We really, really, really do not want to add to the overwrought, over-excitable, neurotic and nerdy commentary on the Sun's shift from New Labour to the Conservatives ... but duty calls. Let's keep it simple?

False Dawns

In a country of 44m voters, the Sun has an average daily circulation of just under 2.9m on a very good day (end-2008). It reaches directly only 6.5% of the population at best.

Of course, the fact that the Sun is not backing New Labour is now known to very many more people than this relatively small group but it is a moot point whether the rest of the population are going to be much impressed.

We need to unpick the hysteria surrounding a spoiler announcement and ask whether the British public have very much in common with an increasingly closed political and media elite whose prime characteristic appears to be its own self-referential agenda.

If you are on Twitter, you will probably have noticed the flood of excitable Tweets about this 'great event' - an excess of political emotionalism that reminds us of the French Third Republic at its most asinine.

But if New Labour suffers from this announcement, it will not be because the Sun can speak unto kings and make them tremble but because New Labour's historically craven attitude to Political Editors has returned to bite them.

New Labour 'strategists' (an inappropriate word for the motley crew who have succeeded the original winning team led by Mandelson, Gould and Campbell) created a narrative that gave the media far too much power in its drafting.

Between the mid-1990s, when manipulation of the newspapers was a critical factor in acquiring power, and today, New Labour lost track of important changes in mass communications and it has failed to create a communications plan that would eliminate the stranglehold of editors over the political agenda.

High Noon for New Labour

New Labour has far more fundamental problems than communications, of course. In our view, its socio-economic strategy may well be in ruins and, at best, taken a bad knock. Less contentiously, it looks tired, it has a string of failures to its name and it seems unable to connect with the population.

We still think that New Labour might recover to do creditably in an election, based in part on a slight recovery, in part on electoral distrust of Tory slipperiness and in part on the standard last minute bribery required to get the worker and regional votes out on the day.

But even if it gets its ducks in a row on the leadership, develops a distinctive policy position to fit the new times we are in and has luck on its side, its organisational and communications operations are in utter disarray. Much of this will have something to do with its appalling financial situation.

In politics, the illusion of success creates success - the prospect of power attracts funds which can be spent on political marketing. This creates an aura of success that increases the prospect of power and so funds ad near-infinitum ... and the converse.

Obscured by Clouds

Around two years ago, there were serious doubts about whether the Party was technically solvent. Since then, there has been relative silence but the open secret is that the trades unions have been holding things together in return for more influence behind the scenes.

There have been mutterings recently about the way that Jack Dromey of Unite has been lined up for a safe seat 'coincidentally' with a large union contribution, although trades union strategy for some time has been to increase union representation in Parliament.

With events in Germany showing that dissident Leftists can win votes - over 22% for the Left and the Greens virtually matching the 'official' Left - fissures are now opening up between radical mid-level union activists and the established political leaderships of the big unions.

The pressure is on now to stop any drift of funds and voting power to any putative Marxist-union breakaway. The traditional union leaderships, subject to some democratic pressure, must ensure that they can point to pro-working class representation and policies in a weakening official centre-left.

This, more than some ideological conversion, explains Brown's apparent shift to the Left and away from the language of markets this morning on Radio 4. Both conference and interview rhetoric were designed to unite a collapsing party and chase off the Left challenge - and shift back to the centre-ground later.

No2EU made a great thing of the fact that all its candidates in the Euro-election were front-line workers. The political wing of the working class has had enough of middle class representation and it is returning to the original purpose of the Labour Representation Committee with a vengeance.

Mandelson's job is to reassure the centre ground, especially big business, and keep the trades union right-wing (the manufacturing-orientated unions) in line with sufficient state aid (such as extension of car scrappage) to keep as many members' jobs as possible through to the next economic cycle.

The Twilight of the Gods

So, the journalists and bloggers who obsess about the opinions of one Editor and his proprietor are exhibiting all the signs of being a flock of oozlum birds.

Many of those who are active in demanding representation for workers in Parliament through Labour are also readers of the Sun, as likely to be so as readers of the Daily Mirror.

Liking Page Three girls and good sports coverage and being instinctively patriotic against Argies and Germans ought not to be associated with solid Menshevik values but people are complicated. My family took the Daily Telegraph every day and voted Labour every election.

A lot of Sun readers are going to enjoy these escapades but will still vote for a Labour candidate if it is the one that their union recommends. And a lot of trades union members will continue to vote Tory and Liberal Democrat - even BNP - regardless of what their union bosses advise.

The contempt of political nerds - whether obsessive activists, bloggers, mainstream journalists, policy wonks or armchair theorists - for the ability of the average voter to weigh up his or her own material and psychological interest beggars belief sometimes.

Of course there is a tribal element in voting but even this is an aggregation of special interest habits from the past or derived from shared experiences that can easily result in changed loyalties under provocation.

The next Government will be created out of a calculus of personal interest tempered by the oddities and biases of the FPTP electoral system. Good communications is there to give some sense of which horse might be worth backing in that interest. It's still the fundamentals, including the economy, stupid!

If New Labour is to be re-elected, it has to deal with these fundamentals and then create a narrative that includes fresh understanding of why the new technologies are half-way to transforming and weakening the power of the old priestly class of journalists and metropolitan intellectuals.

The next election is not going to be the first online media election - that experience is likely to be the election after that - but it should be the first election where the stranglehold of the old media is finally seen to be broken. It should start with a robust stance towards Mr. Kavanagh and his ilk. 

New Labour is still hurting. The latest Guardian/ICM published on Monday showed the Tories remaining solid at 41% of the vote. The centre-left (such as it is) is now split between the incumbents (25%) and the Liberal Democrats (19%).

The Unlikelihood of Labour Recovery

New Labour has now been in steady though not precipitate decline since the beginning of the year while the Liberal Democrats appear to be incapable of moving very far forward under the somewhat lacklustre leadership of Nick Clegg.

What is striking is that the vote for 'others' (a range of Left, Green, nationalist and far Right parties) has maintained (after a dip) its slow rise since the June European & Local Elections.

Although not yet a serious alternative to the three main parties (except regionally), it indicates that protest is still growing at the conduct of the political class. On current trend, this vote could become greater than that of the Liberal Democrats somewhere between the end of 2009 and next late Spring.

The point is not that there is any serious challenger to any mainstream party (although we still consider UKIP to be a serious counterpart to the Scottish National Party in Southern Britain) but that the Conservative Party has managed its 'shift to the left' in a way that is now seen as credible.

This raises the issue of what that 'shift to the left' really means. Cameron's strategy was undertaken at enormous internal risk. The core Middle Britain vote of the Tories (equivalent on the Right to the solid Labour core of New Labour) is far from moderate and centrist and yet the bulk of it has stayed loyal.

But is the Tory Party Progressive?

Hardline tax cutters and privatisers may be migrating to UKIP or even hoping that Mandelson might revive a Blairite New Labour but the vigorous defence by Cameron and his team of the NHS is clearly winning or holding more votes than it is losing them.

Just as the term conservative is becoming redefined, or rather to be returning to the 'one nation' inclusive ideology of the era before Thatcher, so the term 'progressive' (a late import from the US to replace the uncomfortable word 'socialist') is up for grabs.

Actually, 'progressive' might easily be redefined as 'interfering liberal' by many Brits - as state interference without the redistributive and investment strategies of socialism - if they thought about such things very much. What Osborne and Mandelson each means by progressive is very different.

A lot of the unpopularity of the Government must be put down to its petty authoritarianism, its managerialism, its target-setting, its implicit political correctness and, amongst males and some females, the phenomenon that is Harriet Harman. This is 'progressivism' as it should be technically understood.

Exploring the Progressive Mentality

Politics Home published a poll on which party might be called most progressive earlier this month. This begged the question of what respondents thought progressive meant - we suspect many just meant 'forward-looking' but Politics Home did try to define the term.

The definition of progressive here is, regardless of party orientation, one of reform and modernisation with a dash of enterprise and enlightenment. The difficulty for New Labour is that its ideological progressives may not be very modern nor effective reformers from the perspective of most voters.

If the poll is to be believed, although most respondents did not think that any of the mainstream parties were progressive by this definition, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats could both claim 22% of the respondents - and Labour, the ostensible leading party of the Left, only 12%.

Anyone who spends any time amongst Labour activists knows full well that all but the most loyal are in despair and not just at the coming loss of power. The 25% overall vote for New Labour hides a very large minority who plan to vote for the Party only for fear of something worse.

Some cling to the 'very real achievements' (a stock phrase) of twelve years of rule but the list is scarcely impressive when set against the knowledge that massive public spending cuts are inevitable. Many of these cuts must reverse many of the gains for Labour's constituency even if Labour is returned.

The majority will now be looking back over the last dozen years and ask what exactly was progressive (except in the most restricted and ideological sense of the word) about New Labour's tenure.

Labour Progressivism

From the point of view of the activists of the 1970s who now dominate the Party great things were done - liberal interventionism overseas, the first steps towards positive discrimination, the equality and human rights agenda, extension of union rights, the greater if often covert engagement with Europe.

Unfortunately (for the bedrock of the Party), fundamental issues of permanent redistribution have only been rediscovered in the last few months and they are still seen as cultural and social issues rather than economic policy matters. Social mobility is not the same as economic security or equality.

The New Labour agenda remains the re-building of the existing economic system so that the cream can be skimmed off and redistributed as grants from the centre.

Since so much of that grant money goes on a social and cultural agenda, many workers and managers remain extremely vulnerable to the realities of the next year - the paradox of a technical recovery with huge cuts in public spending, higher taxes and increasing fear if not always actuality of unemployment.

This helps to explain why the Tories are successfully managing to sell themselves, as a 'one nation party' that will have to raise taxes, to a population that wants an economy that is more sustainable than the credit-fuelled mania and then crash of the last half of New Labour's rule.

It also gets us back to the debate between Mandelson and Osborne over who is the most 'progressive'.

Progressive Varieties

If by 'progressive', we mean a US-style liberal agenda, then the small educated minority that cares about these things will fluctuate to its taste between New Labour and the Liberal Democrats. This is the much-maligned Guardian readership.

If, however, you mean (as most British respondents will have understood the term) that a party must have an idea of where the country must go in the interests of all its people, then most people may have little faith in politicians but are increasingly prepared to give the Tories the benefit of the doubt.

What they will no longer accept is that New Labour is anything more than a failed tribal coalition that got it wrong once and is likely to get it wrong again (and do so across many policy fronts).

Meanwhile, from the Marxist wing of the Left comes the most acute criticism yet of the wider failure of the centre-left to adjust to the increased prosperity but also the increased anomie of the world of the last great economic cycle (from the 1970s to the 2000s).

David Edgar (in yet another Guardian contribution to this posting) makes a sustained attack on ideological progressives from the Left that is very hard to answer.

Since '68, a generation of middle class activists has ditched redistributive values and its hundred year alliance alliance with the poor and disadvantaged and it has adopted a strategy of seizing the State to impose its liberal values on a population that has grown resentful of its presumption.

The International Dimension

Edgar has the courage to point out that the young 'heroes' of Tehran are not quite so heroic when seen in this light. We add that the drive to spread a centralised liberal progressivism across the globe is, in essence, an export of American urban liberal values that substitutes freedom for equality at every point.

The core of the global progressive revolution started in the universities of the Atlantic system forty years ago and its activists achieved power in the West during the 1990s. This was the golden era of international progressivism and its evil twin neo-conservatism.

But the model for progressive politics is surprisingly reactionary - it is an organised seizure of the State machine by vanguard groups with an agenda of cultural change. Using mass marketing techniques, they achieved their ends but the agenda alienated the populations over which they now rule.

Given the hedonism of '68 and the use of liberal economics to finance the 'revolution', it is no accident that this generation has now foundered on economic collapse and cultural resentment - nor that resistance to the liberal capitalist system is centred on traditionalism and the populist Right.

For the 'damnes de la terre', the liberal agenda offers very little other than patronising aid, trickle-down economics, migration to the factories, weakening social provision and cultural rule by foreign educated and undemocratic or manipulative business school elites.

It is no wonder that the economically vulnerable have a trust issue with America (globally), the centre-left (within the democratic allies of America) and liberals (in the non-democratic pro-Western world). A progressive world looks less attractive the further that you travel from the US Presidential Suite.

The Core of the Matter

So let's get back to the core of the matter. The progressive agenda is now devalued currency. If it means a general commitment to the public good in the interests of all (essentially the position of Obama), then it now becomes the property of any democratic 'one nation' political movement.

From this perspective, Osborne is right and Mandelson is wrong - the Tories are now more progressive than New Labour.

But if it means the uptight socially manipulative agenda of small elites deeply frightened by democracy and its effects on their control of the levers of power, then new media technologies and the decline into political dotage of the current generation are slowly consigning it to the scrap heap of history.

From this perspective, Mandelson is right and Osborne is wrong - New Labour is still far more progressive than the modern Conservative Party.

We are about to see the re-launch of the Government’s policy platform, an event originally intended when Brown came to power as his ‘vision’ but pushed aside by the credit crisis. It is now made necessary by the indisputable fact of an election within the next year.

What is interesting is that Brown’s position is now so weak that he had to have the general outline of the platform pre-announced by Lord Mandelson, an unelected but powerful ‘Deputy Prime Minister’ in all but name, in order to build some momentum.

Building Britain’s Future

Later today, the Prime Minister launches the main policy document. It has the typical New Labour-ish title, Building Britain’s Future. It is believed that the main theme will be the promotion of increased consumer choice in public services.

This, for those with long memories, reminds one of John Major’s consumer-directed response to an economic crisis in an earlier era. John Major lost his election, amidst a climate of ‘sleaze’.

Mandelson is also suggesting (a position fully shared with the Prime Minister) that the Government intends no compromise on its New Labour message. There will be no serious concessions to the Left of the Party just for the sake of Party unity.

This rings true. Labour solidarity after the disastrous June elections has now kicked in. Any bloodletting will come only after an election. Brown has everything to win and nothing to lose personally in sticking to the original narrative of the 1990s.

In his warm-up act, Mandelson put forward a programme that is still not entirely credible to the analytical community. Mandelson is claiming that, despite the massive borrowing required by the credit crisis, New Labour will spend more and undertake better reforms than the Tory Party

His authority, which he has earned rightfully despite significant party unpopularity and occasional errors of judgement, is being used to direct Government communications at the wider population (where he is better liked). The pointy-heads are less important when votes are being courted.

That this PR drive is also intended to consolidate the party’s wobbling traditional support is indicated by Mandelson’s one concession to Left critics - he says that the privatisation of Royal Mail might not take place before the Party Conference because of lack of space in the legislative timetable.

Coming Clean on Spending?

The bet for New Labour is on observable recovery by the Spring of 2010 but there is still widespread concern that New Labour is failing to ‘come clean’ on the scale and direction of future spending cuts.

This suspicion grew with the news that the Chancellor decided to abandon plans for the comprehensive spending review. This should have been held this year but it is apparently being deferred until after the General Election. The decision seemed to have been confirmed today by Mandelson.

The Government is engaged in a massive political punt on the economy. What the Government (through Mandelson) is claiming is that the ‘worst is behind us’. A return to growth before the election will, he claims, allow Government to maintain spending and investment.

This is a very big ‘trust us’ from the Government that failed to predict the original crisis and when the general trend from responsible analysts is to see global growth as slow and vulnerable - and Britain’s fiscal situation to be on a knife-edge.

It is now difficult to convey the general mood of the country during what amounts to a phony war between its people and its government. The expectation of most thinking people is of the chickens eventually coming home to roost on public spending and industrial restructuring.

To make things worse, news is now feeding back from overseas that the country has become a laughing stock over the political expenses stories, It is not so much the fact of corruption (lots of places are corrupt) as the petty and pervasive nature of the corruption, what with duck houses, moats and all.

A more serious effect is that, under New Labour's progressivism, the UK has been wandering around the tax havens and emerging countries of the world moralizing on fraud and corruption. Now it has been shown to have feet of clay.

It scarcely assists the UK’s moral standing in relation to its ‘enemies’ – whether Russia, Iran or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. As we write, FCO officials are said to be (according to the FT) deleting those parts of speeches that call for higher standards of governance lest they cause mirth.

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