“Like Thatcher, Miliband has sought to identify a unifying theme to which all Britain’s problems can be related. Where Thatcher chose ‘socialism’, Miliband has opted for ‘responsibility’. The theme has obvious merits … The problem is that it is inherently non-partisan. When Thatcher railed against ‘socialism’, it was obvious that she was talking about Labour. No one on the Conservative benches self-identifies as ‘irresponsible’, and that limits its power as a political weapon. ‘Responsibility’ has no political hook; indeed, if it were to ‘take’ as a theme, there would be nothing to prevent David Cameron from simply co-opting it.”

“It should be. Ted Heath was a relentlessly pragmatic Tory leader who had poor relations with his party in Parliament and in the country. He began in government seemingly fixed on a clear course of reform and modernisation. But then he hit stormy waters and, lacking an ideological compass that might have helped guide him through, was blown over. Having failed to build good relations with his colleagues, he had no reservoir of loyalty on which to draw. When Margaret Thatcher emerged he was sunk.”

Heath, though, did have an objective for his government. He wanted to pacify the trade unions and draw them into a corporatist national project that would make us less like the US and more like France, not simply through being part of the common market, but also in terms of industrial policy and organisation. While one might have misgivings about this, it seems a more substantial project than whatever the defining purpose of Cameron’s government is.

A crisis reveals. The financial meltdown of 2008 revealed Gordon Brown to be a leader of global standing. (Have we seen much of this lately)? The crisis on our streets last week revealed the big society to be something that people just do. As the dust settled the little platoons came out with their brushes.

Something that people already do, seems an odd kind of project for a government. The argument might be made that the government’s point is to nurture and grow such behaviour. But the £2.8 billion of government spending that the voluntary and community sector will lose over the current spending review period is inconsistent with this goal.

While Cameron has even less of an ideological compass than Heath, in many other respects he seems remarkably like the prime minister described by Martin. Cameron, like Heath, has been too aloof to bother working on relations with backbench colleagues. This is most likely to catch up with a prime minister in difficult times. At the height of hackgate James Forsyth reported that a minister had told him that “Number 10 was having trouble getting people to go on TV to bat for the PM”.

Cameron has fair weather friends on the backbenches and growing tension at the top. Internal opponents have recently been briefing against Steve Hilton and leaking his zanier ideas. It is not clear who exactly these opponents are and what they seek to achieve. But this targeting of Hilton, synonymous with the big society, indicates a lack of confidence in high places in Cameron’s big idea and its guru. If Heath was blown over for lack of an ideological compass, Cameron must be at least as vulnerable to such a fate.

His operation has seemed less steady in the absence of Andy Coulson. But Coulson’s past means Cameron must now regret not following through with his initial plan to appoint Guto Harri. Rebekah Brooks intervened and insisted that the then opposition leader go with Coulson. So when aspiring to run the country Cameron considered his judgment subordinate to News International.

His relations with News International are one sense in which the question that came to define Heath hangs over Cameron: who runs the country?

The country has recently insisted that News International do not. Cameron’s deference to Brooks suggests he thought otherwise.

Max Weber defined a state in terms of a monopoly upon violence. So what was the UK when Cameron was sunning himself in Tuscany?

Ministers and police could then not agree on which of them prised the looters monopolisation from them. Now they can’t agree on the utility of the US policing advisor drafted in by Cameron.

The prime minister has also failed to come to an effective agreement with the bankers on their lending. They continue to enjoy backing from the taxpayer but won’t bend to the will of the government.

The extent to which the looters, the police and the bankers run the country isn’t clear. But it’s less obvious than it should be that the prime minister is in charge. Heath got his answer at the ballot box, “not you, mate”. If Cameron were mad enough to now trigger a general election on the same terms, his only saving grace may be the strength of his narrative on the deficit.

This story is of Labour recklessness and Cameron riding to the rescue with tough medicine. The robust return to economic health that we were told this medicine would deliver seems as distant as ever. But Cameron has succeeded in embedding a perception that Labour will tax punitively to spend wastefully.

If Labour can defeat this perception, what is keeping a second rate Ted Heath in Downing Street beyond the next election?

It is acknowledged that people do not join the Labour party simply to deliver leaflets or attend uninspiring meetings. This tends to go along with support for giving members more say on policy. But parties are vehicles of change, not forums for mass therapy. Party debate is a means to the end of building the world that Labour exists to create.

As our policy review continues, it’s worth reflecting on the “built to last” exercise undertaken by David Cameron after becoming the Tory leader. His government’s programme now appears anything but. His health policy is fudged, his police promises are broken, his public service reforms are rehashed and events have rapidly exposed his defence policy.

The biggest global economic crisis since the 1930s has left almost four in ten voters able to say: “I can’t imagine I’ll ever have the money I want to meet my needs.” Notwithstanding the conflation of wants and needs in this statement, this indicts Cameron’s ability to generate any feel good factor.

Running through many of the government’s failings is a refusal or inability to acknowledge the reality of Britain’s place in the world. They will not place the economic crisis of recent years in its proper global context for fear of distorting their framing of these events as entirely Labour’s fault (and the enduring strength of this frame is one of the government’s trump cards). They will not adapt their defence review to events that the foreign secretary has compared with the fall of the Berlin wall. They will not engage in a meaningful debate about the future of our continent because they are bored by Brussels, contemptuous of Athens and scared of Bill Cash. They will not concede that the UK’s position within global labour markets makes nonsense of their commitment to reduce annual immigration to the UK from “hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands”. This will, as all realities do, catch up with them.

Their immigration policy is just one instance of their being economical with the actualité. Their welfare policy is meant to be about getting people into work. Try telling that to women and council tenants who face perverse work incentives because of policy on tax credits and council housing. And, of course, we were promised “no more top down reform of the NHS” and we were given Andrew Lansley’s earthquake. Michael Gove’s schools reform has proceeded more smoothly than Lansley’s revolution. Could Gove’s relative success be because, as David Aaronovitch recently asked, “he has done pretty much what he told people before the election he would do?”

The implosion of his policy programme matters less to Cameron than it would do to Ed Miliband as prime minister. Cameron believes in nothing, but it is his nothing. It is his occupancy of number 10. It’s not about any bigger purpose. Ironically, gutting himself of principle makes his wholly pragmatic goal of remaining prime minister harder to secure. It makes his government more vulnerable to events. Pragmatism without principle isn’t pragmatic. It’s a ship without a compass. Margaret Thatcher u-turned as prime minister but by never lacking for direction these u-turns didn’t bring into question her fundamental purpose.

Miliband’s purpose is quite different, obviously. He should, nonetheless, ask: What lessons for our policy review can be learnt from the period between “built to last” and now?

The policy review should arrive at a programme that we’d be prepared to defend during the election and be capable of implementing in government. We would be reaping a whirlwind to indulge in any Lansley-like sleights of hand or to promise more than is deliverable, as the government has done on immigration.

Lansley’s reforms have jarred with Cameron’s personal identification with the NHS, which was central to his attempted Tory detoxification. Cameron was right to address negative perceptions attaching to his party, but health policy in government shows that this attempt lacked ballast. This cannot be absent as we tackle the negativity that attaches to us in various policy areas: welfare, immigration, the economy, taxation and “big government” in all its forms.

Not only do we need to show that we get it, but that we require genuinely effective and workable answers. We need also to decisively move beyond the little Englanderism of Cameron – explaining how we will prosper in the post crisis global economy, what kind of Europe should emerge post Eurozone calamity and what our role in the world ought to be post Arab spring.

Yes, robust, inclusive party debate is vital, but so much more so is having this process conclude with a programme that could meet these complex challenges and is genuinely built to last.

I had this on Labour Uncut a few weeks ago:

“We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality”.

Denis MacShane sought to console speaker Martin by writing to him with the words of Thomas Babington Macaulay at the height of the expenses scandal. But was this quotation really appropriate?

Weren’t the British people right to be aggrieved by elected representatives defrauding them? Aren’t they also legitimately angry with, as Ed Miliband put it, “bankers who caused the global financial crisis” and “those on benefits who were abusing the system because they could work – but didn’t”? And can there be any doubt that the revulsion of the public against the News of the World is justified?

The spikes in outrage against fiddling politicians and phone-hacking journalists, as well as the slower burning resentment at welfare cheats and fat cat financiers, makes a nonsense of Macaulay. The people he mocks instinctively know right from wrong. And in this intuitive grasp we see ourselves for what we are: communitarians.

The philosopher Julian Baggini foreswore ivory towers and spent six months with the people of Rotherham before concluding that this is the philosophy of the English. It was, incidentally, in the same town that Gerry Robinson tried to “fix the NHS” and Jamie Oliver “taught the poor to cook”. This is a worldview that stresses the responsibilities of the individual to the community. Membership of the community entitles rights and privileges but responsibility demands that these be reciprocated.

We are a nation that wants to see itself made up of; hard working families who play by the rules. We want those who play by the rules to be supported and to get on. We want those who don’t to be punished. The ascendency of Thatcherism, with its win-at-whatever-cost individualism, has obscured the extent to which we see ourselves as members of social groups to which we owe allegiance and the execution of responsibility.

Those who can work have a responsibility to do so. Those who can work but don’t should be penalised. Law makers have a responsibility not to be law breakers. Just like everyone else, including journalists and bankers. And they should feel the full force of the law when in breach of it. These professions are, however, held to more exacting standards of responsibility than legal compliance alone. Their integrity demands more than this. The irresponsibility of hacking the phones of grieving families is about much more than breaking the law.

As Ed Miliband’s advisor Greg Beales tweeted last Wednesday: “Today Ed Miliband spoke for the country because David Cameron can’t. Very important moment”. Tony Blair drew applause from a Progress audience last Friday by saying: “Ed Miliband has shown real leadership this week”.

Cameron’s “catastrophic error of judgement in hiring Andy Coulson” ties him to the violators of the communitarian rulebook. Miliband, in contrast, has made himself a tributary for these rules. And followed this through to demands for the requisite punishments: the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, the referral of News International’s takeover of BSkyB to the competition commission. In doing so, he gave his leadership its biggest turbo-charge to date.

He had previously enjoyed one of his best days with a speech on responsibility that placed him on the right side of the rulebook on welfare and bankers. By throwing everything he could at News International Miliband generated a much bigger impact than that speech had. But he also took a bigger risk.

Because, beyond the fierce urgency of now, a risk is what being sanguine about schmoozing Murdoch – who will more than likely still be a major media player at the next election – amounts to. But smart politics is about calculated risk-taking – and, in a country of communitarians, respecting the rulebook. If the power of newspapers is as diminished as we are sometimes told and if the public standing of News International continues to decline, Murdoch’s bite shouldn’t be as feared as it has been. If Cameron keeps being on the wrong side of the rulebook, he won’t be the winner that Murdoch always looks to back.

The possibility, although still slim, that Murdoch is a busted flush and Cameron a loser suddenly appears real. If Miliband can maintain his forceful leadership on the issue, capturing the public mood then this will increase. It will require much more than a win in today’s Commons vote called by Labour or in the wider debate opened up by the News International revelations.

This debate threatens a rupture between Cameron and the people – and demonstrates that when Ed connects with popular instincts for right and wrong he can lead.

Stewart Lee describes David Cameron with his arm around Nick Clegg as being akin to “a bloke who has bred a prize pig”. The Liberal Democrats have been slaughtered to ten per cent in opinion polls and Cameron boasts of being “in a position in four years time where we win the general election and govern on our own”.

While Tories love this bullish talk, the plan for the “pigs” fight back is more obvious than that which will deliver Cameron this outcome. The NHS bill has shown what can be expected from the Liberal Democrats. Pick fights with their governing partners – even if this necessitates reneging on past commitments. Extract concessions. And present the outcomes as injecting Lib Dem sanity into the Tory madness.

In 2003, the Tories complained about the Liberal Democrats producing a “disreputable” campaign guide. It advised candidates to “be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly”. The Tories might suspect that Lib Dem ministers have dusted it down. Chris Huhne seems eager to manoeuvre. He has attacked his Conservative colleagues as “rightwing ideologues”. He is, obviously, looking for a “win” on the environment.

Huhne’s constituency was Tory target seat number 12 last year. It is reported that Cameron will “not lift a finger to help” Huhne if he is found to have lied to the police. This disinclination may reflect bad feeling over the AV referendum. Huhne’s spoiling for a policy fight is unlikely to rebuild burning bridges.

Huhne retaining his seat through taking a joint Tory/Lib Dem ticket at the next election seems a diminished probability. As government policies are doing nothing to allow Cameron to make substantial inroads in the north of England, the prime minister looks intently upon Lib Dem seats like Huhne’s in the south.

With his scraps with government colleagues, Huhne seeks to retain his hold on his seat. Huhne won’t attack from the right in these inter-government confrontations. The Liberal Democrats are desperately trying to salvage their leftist identity from the wreckage of their entry into government. This boxes the Tories in to the right – limiting the extent to which the Cameron camp can be pitched on the centre.

Having devoured (but not properly understood) the Tony Blair books, this might unnerve Cameron. He wants to command the centre and shift it in his direction through reform, in contrast to the supposed failure of Blair’s first term. But nowhere in those books does it advise immediately firing out all your ideas, even if they are so half-baked they will inevitably fail to secure support and demand back tracking.

We know about the u-turns. The delayed white paper on public service reform also suggests that, while the Lib Dems are reduced to pettiness, the Tories are already scraping their ideas barrel. Tory ministers are risk-averse in assisting, because, as the likes of Andrew Lansley and Caroline Spelman attest, they will be hung out to dry if these risks don’t quickly come off.

There are threats and opportunities for Labour in these developments. We seem irrelevant when the debate plays out exclusively between two fractious governing parties. It is frustrating that, while it was long apparent that this was likely, the NHS bill has too often played out in this way. Huhne now threatens to extend this pattern to the environment. The need to insert ourselves into the national conversation places increased premiums on clear messaging and distinctiveness.

Senior Labour people insist that we “defend the record” of the last government. This cannot be at the expense of not learning the lessons of the last general election. We must not confuse babies with bathwaters in striking this balance. We’ve been too coy, for example, about the health gains we achieved by GP commissioning in government, which didn’t lose us any votes. Instead of being fearful of our own shadow, let’s take such good ideas to their logical conclusion. This won’t leave us in the same places as the government. It will, though, confirm Alan Milburn’s argument that only Labour can successfully reform public institutions.

Some examples of where this attitude might lead are: Labour believes that work should pay, so we want to rebalance taxation from income to wealth. Labour believes that power should be accountable to people, so we want a second chamber fully elected by PR. Labour believes that Britain is in Europe, so we will work constructively to create an EU that best enables the UK to adapt to twenty first century realities. Labour’s engagement with the EU is part of a belief in internationalism. This demands that we do not allow a narrow, ultimately self-defeating conception of national interest to stand between us and support for the kind of urgently needed reforms to global institutions championed by Mark Malloch Brown.

Advancement of these kinds of idea would show the country that we have the self-confidence to speak our truths about today’s biggest challenges. It would show the Lib Dems that if their core beliefs (on tax, the Lords, PR, Europe and global institutions) mean anything, that they could be better furthered under a Labour-led government than a Tory one. If we can secure the tactical objective of ensuring that Lib Dem MPs are inclined towards a Labour-led government, then the Tory/Lib Dem alliance cannot continue into a second parliament. If we can do this at the same time as achieving the strategic objectives of distinctiveness and relevance, then so much the better.

These strategic and tactical imperatives require candour about our beliefs and the policy conclusions to which they lead, rather than Clegg-bashing or any other form of personality driven politics.

Jonathan Todd is Labour Uncut’s economic columnist.

Politicians of all parties claim to favour rebalancing the economy; whether this is rebalancing from the public sector towards the private sector; from domestic consumption to exports; from finance towards manufacturing; or from London and the South towards the North and Midlands. These various kinds of rebalancing all enjoy broad political support but these consensuses risk being as glib as saying that all mainstream British politicians believe in, say, liberty. They mask deeper complexities and challenges, which must be overcome to achieve meaningful economic rebalancing. Labour should seek policies which will enable this, as well as language and demeanour that will allow us to reap the political benefit of tapping into the popular desire for a less financial-centric society and economy. We should, however, focus on the substantive issues and avoid puerile bashing of bankers. Let’s consider in turn each kind of rebalancing.

Rebalancing from the public to the private sector

The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that by the end of this parliament there will be 1.5 million more people working in the private sector and 400,000 fewer in the public sector. The political and economic strategy of the Government largely depends upon something of this order coming about. While their cuts are faster and deeper than is prudent, it is not inconceivable that extremely lax monetary conditions – rock bottom interest rates and quantitative easing – and a low pound allow something approximating to the OBR prediction to become real. Equally, there are many reasons why it may not; not least on-going instability in the eurozone.

It would be as unwise for Labour to be wholly pessimistic about the prospects for private sector recovery as it would be for the UK to gloat about troubles in the eurozone. Labour has to be the party of optimism, which should include being optimistic about the ingenuity of business, particularly if the Bank of England contains its fear of inflation and doesn’t raise interest rates too rapidly. Labour must avoid the perception that we see fiscal stimuli as the only motor of growth and monetary and exchange rate conditions as irrelevant. We should also acknowledge, through a credible deficit reduction programme, that a key reason for deficit reduction being important is that it reduces upward pressure on interest rates.

Part of this programme should involve a shift in the tax base to sharpen incentives towards hard work. This means less tax on income and more on wealth. A land tax could form part of this transition. It would do something to dampen the British tendencies towards property speculation and bubbles. It might also form part of a Labour drive towards tax simplification. Because taxation of land is simple it would be difficult to avoid. Labour could win friends from UK Uncut to the CBI with a considered drive towards tax simplification. UK Uncut should appreciate simplifications that make tax harder to avoid and the CBI should value simplifications that support economic growth. A land tax offset by reductions in taxation on employment would reduce the capacity of the rich to avoid taxation and increase the extent to which everyone keeps the fruits of their hard work. Tax simplification should not be owned by the right. It should be part of Labour’s arguments for rebalancing from the public and private sectors.   

Rebalancing from domestic consumption to exports

The global recession has demonstrated the utility of exchange rate and monetary flexibility and vindicated the decision to keep the UK out of the Euro. It is far from certain, however, that policy thus far has successfully contained the banking and fiscal crisis in the eurozone. Given the importance of eurozone growth to UK growth, the UK should play a constructive role in arriving at such policy, while not confusing our responsibilities with those which properly belong with eurozone members. As debates about the future of the Euro and the EU are disentangled – or, as has been more the case to date, conflated – British interests are ill-served by the chair left vacant at the negotiating table by David Cameron.

The prime minister has been eager to champion trade with the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and bored by Europe. Not realising the connection between the BRICs and the EU. In 2009 Ireland’s 4.5 million people accounted for more UK exports than the BRIC countries combined. It should be an economic priority for the UK to deepen our comparative advantages with the expanding middles classes of the BRICs. The development of these countries does much to explain the expectation of Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered, that the global economy will at least double in size between now and 2030.[1] However, the extent to which the UK benefits from this development depends on how quickly we advance trade with the BRICs. We need an EU that is recalibrated towards adaptation to a global economy that is increasingly driven by Asia. Cameron is too scared of Bill Cash to properly work towards such an EU. His carpet bagging of UK PLC to the BRICs counts for little next to this.

Rebalancing from finance to manufacturing    

We need to be realistic about employment prospects in manufacturing. The UK’s manufacturing sector remains the sixth largest in the world by output but no manufacturing sector in the developed world, even in Germany, a country with a stronger modern manufacturing reputation than us, has been able to avoid a considerable long-term decline in manufacturing employment.

We should not give in to the presumption that finance and manufacturing cannot be complements. We should be asking: what kind of financial sector would be most complementary to manufacturing in particular and the wider economy in general? And how can public policy best encourage such a financial sector?

The objectives set for the Independent Commission on Banking – minimise systematic risk and moral hazard; promote competition in both retail and investment banking – are vital. George Osborne won’t hold the Commission to these objectives. But Labour should. We should also be advocating a financial sector that is as complementary as possible to the wider economy. This argument probably goes beyond the remit of the Commission but the work of the Commission gives Labour a chance to firmly place it within the national debate.

Alongside rock-solid retail banks we need a flourishing of nimble financial services firms that are prepared to provide capital to enterprising SMEs. Such firms must be developed in green manufacturing but they will be more likely to do so if a credible price for carbon can be established. At the moment the carbon price comes from the ineffective EU-ETS. This carbon trading scheme either needs meaningful reform or replacement by a carbon tax. Either approach should be taken forward at the EU level, rather than in the form of the cack-handed move towards a carbon price contained in Budget 2011. Again Cash haunts Cameron.   

Rebalancing from London and the South towards the North and Midlands

As well as having sharp economic disparities between our regions the UK has one of the most centralised political systems in the democratic world. Labour should take ownership of the localism debate with the intention of creating forms of localism that reduce these disparities. This means holding localism proposals to the real localism standards proposed by IPPR – localism be effective and efficient; properly funded; at the heart of a drive for social justice; accompanied by a step-change in the transparency and accountability of local decision-making; and framed within a constitutional settlement between central and local government.[2]

Local government should be where the next generation of Labour leaders and ideas emerge. When we were last in opposition Lambeth was ill governed by Red Ted Knight. Now it pioneers the ground-breaking co-operative model. Liverpool was once troubled by Militant. It should soon have a resonant voice in national policy debates in the form of a Labour mayor. That Andrew Adonis, as Transport Secretary, reports battling to identify the views of great regional cities like Liverpool, while Transport for London made constant demands of him, is indicative of how skewed our national conversation has been.[3]

Regional cities haven’t only lacked voice in national debates. They have also lacked private sector employment. While Brighton and Milton Keynes both grew their private sector jobs bases by 25 per cent between 1998 and 2008, some cities slipped backwards: Stoke (-16 per cent), Blackburn (-12 per cent), Blackpool (-6 per cent).[4] The Government’s response – Enterprise Zones, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and the Regional Growth Fund – is inadequate. The Regional Growth Fund is one quarter the size of the budget for the (now abolished) Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in 2009/10.

The future of funds previously allocated by RDAs has been keenly debated. But these funds account for less than one per cent of total government spending in the regions.[5] Mainstream budgets, such as transport, skills and housing, are much larger. The principles of real localism should be applied to these budgets. The interface between LEPs and mayors remains to be worked out but the real localism case for devolving mainstream budgets to mayors, given their transparency and accountability, seems stronger than to LEPs.

Irrespective of whether it is to mayors or LEPs that mainstream budgets are devolved it is imperative that these resources are allocated to maximum incremental impact. This means working with the grain of markets, ironing out market failures and only intervening where there is a clear rationale for doing so. That many of these markets are global, both underlines the interconnectedness between the domestic and global economies and the scale of the challenge facing policy makers who are seeking to achieve on much reduced resources objectives that often proved sadly illusive during the New Labour boom. Yes, the resources available in the boom years were not always as well targeted as they could have been. Yes, real localism hasn’t been applied before and should enable better targeting. Nonetheless, it remains the case that politicians eulogise economic rebalancing, due to its popularity with voters, without acknowledging that it often runs contrary to the underlying drivers of our economy or facing up to the tough policy choices that will be required to make it more of a reality.

Conclusion

Voters are strikingly confused as to what Labour stands for.[6] Economic rebalancing, in every sense, given the ineffectual policy, lip service and lack of resources provided by the Government, can be a policy area commanded by Labour, in which we find new expression of our values of equality and fairness. But it raises many challenges, which the party’s policy review should seek to navigate. Only by rising to these challenges will Labour be able to move beyond the dismal record of politicians over-promising and under-delivering on economic rebalancing.

While the country almost aches for politicians capable of doing better than this, Labour will need to be bold reformers of both state and market to be these politicians. Applying real localism principles to mainstream budgets and fully realising the promise of mayors would, for example, be profound reforms of the state. Reforming the financial sector to make it as complementary as possible to the wider economy is as far reaching a reform of the market. Nothing less than such thoroughgoing state and market transformations will be needed for the UK to prosper in an increasingly Asian age.

“Pause, listen, reflect and improve”. That’s what David Cameron and Nick Clegg said they were going to do on the NHS bill. Most people know what these words mean. Cameron and Clegg don’t seem to, though.

The only thing that Clegg now reflects upon is how he can shore up his position as Liberal Democrat leader. With Chris Huhne and Tim Farron, two would-be assassins, both playing to his party’s gallery, he has reason to be worried. He sees the NHS as he now sees everything else: through the prism of his anxiety. For the NHS to relieve this, he needs to come to be seen as the man who saved it. The restorer of sanity subsequent to the Andrew Lansley-induced madness.

He wants “substantial, significant changes” to Lansley’s proposals. But the extraction of compromises is the least of the barriers standing in the way of him being re-born as Mr. NHS. He needs to explain away no Liberal Democrat MP voting against the bill at either first or second reading. Perhaps his MPs followed their whip because they thought the whole thing a Liberal Democrat idea. After all, that’s what Clegg argued not so long ago and, as John Redwood reminded Today listeners, the proposals are consistent with the Liberal Democrat manifesto.

Having broken promises on tuition fees and the depth and speed of cuts, Clegg’s attempt to reposition himself on the NHS bill is supremely opportunistic. Labour needs to expose this manoeuvre for the shallow gesture that it is. Only we have consistently opposed this bill and advocated workable reform in the NHS. The Liberal Democrats must not be allowed to steal our clothes.

Such theft would not be without risk for the prime minister. No government u-turn of such proportions can be without risk for its leader. It is indicative of the pickle into which he has allowed things to descend that Cameron now seems set to open this opportunity up to Clegg, particularly when his personal empathy with the NHS was central to his attempted detoxification of the Tories. Cameron may no longer be the man who loves the NHS if Clegg becomes the man who saved the NHS. It may make the “Thatcherite” label start to stick better on this somewhat Teflon prime minister.

We cannot allow the NHS debate to play out in terms of the politics between the governing parties. We need to make ourselves central to it. Ed Miliband’s speech to the RSA was helpful in this regard. It confirmed that we favour reform that works, not sticking our heads in the sand of the status quo. Our use of Commons debates can further assist.

Miliband is fond of saying “I get it”. The public needs to know that he gets the need to raise NHS productivity to maintain service standards in the context of the cost increases associated with society’s ageing. Obviously, real people don’t speak like this. But they don’t take NHS spending commitments alone to be virility symbols for the extent of a politician’s love for the NHS. They know that what is done with the money matters as much as the amount of money. And they also know that the country isn’t sitting on a bottomless pit of resources to devote to public services, and that tough choices, therefore, have to be made.

People are also worried about their own care and that of relatives, particularly the elderly and young. They want politicians to speak to these worries. But in ways that they consider realistic, given what they understand about the pressures on public expenditure.

The NHS in Cumbria shows that Labour reform works. It now shows that the facts on the ground are changing, even as the Lansley reform is supposedly paused. North Cumbria university hospitals NHS trust is to be taken over by or merged with another trust. This is because the current management has concluded that it cannot meet the strict financial criteria set to achieve the foundation status that the NHS bill requires it meet by 2014. This could well remove control of Cumberland infirmary in Carlisle and West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven from Cumbria – a curious form of localism. Try telling the 9,000 signatories on a petition organised by Labour MPs Tony Cunningham and Jamie Reed to maintain services at West Cumberland that the NHS Bill is paused.

Cumbria isn’t an isolated case. At PMQs recently, Labour’s Debbie Abrahams pointed out that the inception of cluster PCTs, which precede the GP consortia, including the Greater Manchester cluster PCT, was brought forward from 1 June to 3 May. The perception that significant swathes of the Lansley reforms are proceeding apace, irrespective of the pause that is meant to be in place, is encouraged by reports that the 50-strong “listening panel” set up to review them is stuffed with “yes men and women”. And, as the focus of the NHS is distracted, waiting times are rising.

Labour’s ground battle is to resist local changes brought about by the non-pause of the Lansley reforms. Labour’s air battle is to stop Clegg becoming the man who saved the NHS and Cameron being someone who gets the NHS. The war will be won when our policy review shows that not only does the government not have the right reforms, but that we do.

I wrote this recently for Labour Uncut when I was on holiday in the USA.

“I know America to be a forward thinking country because otherwise why would you have let that retard and cowboy fella be president for eight years? We were very impressed. We thought it was nice of you to let him have a go, because, in England, he wouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors”.

With such jokes, Russell Brand, as host of the MTV awards, initiated what is becoming an Anglo-American tradition: the cheeky Brit at a major American award ceremony. Ricky Gervais followed up at the Golden Globes this year. These comedians aren’t short of lines ripping George W Bush, but what assurance can we have that the British head of state can be trusted with a pair of scissors? Or even know what scissors are?

We can, of course, have no such guarantee. Birth right determines our head of state, irrespective of their abilities with scissors or other qualities. In contrast, the commander-in-chief is subject to the most gruelling of recruitment procedures. This fundamental difference between our monarchy and their republic convinces me that no matter what wise cracks Brand may make and how many William and Kate themed souvenirs American tourists may buy, ultimately, Americans are laughing at us. The idea of Donald Trump being president is preposterous, but selecting our head of state by birth is infinitely more so.

The royal couple competes with Lady Gaga for coverage in American tabloids. Cat Deeley vomits at the prospect of fronting the US TV coverage of the big event. Such is the nerve inducing size of the audience. Every major US TV and news network had teams in London well in advance. “It’s all so royally romantic”, a CNN anchor cooed.

All of which means they are interested, right? Well, certainly. But largely in the way that museum artefacts fascinate without tremendous contemporary relevance.

Americans are fiercely proud of their constitution. Their forefathers crossed the Atlantic to enact and enjoy its rights. The royal wedding is a throwback to the world they left behind. Not a world they want to return to. They are peering through their TV screens and digital cameras at the crazy Brits. But that doesn’t mean they want to be us or see us as being especially important. Some of them are enticed. All of them are, at core, pitying. We are crazy, after all.

We’re crazier than Arabs who recently seemed so separate and peculiar. Where once the terrain was deemed too arid for freedom and democracy, now Egyptians proclaim the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as have always defined Americans. We, on the other hand, remain subjects, not citizens.

The Arab spring is as inspiring as the Gettysburg address, but its outcome remains uncertain and, as with an increasing amount of things, beyond America’s control. America still wants to be the shining house on the hill. But it knows the world is changing. And it is worried.

Whatever else is achieved by William and Kate, they will not encourage the US to see the new allies that they need in the UK. The wedding reinforces the perception that the key global axis no longer exists in the Atlantic but in the Pacific. Europe is ageing, uncompetitive and stuck in a past exemplified by the royal wedding. Asia is rising, assertive and in command of events. Millions of Europeans flocked to Barack Obama even before he was president, but he is deeply pragmatic. He has limited emotional attachment to Europe and wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted by one even if he did.

He might think more of Europe if we were able to punch our weight in military and economic affairs. While the euro threatens to collapse amid its contradictions, European states struggle to muster a credible military response to a crisis happening on the other side of the Mediterranean. Just because the UK isn’t in the euro-zone and is one of the more militarily capable European states (though, one whose military ambitions threaten to outstrip our capacities) doesn’t mean we should congratulate ourselves. Instead of leaving an empty chair at the negotiating table – David Cameron’s style – the UK should be leading in Europe. On Friday, rather than taking such steps as will be necessary to create a Europe fit for the twenty-first century, the prime minister will be eulogising the hereditary principle.

The continued application of this principle distorts what we think of ourselves and what others think of us. So long as it is applied it won’t be possible to bring up children in the UK and truly tell them that they can ascend to any station, nor will others see us as fully engaged in modernity. The Arab word has boldly embraced the future (in spite of our endorsement of the past by having the crown prince of Bahrain attend the Royal wedding). So should we.