The Left Alternative

John O'Farrell, writer, humourist and Labour Party parliamentary candidate - whom I like a lot - has just posted on Twitter in response to a letter in today's Guardian calling for a new party on the left of British politics.

"Everything to left of Labour is about protest, not seeking power. Protest is important & Labour needs to be pulled leftwards.....but just don’t expect Labour to be happy with ideological pure but permanent opposition. That is what the Tories pray for."

I'm finding this impossible to disagree with but at the same time deeply disheartening.

Because what O'Farrell is really saying is that you can't win power in the UK with radical, progressive policies.The best you can hope for is to be less bad than the alternatives. Vote Labour - things will be a bit better than they would be under the Tories.

And they wonder why people are disengaging from politics?

Is it really impossible for a radical party of the left to win power? That is certainly now the received wisdom and it's an assumption that weighs me down as well. It's hard not to see the UK as a broadly conservative country, suspicious of radical alternatives. If you grew up, as I did, under Thatcher it's difficult to imagine the days of genuine ideological warfare between left and right that preceded her.

Has the centre-right simply won the argument? You might think so given the lack of alternative voices in mainstream politics and the media. In all the sound and fury surrounding the credit crunch and banking crisis the argument never moved from how to reform and regulate the current system to whether there might be an alternative to the system itself. And when you see the Labour Party scrabbling to catch the coat-tails of the latest coalition propaganda - strivers not shirkers, yesterday's sordid spectacle of Chris Bryant jumping on the anti-foreign workers bandwagon - it can feel like time to raise the white flag.

So O'Farrell is right that while the terms of the debate are so narrow the Labour Party has its hands tied. But the Labour Party has it in its hands to change the terms of the debate and if they jeopardise their chances of power in the short-term then that may be a price worth paying.

Fringe groups of the left are easy to dismiss and ignore. They have no effective voice in mainstream politics or media. The Labour Party has clout. It is the second biggest party in the country. It has significant representation in Parliament. Its voice is heard on the national stage. It shouldn't be following the agenda, it should be setting the agenda.

Yes, it will be a long and hard road, the spectre of 1983 and Michael Foot's strongly socialist manifesto leading to Labour electoral humiliation will always rear its head. But this isn't 1983 and after 30 years of free-market excess surely the time is now right for a powerful, mainstream alternative voice.

The most astonishing thing about the recent crisis in the financial markets is how little popular, public discontent there has been. Yes you get the vox pops on the news where people grumble about greedy bankers but there have been almost no political consequences which is both extraordinary and depressing when the actions of a few have directly affected the living standards of the many.

Is it that nobody really cares? Or is it that they feel powerless, unrepresented, without a voice or a forum to express their discontent? I suspect it's the latter. What an opportunity for the Labour Party to step up to the plate and do its job. If they're brave enough they may just find that there's a silent constituency ready and waiting to support a real alternative.

And it's not just the future of the Left that's at stake. It's the future of a vibrant political culture. A system built on a free market, centre-right political consensus, where parties scramble to occupy the same centre ground will breed two things: career politicians for whom the retention of power is all; and a total disengagement of the public from the political process.