A question to Jon Cruddas on Labour’s “organisational renewal”
I was fortunate to get an invite to a talk by Labour’s Policy Review Coordinator Jon Cruddas yesterday evening hosted by the Civitas think tank in Westminster. Cruddas made a typically interesting and enigmatic speech, on the theme of ‘ One Nation Labour: work, family and place ’ (transcript here ), outlining how the Policy Review is unfolding around these themes and exploring them in some detail. I won’t go into much of that detail here (click the link above to read the speech); instead I want to focus briefly on the “organisational renewal” within Labour that Cruddas spoke about in glowing terms. This is the attempt, led by the American community organiser Arnie Graf , for Labour to become more connected within communities, engaging with voters more on their terms and with less focus on “harvesting their votes” using Voter ID data (which puts you into categories and defines you without campaigners even needing to meet you).(For some of Graf’s own thoughts, cli...