What Labour Is For A New Foundation for Purpose and Direction

"If progressive politics is to have a future it needs new diagnoses of the perils of our times and new strategies for confronting them. What Labour Is For provides these in an engaging and arresting analysis which is both fresh and radical. It deserves to be widely read."
- Andrew Gamble, Professor of Politics - Emertius, University of Cambridge

"Who belongs to the nation, on what terms and with which shared stories and values, is a defining political issue of our time. What Labour Is For is an original contribution to that debate."
- John Denham, former Labour Cabinet minister and Director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics

The post-war settlement that gave Labour its purpose has broken down. Across Europe, social democratic parties are losing ground to the populist right. Labour faces the same pressures, and the old answers no longer hold. Reviving the 1970s will not work. Nor will recycling New Labour.

What Labour Is For sets out a progressive-realist proposition for the party. It explains why the settlement failed and how it can be renewed. It answers the populist right and makes the case for the welfare state. It stays rooted in Labour's own history, from Hardie and Attlee to Crosland and Blair.

The book then applies that thinking to eight areas. Some are where Labour's ideas are weakest. Others are where the next election will be decided.

The argument was developed through two forums of centre-left thinkers and refined through feedback from senior party figures. It applies the framework of Nathan J. Murphy's Liberalism That Wins, which grounds politics in the science of human nature.

A short, direct read for anyone who wants Labour to know what it stands for.