How to rewire the British left

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Demos' Open Left project has been billed at this conference as one of the main sources of 'big ideas' for the future of the left.

Its aims are certainly timely.

Labour faces enormous challenges from the right to make spending cuts, and the left (and the trade unions in particular) to defend investment in jobs and public services.

This project, seeking to reconcile two of Labour's dominant tradions – the liberal and the social democratic – has proved an interesting place to start. Chaired by Channel 4 News anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy, it was certainly a lively debate – beginning by questioning what kind of quality Labour should aim for.

Roy Hattersley, former Labour deputy leader, was here to represent the party's social democratic tradition – and he began by voicing the kinds of equality to which the left should not asprire.

One was equality of opportunity, which, he said, essentially amounts to nothing more than 'survival of the fittest'. The other was 'unattractive uniformity' – a long-standing critique of left-wing thinking.

Hattersley's notion, he said, is one of 'democratic equality': that government should create the means to allow people to do things, and express themselves, in ways they never had before.

By contrast, the liberal torch here was carried by James Purnell, MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, who heads the Open Left project – and who last year made waves with his solo resignation on the eve of the European elections in June, saying he could no longer serve under Gordon Brown and citing as a factor in his decision Labour's ideological drift.

Purnell described Open Left as 'a machete to cut through the philosophical jungle' of the left, and was keen to emphasise the 'open' nature of the project.

The former cabinet minister himself is a staunch defender of what Hattersley called 'Labour's choice agenda', and drew on classical liberal ideas to do so.

Purnell's starting point, he said, was "devolving power to individuals and communities".

He quoted as an aspiration the economist Amartya Sen's notion of 'equality of capability', with powerful individuals the best starting point for a fairer society.

In the same vein, Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said she was "not as down on equality of opportunity" as Roy Hattersley.

She did, however, acknowledge that "the languageof equality has become very tired", and said that the left can only achieve equality of opprtunity by first gaining a very clear understanding of the obstacles to achieving it.

Jowell's interventions in this debate proved particularly controversial.

When she spoke about the need to continue to introduce market reforms in order to improve Britain's public services, Jowell was heckled from the floor by a Labour delegate who works in the NHS. She made her feelings on the limits of the market very clear.

Higher education minister David Lammy sought to drive a path through the middle of these viewpoints.

He referred to New Labour as "the politics of comprosmise: a successful way to reconcile Labour's historic egalitarian goals with an increasingly individualist, atomised, market-driven society".

Like Hattersley, Lammy said he took issue with New Labour's emphasis on individual choice, saying that when his mother was battling cancer last year, she would not have been able – like many of Lammy's constituents in Tottenham, one of the country's most deprived constituencies – to navigate her own path through the NHS.

Lammy paid tribute to Labour's liberal traditions.

"I would not be here today without our fight for individual rights", he said – but he urged the party now to forge a new public realm.

Indeed, Lammy warned against too great an emphasis on the individual, when the great challenges ahead are "collective challenges: climate change and and ageing society".

Lammy said he suspected Labour's 'mood music' going forward would not be reminiscent of Peter Mandelson's infamous assurance that Labour was "intensely relaxed about people getting filhty rich"; and when challenged by Guru-Murthy to find common ground between his Tottenham constituency and much wealthier Hapmstead down the road, Lammy said it was "the responsibility we have to one another".

The last panellist, Independent journalist Steve Richards, provided a pithy and perceptive analysis of Labour's problems. Investment in public services, he said, had been badly underplayed by the government as a factor in achieiving equality of opportunity. Richards also challenged Purnell's project with the simple question: "How?"

Empowering communities, he said, was an end – not a means to actually get there, which Labour had yet to define.

Perhaps inevitably, this searching question remained open. Indeed, the Open Left debate asked as many questions as it found answers, which may yet proveto be Labour's electoral undoing.

As a three-year project, Open Left will undoubtedly remain an interesting hub of ideas and debate, and if it can make a dent in reconciling Labour's often profound ideological and moral dilemmas, that will have been time well spent.