This week James Purnell launched a Demos project, Open Left, which is asking what it means to be on the left today. To understand the difficulties that face the left you have to start way back. For almost 10 years a consensus has developed within the three main parties inspired by the Thatcher counter-revolution, which argued that government should keep out of industry and leave everything to the market.
It was that very policy that led to the present economic crisis and which has had a dramatic effect on the level of Labour support in two ways: a falling turnout for Labour and the emergence of the BNP.
The present government has many achievements of which we can be proud, not least on the environment, but the party is seen as offering management rather than representation. Policies worked out on the sofas in Whitehall will not, in my opinion, make much of a contribution to the rebuilding of confidence among the voters.
Nor indeed will sectarian strife on the left help.
More and more people worldwide now see that the basic conflict is between the majority who create the wealth and the handful who own it and want jobs and homes, good healthcare and education, decent pensions and peace.
From where I see it now, outside parliament, the reconstruction of a strong left has to begin by developing powerful campaigns centred on the issues that concern people, which can bring in support from across the whole political spectrum.
The Stop the War movement, which has been one of the most successful in my lifetime, enjoyed the backing of conservatives, liberals, greens, as well as those on the left, and will ultimately win a majority for a policy of withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Now some generals are coming out against nuclear weapons at the moment when we are being told we may have to spend billions to upgrade them. This project is the most obvious candidate for a cut in public expenditure.
Housing is another example. We see a long housing waiting list and unemployed builders who cannot be financed because the money is going to the bankers, some of whom are getting huge bonuses, paid for by taxation.
Similarly there is great anxiety about the deliberate privatisation of the public services – which we have seen in academies and the private financing of hospital building – which leaves them outside any democratic control.
It is the same with civil liberties that have been eroded and state pensions which are still dropping behind the earnings with which they were once linked.
Then there is taxation – where the modest increase announced for wealthier people has been denounced by the City but it is nothing compared to the highest level when Churchill left office in 1945 – 95%, justified on the grounds that the money was needed to fight the war and that the rich should share the burdens that others had to bear. These arguments apply to the present economic crisis.
We have to win these arguments if we are to retain power next year.
And that means there has to be much more pressure from below on the policy makers in Downing Street. Out of such pressure will come a revitalised left renewing its commitment to serve those it has always sought to represent.
For the first time in my life the public is more progressive on all these issues than New Labour.
Democracy is the buckle that links the streets to the statute book and to renew the left, democracy must be strengthened in a world increasingly dominated by forces we do not control.
Letters to my Grandchildren, by Tony Benn, will be published in October by Hutchinson