 The Labour Party has been struggling of late to explain what it stands for. This has damaged the personal reputation of party leader Keir Starmer and has also left Shadow Cabinet members in awkward positions when they're asked about Labour's vision and they have nothing to say. The farce continued when Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth appeared on Good Morning Britain to give this astonishing answer. Do you guys sat down yet and decided what policy? I mean have you spoken to Keir Starmer? Have you sat in a room and gone right guys? What does the Labour Party stand for? Have you had that conversation yet? Well of course we have we have our Shadow Ministerial, you know I've said a couple of meetings. Can you share it with us then? What does the Labour Party stand for? Confidential meetings I can't. Confidential meetings? You're a political person. I'm asking you the Labour Party. So it's confidential. You know normally when Keir Starmer gets asked what's your vision our vision he says something completely banal. You know our vision is we're going to look outwards, our vision is we're going to speak to the country. You know it means absolutely nothing but at least it kind of you know it works syntactically even if it doesn't have any content. Jonathan Ashworth just went it's confidential. Sorry we may or may not have a vision but if we did I wouldn't be able to tell you right. You know in his defence, not many people were defending him by the way, but if you were to defend him you say look we're four years out from a general election. There was a very important set of elections earlier this month and the Labour Party was surprised that in those elections they did really poorly when you know what they stand for is confidential. So you've got a vote to say should I vote for the Conservative Party who are offering me a vaccine rollout who are offering to re-industrialise the north of England who are you know offering to make Britain great again or should I vote for the Labour Party whose policies are confidential? Is it any surprise that Labour tanked in those elections when you've got the Shadow Health Secretary? You know very very important job being asked what Labour's vision is, what it stands for and saying well that was discussed but those meetings were confidential. The Labour Party understands that we have got to speak to the British people about their priorities and their interests and their concerns and we're launching a big policy review which we're going to take to the country and we're going to engage the country in a discussion and a debate and we're going to listen to the country about what it is they want, how they want this country to change because when I travel across the country I see it for myself in my own Leicester constituency and where I live in Leicester that we can do much better than we're doing at the moment. Our schools can be much better, our NHS can be much better. We've got nearly five million people on the waiting list, we need to sort that out. We can do much better to make the air that we breathe cleaner and our community is greener and we can do more to invest in making our communities safer and we've got to do more in the economy so people have well-paid jobs not relying on low-paid temporary work or zero-hours contracts so they can buy their own home. These are big issues that we're going to be focusing on in the weeks and months ahead. It is ironic though, isn't it, Jonathan Ashworth, when you say we need to tell the electorate what we stand for but we can't yet because it's confidential. Well I was talking about the particular meeting but I mean look, we are going to be having a big policy review with the country and the cost of meetings aren't confidential, that's more of a sort of throwaway comment but look we're having a big policy debate and discussion with the country and you'll see Labour coming out with exciting ideas. I have to say I kind of preferred the answer that it was confidential, you know, at least it was more memorable because what did he say there? He tries to, you know, recover himself, save himself because we've got to speak to the British people about their priorities and their interests and their concerns. Do you not have any priorities, interests or concerns? You know, the point of politics and political leadership is you have some concerns and you talk to the electorate about them and yeah, you then listen to the electorate's concerns and you consider whether you should change your policies or whether you should modify them but you don't go to the electorate with absolutely nothing because if you go to them with absolutely nothing then what are you bringing to the table? You're not bringing anything to the table, right? And Labour there are not bringing anything to the table. When he does talk about more concrete things, it's just a list of a bunch of nice things. We'll make schools better, we'll make the NHS better, we'll make the air we breathe cleaner. Literally anyone could say that, you know, you can be from any political party saying, oh, we'll make the NHS better. It's just a list of nice things. You have to explain why the Tories can't deliver that, why the Tories haven't delivered that. You can't just say, oh, we'll make everything better. What's your vision? Oh, we're going to make things better party. It doesn't stack up. I mean, it feels like Groundhog Day. It feels like every time I come on Tiskey, there's another one of these interviews. And how have they not workshopped a better response to this? It's been several weeks now. Like this is not a gotcha question. This is not unpredictable. Like it's been several weeks now of these shambolic media appearances where they have been challenged on this. And I don't understand how Keir Starmer has all of the discipline in the world when it comes to, you know, what socialist MPs tweet about and, you know, socialist party members and expelling people and all of this. And yet doesn't have the ability to discipline his own front bench into effectively answering a question that everyone is asking and has been asking for several weeks. And that should be really, you know, should be easy to answer. But also it makes me think about, you know, going back to the earlier story in this week, in this show, where, you know, that Starmerite tactic of, you know, when he challenges the government, quote unquote, of just sort of basically endorsing the fundamental political and ideological values that guide what the government does, but just sort of saying that the government is incompetent at delivering it, that doesn't work when you look significantly more incompetent. You need a better tactic. And I think also that's the kind of strategic question, but then thinking about actually, you know, the kind of moral and the ethical and the political question here. We are living in a moment when there is so much space for really transformative vision and for really transformative thinking, you know, we've got multiple crises that are overlapping with each other from, you know, climate to COVID to the crisis in employment in, you know, the fact that so much of the work that people do is not good, not enough to sort of put, to adequately look after themselves and to adequately have security and stability. And this is one of those historical moments, you know, once in not just a generation, but several generations opportunity where the contradictions and the problems in the existing system are being sharpened and are being lived through in really visceral ways. And it's in these moments when resistance out of and replacing of those systems can be consolidated, whether it's, you know, through transformative visions around work, whether it's transformative visions around climate change, you know, ecology or, or decentralization. And we have to remember that, that this is how neoliberalism itself gained power. It was through approaching a moment in crisis with transformative, obviously, we believe for the negative transformative visions and, and building the power to make that actually happen. And it's not easy. It's not a struggle. It's not, it's not easy. It's, you know, it's an uphill struggle. But it's also incumbent upon us. It's our historical duty as the generation living in this particular moment, where we meet this cross section of crises to be up to that job and the labor, you know, something called the labor party to be languishing in this moment and to be so indifferent and so anemic and to have no ambition other than to simply lower the expectations of what can change. It's a giant abdication of that duty. And what it will mean is that the space to reinvent and reconsider the way that we live our lives is going to be left to much more dangerous forces. And I think history is going to be very harsh on those who didn't have the metal and sat behind and let that happen.