Ross Martin: Labour must take pains to reconnect with voters

WHAT lessons will the Scottish Labour Party learn as it prepares for round two of the intense political battle that began with the UK election?

Next up is the 2011 contest for the Scottish Parliament, followed by what could end with a knock-out punch in the fight for local government in 2012.

It is a crucial period for the party, which some claim is more in tune with its electorate than New Labour ever was across the rest of the UK. Or did the anti-Conservative nature of the vote in Scotland mask a popular disconnection that will return to punish Labour at the Holyrood election?

Rather than "making Westminster dance to a Scottish jig", the SNP has been left reeling, having failed again to make a breakthrough at Westminster. The SNP may bounce back and maintain, or even strengthen its position as Scotland's leading party, but that cannot be a certainty.

And with the Tories truly dumfounded by their inability to make any gains whatsoever, the spectre of Michael Forsyth is again haunting their Scottish headquarters. Do they, as he suggests, need to put clear blue water between them and the social democratic majority of the Scottish body politic?

All the attention is on the Liberal Democrats and what electoral tsunami may engulf them for having the effrontery to get themselves into power, but it is the Scottish Labour Party that is in need of a period of the deepest soul-searching to find its true identity. This is the debate it never had at the birth of New Labour.

On the face of it, theLabour Party leadership in Scotland may feel vindicated by the UK election, but is it seeing a clear picture? Does the policy platform designed to hang on to power at Westminster really represent a progressive context for the Scottish manifesto for next year?

One thing is certain, change is in the electoral ether and any party that cannot empathise with the mood of the nation is doomed to defeat.

Regardless of the electoral system, the electorate has an uncanny ability to deliver a collective. The UK election was one such occasion.

One possible outcome is that next year's Scottish Parliament election delivers a similarly damning verdict of a plague on all the parties' HQs. It is widely recognised that the electorate, even in Scotland, is in the mood for change. Given past experience of majority government – more than a decade of Margaret Thatcher and similarly of Tony Blair – the majority of the electorate wants something different.

In the UK election it was clear that, this time around, voters did not want the party political pieces to settle at all. Instead, at least two parties would be forced to co-operate in the corridors of power.

Even in Scotland, the electorate demonstrated a democratic desire for flux, ensuring that the majority party in the UK coalition isn't over-powerful north of the Border, where it is definitely a minority interest.

So, if the Scottish Labour Party is to respond with a progressive programme for government, what would that look like?

It could take the form of a Blair-ite purge of the public sector, cutting down to a sustainable size the 58 per cent of economic activity that it is currently responsible for.

Or the Scottish Labour Party – as its competitors in the political market-place are also seeking to do – could redefine itself by drawing upon its strong heritage and its historical alignment with mainstream Scottish political opinion.

For example, the Labour Party's proud co-operative movement could give it an electoral edge in the education and health sectors. A modern take on traditional Labour values of collective action could see an explosion of social enterprise delivering a wide range of public services.

Another example: instead of closing rural schools across the Borders and the Highlands, the Land Reform legislation brought in by the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition could be shaped to enable a new community right to run local schools.

An extensive and energetic programme of partnership with Scotland's struggling housebuilding sector could see public land and a significant amount of slum housing stock being transferred into joint ventures that deliver modern, environmentally friendly housing and a financial return for reinvestment to avoid estates crumbling in the way that the now-infamous Scheme being beamed across our television screens has clearly been allowed to.

In the health sector, the monolithic NHS must be forced to deliver local diversity and challenge the culture of fear called "postcode prescribing".

For example, in our island communities Labour, the party that laid the foundation stones of the National Health Service, could be promoting the integration of health and social services into single public authorities, bringing democratic accountability to a sector that has lacked that driver for change and innovation locally.

In transport policy, the goal of "integrated multi-modal mass transit" – that is buses and trains working together – for each of our city regions must take precedence over any battle between the ideological interests of a pure private, or indeed public sector solution. If it wants a model, Scottish Labour must bring forward ideas based upon the partnership model that was Lothian Region Transport and that delivered the UK's best bus company, Lothian Buses.

The Scottish electorate has presented its politicians with a wonderful conundrum. Voters are seeking change, but only painting a part of the picture of what that might look like. Labour can only win the right to govern again if it takes seriously the responsibility of articulating a clear vision of the future.

Scottish Labour cannot therefore afford to be complacent, it needs to re-order the world around it to produce a progressive manifesto that draws upon its undoubted strengths, while recognising that the political pieces are still in flux and that there is no settled will of the Scottish people.

• Ross Martin is the policy director of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy think-tank.