Just three words from Gordon Brown could transform Labour's prospects even now: "Blairism is dead." Already I can hear the objections from remaining defenders of the faith - drop the Blairism that won Labour three elections?
Alas, each victory at the polls was won with 2m fewer voters than the one before. We have run out of road there - and the Tories have had a makeover. But there is a more profound reason why we cannot look to 1997 for lessons. The world has changed. The Blairite "all things to all people but more things to rich people" approach could get by when the world economy was booming. Trickledown theory only works when it's raining money.
Today we have to recreate the Labour coalition in much tougher times, when capitalism's face is getting less acceptable and many people are facing real hardship as food and fuel prices soar. This should not be a big challenge for a party founded on the values of social justice and equality, of community and looking after the most vulnerable. But New Labour has taken the party far from those core principles, and millions of lifelong supporters have noticed.
It's not just the 10p tax fiasco. It is also that business secretary John Hutton misses no opportunity to drool over the super-rich while fretting over workers' modest pay rises; that the wealth gap is widening; that ministers praise a deregulated labour market, while supporting the toughest trade union regulation in Europe.
People notice what the government seems blind to - that the free market has crashed. Their bills are soaring, their jobs and even their homes don't feel secure, and they know full well that the pain is not being shared. Public sector workers have been offered a pay cut this year, while the casino capitalists - whose bonus-drunk decisions got us into this mess - carry on enriching themselves with ministers' blessing.
The Labour party, the first major socialist party to embrace neoliberalism, now has to let go of it to have any future. Many MPs know this. Yet the government remains terrified by big business and unwilling to advance a single proposal that might discomfit the super-rich.
Both Obama and Clinton set out a far bolder political stall than New Labour on inequality, manufacturing and redistribution, while Labour in New Zealand has restored the railways to public ownership. Only in Britain is the centre-left still hobbled by a timid leadership that believes the market can do no wrong, that a widening wealth gap is a matter of indifference, and that state intervention and regulation are dirty words.
These ideological blinkers need to be discarded before Labour charges over an electoral cliff. Can Brown do it? Of course he was one of the architects of New Labour in the 90s. But then he was a strong socialist in the 80s.
We know what works. The governments in Scotland and Wales are winning praise and votes for adopting "old Labour" measures like stopping NHS privatisation and scrapping tuition fees.
Construction jobs are disappearing while there is a chronic shortage of decent housing in many areas, something exploited by the BNP. What is there to stop a decent social democratic government announcing a major programme of council-house building? Only fear of the rich man's frown.
A massive windfall tax on the mega-profits of Shell and BP would be a vote-winner and the right thing to do - make them put something back to help with pensions. The utilities companies - gas, electric and water - which now have the cheek to threaten a 40% price increase, must be told that every extra penny they charge will returned to the country, again by a windfall tax.
Brown has one last window of opportunity. Face down the Blairites within. Clear the apologists for the big bonus brigade out of the cabinet and make Labour once more the party for state intervention for social justice.
This can't guarantee winning a fourth consecutive term. Nothing can. But it will ensure a real fight against the Tories, and that we have a Labour party still in business the morning after.
· Tony Woodley is joint general secretary of Unite the union tgwu@tgwu.org.uk
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