Yes that’s the recipe for Labour victory – ditch your public sector workers core support and charge round the country patriotically appealing for growth ……..I can just see thousands pouring onto the streets now as the Ed Battlebus approaches wrapped in the union jack and urging more work for lower pay mixed in with some Wilsonian hokum about white heat of technology written by a couple of oxford dons for an oxford leader! Hallelujah! I fear the two Dons are mere outriders for the imminent return from the wilderness of the loathsome Mandelson.
Gregg McClymont, the shadow pensions minister who is a former Oxford history don, writes in a new pamphlet that Labour will avoid the Tory trap only if it resists the temptation to appeal to its core supporters in the public services.
In a pamphlet for the Policy Network thinktank, established by Lord Mandelson, McClymont writes: “Labour can sidestep the electoral trap being sprung by the Conservatives by refusing to be driven back to its core support. A patriotic appeal to the nation to improve growth and living standards, not a simple defence of the public sector and public spending, is crucial to foiling Conservative attempts to render Labour the party of a sectional minority.”
The warning by McClymont is jointly written with fellow Oxford historian Ben Jackson. Ed Miliband is set to follow its ideas.