The wise heads making careful analyses of when the general election might be, plotting hypothetical growth against likely drops in inflation and interest rates, splicing in the weather and the vibes, are missing something about the current government. It doesn’t really make decisions; decisions are forced on it, by crises it didn’t see coming because it was too busy trying to create chaos elsewhere. We will save ourselves a lot of time if we just assume the election is tomorrow. What would a great run-up look like, for those of us who, ideally, would like to see the Conservatives defeated? How could a challenger candidate, who for the sake of argument we will call Keir Starmer, put hope in our hearts and engender a sense that something different, something constructive, something meaningful might come out of Downing Street?
It would be great to see Starmer start with a presumption of love. Certainly since the start of the coalition government, arguably since David Cameron became Conservative leader, the drumbeat has been to punish the out-group. Benefit claimants and disabled people – remember when they crashed the economy? Then public sector workers, then migrants, then the metropolitan elite, then migrants again, then the wokerati, then lawyers, then trans kids, then refugees, then the civil service, then (checking notes, as it hardly seems possible) homeless people, then migrants again. The rhetoric might jump around from lordly censure to outright hatred but it all has the same lacuna where the engine of society should sit.
Irrespective of the size of the challenge, we can solve problems because we love each other. We do not want to think of kids arriving at school hungry, or adults, whether they are a nurse or a delivery driver. And while we are here, we do not want people to live with black mould and cockroaches while their landlords, unfettered by conscience or regulation, hike their rents. And the reason, deeper even than any innate attachment to justice, is that we love each other. All resilience, zeal and creativity come from ordinary (but also extraordinary) civic love, and so the language and logic of love must be at the centre of any argument. Performing cruelty to mood-match the Tories won’t work, and is boring to watch.
When Rachel Reeves promised to be Britain’s “first green chancellor”, the optimism of that was not only in the language of priorities – finally, a government that might take the climate crisis seriously – but the glimpse of prosperity. What if reaching net zero might make the nation richer rather than poorer, might deliver high-quality jobs rather than strip them away, might alleviate rather than intensify the pressures on households? Since then, there has been a rush to stupefy the conversation and turn it into one about 15-minute cities, or Ulez, or low traffic neighbourhoods, or whether commuters have had their human rights breached by Just Stop Oil. Labour needs to resist the call to idiocy and stick to its vision.
On housing, meanwhile, it would be an incredibly useful opening position to describe the reality people are living in: private renters in fierce competition for homes that will cost half their post-tax income, and social renters languishing for years on waiting lists while councils have their housing stock eroded by senseless right-to-buy rules. There is plenty a party could promise that would make a material difference to people’s lives, from boosting tenants’ rights to regulating rents. Labour doesn’t have to side with landlords in order to sit at the big boys’ table.
It would be a great start, on health, to ally overtly with the workers who are keeping the NHS upright, although this does entail listening to them. As a broader principle, Labour needs to stop backing away from conversations just because they sound expensive: the most expensive state imaginable is this one we are living in, run by incompetents, rife with cronyism, chasing false economies for headlines. Anything would be more fiscally responsible.
In 2024, realism for Labour doesn’t mean dialling down the ambition: realistically, it is going to win anyway. Why not win big, with a song in your heart?
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
