Advice from right field

Sometimes, interesting ideas come from the least-expected sources.

Here, for example, is Tim Montgomerie in The Times offering some to the Labour Party:

“Left-wing parties need to find a new identity for a movement that has been defined by redistribution for as long as Marxism elbowed Methodism aside as socialism’s main inspiration. What is the left’s new purpose? Intergenerational equality? Using new technology for progressive ends? Housebuilding to spread ownership of assets? Or even some renewed recognition of the value of Methodism’s voluntary mutuality?”

Answer: All of the above, but underpinned by an overarching analysis of the world as it is, not as it used to be or as we’d like it to be.

Interesting also that Montgomerie mentions the one thing that Labour under Miliband resolutely ignored: the potential of the Net to revitalise political action.