Purnell sees no Labour masterplan

Saturday, 18 July 2009 12:39 PM

The Labour party cannot shake off the shackles of its Britpop-era heyday and yet continues to toil under small-c conservatism, government rebel James Purnell has said.

In his first major interview since trying to topple the prime minister last month with his resignation from the Cabinet ten minutes before polls closed in European and local elections, Mr Purnell says Labour is in dire need of 'reinvention'.

The former work and pensions secretary told the Guardian he had doubts about Gordon Brown's ability to lead the party and government as early as last December.

"Over the last six months I had been thinking, 'has the elastic stretched beyond the point where I feel I am being true to myself?'"

Mr Purnell was one of 11 to walk out on Mr Brown's government in the lead up to and wake of the European and local elections, with the prime minister clinging on by the skin of his teeth with a last-ditch reshuffle.

In today's interview he explained his unease with government policy on a range of issues, including immigration, faith schools and electoral reform.

But he urged the party to fully move on from its New Labour past.

"All those Blairite, New Labour labels... for me, it's a bit like Britpop - I feel nostalgic for it, it was absolutely right for its time but that time was 1994," he said.

"It's a very different feeling being 12 years into government from the idealism of the start, but we need to recapture that idealism, not by living in the past or by aping New Labour or just sticking to the old tunes. We need to open up New Labour, reinvent it and then eventually move beyond it."

Mr Purnell added that his resignation had put close friend foreign secretary David Miliband in a "difficult position".

And despite distancing himself from a return to front-line politics, Mr Purnell - who takes up a new role with thinktank Demos in the autumn - appeared to leave the door open by saying such a return would be "pretty unlikely".

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