1. Listen
The first step back for any party who wishes to seek re-election is to listen to the voters that did not vote for them, or perhaps once did but felt they no longer could. Labour lost 5 million voters and it is impractical to go and talk to every single one of them but if you look at the demographic polling data you are presented with, that should enable you to locate the largest reasons for defeat. Listening to your errors can make you becomes defensive or indeed prompt you to defend your record but if you do either you are not really listening. The listening exercise involves you keeping strum and listening to endless criticism. If you are keen to improve and learn from your mistakes then this does not have to be a negative experience.
2. Locate principles that went missing
Having arrived at bullet point list of social groups who deserted you, you can with some deliberation ascertain which policies, or lack of, may have adversely affect them. Retracing when precisely these social groups left in the largest numbers and linking it to policies at the time then with deduction you can ascertain the policies that peeved them. You must then ask yourself what principles helped shape those policies. Why did we in Labour chose this path, and not that path. Locating the principles behind the policies that annoyed voters, or locating the absence of principle behind policies you refused to implement you will then be able to jot down a set of principles that went missing.
3. Reapply lost principles ditch wrong ones
It is up to you after this point. You are now no longer working off polling data or head scratching. Instead you have a list of policies that did not work and a list of principles that were either wrongly applied or not applied at all. If you are hungry for re-election you might wish to consider whether or not you wish to begin to formulate policies from principles you once abandoned. You may wish to consider whether you wish to abandon principles or positions that are no longer relevant. This is a process of renewal. What was before cannot be what is now, or what will be going forward. It is by this logic that New Labour are dead. It is nothing personal, for example those set of principles and policies were once considered good enough to form government. But they lost 5 million voters and in 2011 are no longer good enough.
4. Generate Policy based upon principle
Now that you have opted to proceed with a set of principles based on what you have learned from your errors, you have a decision. What policies match these principles? This requires hard work imagination and creative thinking. In each and every policy the principle should be crystal clear. IF indeed your intention is to win back voters, it should be easily traceable back through all four stages of logicial thought which principle it is you are operating under, what mistakes you made in the past, and how you think these new principles will fix them This process of human thought theoretically should help you remain authentic, stay in touch with your core values, and generate policy based upon listening.
Almost every Labour representative or supporter I have ever met refuses to adequately complete stage one. Failing to do so, their principles are formed on uncertain ground, and they risk repeating mistakes of old. Progress, Purple Labour and Blairites are insulting voters if they think that a new charismatic leader and a rehashing of the old formula are all that is required to win the next election. That makes me sad and a little angry.
