard-headed strategic perspective:
The Lib Dems made gains in seats with unusual electoral makeup. The "urban intellectuals" (what demography wonks call Mosaic social class E) made up 43 per cent of voters in Cambridge and Manchester Withington and 46 per cent in Hornsey and Wood Green. We must win back these natural Labour voters, who include many Guardian readers, but across the country they are just 4 per cent of the electorate and can't be the basis of a national strategy; if we win back Cambridge but lose such seats as Crawley, Dartford, Selby and Gillingham, we will be out of power again. The battle of the supermarginals will decide the next election. In our 100 most marginal seats, the Tories are second in no fewer than 88.
In other words, a Labour tack to the left might reassure some of its core supporters but that wouldn't be of much use because the party would be out of power.
Polly Toynbee, meanwhile, takes the principled view:
[Blair] approaches the voters as an unchangeable force: selfish, demanding, and impervious to hope beyond self-interest. He doesn't try to make the weather, he surfs it. He talks of the need to assuage public concern over antisocial behaviour, but never considers that where there is an ideological vacuum, the public will fill it themselves.
In other words, voters also punish unprincipled opportunism and drift.
So there stands New Labour, embarking on its historic third term, eight years into the revolution, short of ideas, divided over strategy becalmed ...
