Tom Griffin (London, OK): Sunny Hundal suggested last month that the debate about the direction of the Labour Party could be cast as a confrontation between two party pressure groups, the Blairite Progress and the centre-left Compass.
If that's true, then Friday's Guardian exchange between Progress director Robert Philpot and Compass chair Neal Lawson may be a useful guide to the parameters of the argument.
Lawson argues that Labour has allowed itself to be outflanked by the Conservatives:
New Labour's electoral strategy was premised on the belief it could shift to the right and force the Tories to extreme and unelectable positions. It also believed that its supporters had no where else to go.
David Cameron has called our bluff and leapfrogged into much of the centre-left terrain that should be ours. The issue is not whether the Tories will do more on social justice or not but why we don't.
Philpot argues against any fundamental shift in the party's direction:
let's be careful not to repeat Labour's mistake of the 1980s: the notion that when the voters swing to the right what they're really signalling is that they want the party to move to the left.
I've long been surprised by the generosity that you show towards the intentions of David Cameron compared with the caricature of "Blairism" that you paint.
On both sides, it is a fairly traditional argument about positioning on the left-right ideological spectrum. What's lacking is any sense of the connection between Labour's problems and the wider crisis of the British state which both David Marquand and Compass member Gerry Hassan have identified.
