THE message to the Labour Party conference is “Give us something to vote for.”

If nothing else the Scottish referendum has demonstrated that when they think there is something to vote for, whether for or against, people will turn out in their masses.

They will also engage politically in serious and considered political debate.

This isn’t the passive politics that we have become acclimatised to, where political parties have arrogantly relied upon the blind loyalty of their traditional supporters to turn out and put their mark beside the often unrecognised name of the party’s candidate.

Traditionally Labour relied on its core working-class vote as the foundation stone from which to build the electoral coalition it needed to win elections and sustain it in office.

In the 1960s and ’70s various theories were advanced to argue that the relationship between class and party political affiliation was in decline.

One of these was the theory of “embourgeoisement,” which argued that as workers’ wages increased and they bought their council houses they were increasingly incorporated into the economic system and were less likely to vote Labour.

Regular crises of capitalism causing mass unemployment put paid to much of that theory, but it is true that in increasing numbers working-class people from the 1980s onwards no longer automatically supported the Labour Party.

Even in Labour’s landslide victory in 1997 and subsequent wins in 2001 and 2005, the first-past-the-post electoral system masked the facts that not only were election turnouts declining but also working-class support was being leeched away from Labour.

Labour victories were also based much more on the rejection of the Tories than a positive support for new Labour’s policies.

Today’s polls reveal Labour leading the Tories by narrow margins, with many of Labour’s poll leads being within polling’s margin of error of 3 per cent either way.

This is nowhere near enough at this stage of the campaign to secure a clear workable majority for a Labour government.

Certainly there is disgruntlement with the coalition, but Labour is being held back by an uncertainty about what Labour stands for and what difference it would make if elected.

When people can’t see a clear identity for Labour or what positive impact a Labour government would have on their lives, there are understandable doubts in their minds about whether Labour is worth voting for.

It is these people who form part of the four million voters Labour has lost in recent years to either staying at home and not voting at all or, worse still, feeling unrepresented and voting for the populist right in the form of Ukip.

To stand any chance of winning the next election the Labour Party has to use this week’s party conference to launch a decisive election campaign based upon a sense of clear direction and clear-cut policies.

Half-measures will not be enough to mobilise the positive support we need to secure a majority.

Promoting a policy programme which is proscribed by a mealy mouthed austerity-lite will simply result in people having no real reason or motivation to vote Labour. In that instance many will simply support the Tories as the devil they know.

When there is little political or policy differentiation between the parties, people fall back on personality politics. Elections become a politicians’ beauty parade that is easily manipulated by the media.

When there is a political vacuum we have seen that it is filled with trivial polling about the performance or attributes of the political leaders.

Given the consistent poor standing of Ed Miliband in the personal poll ratings, David Cameron knows that all he would have to do is to avoid any major embarrassing blunder in the next eight months to sneak back in.

Labour could use this conference week to expose the undemocratic corporate kleptocracy that our country has become under successive governments but especially under the coalition.

In the six years since the economic crisis hit, finance capital, especially in the form of the City of London, has re-established its absolute dominance over the economy and policy-making in government.

Attempts at regulation have been derisory and so the casino wheels are turning once again, but faster in the City.
Government support for property speculation is rapidly fuelling the next debt crisis. It is as though the 2008 credit crunch had never happened.

Through privatisation, corporations are mopping up what is left of the welfare state and are maximising huge profit ratios at the expense of both the users of the services and the overall taxpayer.

At the same time the corporate owners of previously privatised services like rail, energy and water are flouting any attempts at price controls and are ripping off their customers in a short-term manic profits binge for fear of even an unlikely prospect of future price controls.

And despite all we now know about the climate change time bomb that is ticking away, energy companies are now preparing to speed this catastrophe by fracking under our feet, uncontrolled by a government colluding in this exploitation of our natural environment.

Wages also continue to fall against inflation and yet the salaries of company directors are matching those of footballers and massive bonuses have returned in various covert forms.

What an opportunity there now is for Labour to expose how our current economic and political set-up stinks.
What an opportunity there is for Labour to present an alternative to this.

Just a few decisive measures announced this week would send out the message that so many people want to hear. That real Labour is back and is up for the fight to take on this corrupt system.

Here are just a few of those messages people are listening for.

Labour will end poverty pay. Eight pounds an hour is not enough — it should legislate for a £10-an-hour minimum wage.

Labour will outlaw zero-hours contracts.

Labour will make sure nobody lives in poverty by introducing a citizens’ basic income.

Labour will end all privatisation of our public services, especially the NHS, and will start the process of bringing privatised services back by bringing rail back into public ownership and control.

Labour will not just build 250,000 new council houses a year, it will introduce rent controls in the private sector.

Ordinary working people will not pay for Labour’s programme. It will be paid for by those who caused the economic crisis and who are still ripping us off. This means Labour will introduce a land value tax, a Tobin tax on City speculation and will close down corporate tax avoidance and evasion.

This is just a flavour of the decisive approach people now need to see from Labour.

I believe that there is a new popular mood for radical change that could offer a real chance of securing the return of a Labour government capable of transforming our society in the way the Attlee government did in the 1940s.

I urge the Labour Party conference to seize that opportunity.

John McDonnell is Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington.