Ideas Labour?

DOES anyone remember Ideas Wales? No? It was an organisation set up under the aegis of Welsh Labour in early 2008 to think big thoughts about future direction and policies for the party.

Nothing much seems to have come of it, at least so far. The last event organised by Ideas Wales was in November 2008, and its few publications predate that.

If you’re a Labour supporter, that can’t be a good sign. And, if you take Huw Lewis at his word, it’ll soon be a thing of the past. Launching his campaign in his home village of Aberfan today, the Merthyr AM called for a “battle of ideas” to begin within the party.

It’s a battle Lewis says he intends to win, putting “a defining vision back into the heart of this party” in the process. After a week of YouTube videos and website launches, the former Deputy Minister deserves credit for kick starting the “ideas” bit of the campaign, even if cynics will suggest it is because he doesn’t want to talk about the “endorsement” bit of the campaign for fear of highlighting how far he is behind his rivals.

But if you’re going to challenge the other candidates to knuckle down to the issues, you need have something to put on the table. In Huw Lewis’s case, he’s brought five key pledges.

Five key pledges? Is it 1997 all over again? Perhaps John Prescott will pop up with his little pledge card. Then again, perhaps not. That would be a big endorsement.

But even if the packaging has a vintage feel, the pledges themselves contain fresh meat. There’s a Welsh Opportunities Fund to improve educational provision for deprived children, promises of binding agreements on climate change and social partnership, and a commitment to new solutions for affordable housing and the NHS.

Whether these are good ideas is for those with a vote to judge. But they don’t feel that connected. They don’t seem to offer that overarching narrative about Labour’s future as a party of the progressive centre left, or seem to suggest a coherent rallying cry to members.

Huw Lewis says they are “just snapshots” from his forthcoming manifesto, so we can expect far more. Will these ideas cohere into something that feels like a plausible analysis of Welsh Labour’s recent travails, and a prescription for its renaissance? In other words, can they provide that “defining vision”?

We wait and see for that answer. But at least now the ideas discussion is underway. It’s just as well; we could be waiting for a long time if it was left to Ideas Wales.