UK Higher Education Policy and the Global Third Way

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UK Higher Education Policy and the Global
Third Way

• David Jary

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The argument

• Concept of Third Way much disparaged as lacking a
  clear definition.
• Anthony Giddens, the theorist most identified
  with the concept, insists that the case for the
  reform of social democracy and social welfare
  that is central to the Third Way has gained
  global support
• New Labour higher education policy remains
  much influenced by the concept.
• I explore the view that working with the grain of
  Third Way theory, Labour governments policies
  and provides the best way forward to a higher
  education that matches the needs of the global
  knowledge economy and enhances social inclusion
  and social justice.

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The article

• The article reviews developments in UK higher
  education including the 2003 Higher Education
  White Paper and the 2004 Higher Education Bill in
  the light of central tenets of Third Way theory,
• Sees New Labour Higher Education policies as
  strong embodiments of Third Way principles
• Although they build on Tory policies grounded in
  neo-liberal and mainstream management theory -
  and a good deal of disparagement of these
  policies within higher education including
  widespread criticism of a culture of targets and
  audit New Labour policies differ significantly
  in other respects, not least in combining an
  emphasis on sound public finance and strong
  public services.

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Giddens on the Third Way

• Critique of historical materialism (1985)
• Account of the dynamics of global society and the
  global knowledge economy (1990).
• Mouzelis (2001 436) unlike most other
  progressive thinkers, he squarely sets aside
  all expectations of a transition to socialism and
  concentrates on the much more relevant problem
  of the humanisation of capitalism.
• Beyond Left and Right (1994) a bridge between
  Giddens previous theorising and his later
  writing on the Third Way.
• Giddens (2001) argument is that with the
  collapse of state socialism and the triumph of
  market mechanisms and the new importance of the
  knowledge economy there is today no political
  alternative to the Third Way.
• For Giddens the Third Way, and in the UK New
  Labour is, for the present at least, the only
  show in town capable of responding realistically
  and progressively to modern requirements,
  including the reform of the welfare state and of
  education

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The rationale of the Third Way

• Expressed most fully in the writings of Anthony
  Giddens (1994, 1998, 2001, 2002a). His
  articulation of the Third Way is aimed at taking
  progressive politics beyond the traditional
  dividing lines of left and right and at the same
  time meeting the demands of the global economy
  and the objective of advancing social justice.
• The Third Way not an attempt to find a halfway
  point between the Old Left and free market
  fundamentalism (Giddens, 2001).
• Rather, as seen by Giddens, it is a
  distinctively left of centre project it is
  about the modernisation of social democracy.
• Giddens has continuously reoriented himself as a
  public intellectual and has become far and away
  the major theorist of the Third Way.
• Sometimes referred to as Blairs guru, Giddens
  accompanied Blair in his Third Way seminars with
  Bill Clinton, whose Democrat administration and
  the Democratic Leadership Council first advanced
  Third Way politics in the USA.

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Blair on Third Way

• For Tony Blair (2003), the main elements of the
  Third Way for New Labour are as follows.
• the economy, acceptance of fiscal disciplines
  together with investment in human capital,
  science and knowledge transfer to meet the needs
  of knowledge and information society
• civic society, an emphasis on rights and
  responsibilities, a new citizenship contract
• public services, investment to ensure equality of
  opportunity, but a restructuring to provide more
  individually tailored services built around the
  needs of the modern consumer and to secure the
  public goods that markets, if left to themselves,
  could not provide.
• Thus New Labours modernising stance
• Differs significantly from Old Labour or
  neo-liberalism/Thatcherism not least in combining
  an emphasis on sound public finance and strong
  public services
• As such, New Labours policies involve
  continuities as well as discontinuities with
  traditional Labour values.

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Not only Blair or New labour

• Although a significant influence on New Labour,
  the Third Way is not simply about Blair or New
  Labours policies or programmes.
• As well the current policies of New Labour, it is
  the more general potential of Third Way theories
  and politics that are the focus of this article.

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Looking at higher education specifically

• What is above all distinctive about the Third Way
  is its dual nature its mix of marketisation,
  the introduction of market relations between and
  across various sites in society on the one hand
  and its concern with equity and social justice
  on the other with the intention of deflecting
  the most corrosive effects of market forces
  through state regulation and state support.
  (Rajani Naidoo 200025)
• Reform strategies in higher education reflect
  these twin aims.
• Whether the tensions between them e.g.
  maintaining globally competitive world class
  universities whilst widening participation can
  be satisfactorily resolved is a primary issue.
• However an explicit recognition that these
  tensions exist and must be confronted in a
  realistic higher education policy can be regarded
  as a crucial feature of distinctively Third Way
  higher education policy.

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1996 General Election campaign emphasised
education, education, education reflected
Gordon Brown endogamous growth assumption of a
virtuous circle between human capital and
economic growth

• The expectation that higher education will
  contribute to enhancing the nation states
  competitive edge in the global market place by
  developing innovations in knowledge and
  technology and producing new smart workers
  (Naidoo, 2000).
• Traditional role in training an academic elite
  and attention to the importance of an improved
  science base plus a heightened emphasis on the
  importance of higher education as preparation for
  increasing areas of employment requiring
  adaptability and flexible skills.
• Although disparaged by some critics on the Left
  as a narrow emphasis on employable selves also
  an argument that an expansion of numbers and a
  widening of participation in higher education
  will be crucial in delivering increased social
  inclusion and wider social benefits, including
  citizenship and social justice.
• But the role of education in a fulfilling life,
  as a good in its own terms receives emphasis,
  notably in The Learning Age a Renaissance for a
  New Britain. Education is extolled as a personal
  acquisition and a collective benefit. (Toynbee
  and Walker, 2005)

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Significance of key documents in relation to
Third Way themes

• Higher education expansion increased student
  numbers and improved research funding aimed at
  improving economic competitiveness and expanding
  the personal and social benefits from higher
  education
• Widening participation aimed at achieving
  improvements in social justice as well as human
  capital
• Increased student contribution to the funding
  of higher education seen as necessary to expand
  mass provision and also to support financially
  poorer students
• Greater accountability and improved management of
  higher education and support for enhanced
  professionalism
• Improved responsiveness of higher education
  (including targets and resource competition and
  emphasis on partnership and knowledge transfer)
• Encouragement of increased private funding

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Three Phases in New Labour HE policies -
Continuities and discontinuities with Tory
policies Whilst phase 1 and 2 list policies
already implemented, Phase 3 is more promissory
and represents the aspirations of New Labour
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Uncertainty and risk and accountability, audit
and enhancement in an expanded new higher
education

• Uncertainties re new kinds of students, new kinds
  of courses and newly established institutions and
  the efficiency and value for money of higher
  education expansion
• Demand for accountability and audit also fuelled
  by pressures
• from students for a democratisation of the
  control of teaching and learning,
• from employers and students a demand for greater
  relevance and transferability in the
  knowledge and skills provided by courses..
• Although commissioned by a Conservative
  government, the Dearing Report provided a
  powerful impetus to New Labour policies not least
  in the areas of quality management and
  enhancement.
• One significant outcome of Dearing was the
  creation of Institute of Learning and Teaching
  (ILT) and the Learning and Teaching Support
  Network (LTSN), now incorporated into the Higher
  Education Academy, developments generally viewed
  favourably as involving an appropriate mix of top
  down and bottom up processes.

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Negative aspects of regimes of accountability
and quality enhancement in UK Higher Education

• Successive regimes of quality assurance and
  accountability and new managerialism in UK
  higher education in part associated with New
  Public Management continued under New Labour,
• The importation of new languages new
  discourses and Foucauldian cultures of
  self-improvement within institutions
• Alienating to many academic staff and often
  regarded counter-productive as distracting from
  the real world of teaching and learning, and
  leading to a game playing pursuit of favourable
  ratings without necessarily contributing to an
  enhancement of learning and teaching.
• Nor, is the information provided by audits
  about institutional performance or the
  standards of learning and teaching always seen
  as useful.
• As suggested by Michael Power (1994 1997), the
  messages given-off by audits often fail to
  reflect institutional realities.

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Power, Giddens, Keoane etc on Audit and a Third
Way agenda

• Notwithstanding the pathologies of audit, the
  ubiquity, inescapability and legitimacy of what
  Power refers to as the audit explosion is
  emphasied by him.
• Appeal of audit as a seemingly effective
  portable management tool directly related to a
  new environments of trust and risk and the
  increasing centrality of institutional and
  personal reflexivity in a global society.
• In such a risk society (Giddens Beck, 1992)
  the internal monitoring and adaptation of
  performance becomes a prerequisite for survival
  and effectiveness.
• Robert Keoane (2003) also sees the necessity and
  legitimacy of accountability in a global and
  would-be democratic age. Accountability as
  hierarchical and supervisory legal, peer
  accountabilityalso arises from the
  reputational sensitivities of institutions.
• Thus accountability is not only a consequence of
  neo-liberalism but is a vital element in a
  necessary democratisation of control of public
  institutions and crucial in the context of a
  Third Way agenda.

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Quality assurance mechanisms in universities

• First introduced in 1992 the Teaching Quality
  Assurance became the responsibility of the
  Funding Councils, and the Higher Education
  Quality Council carried out reviews of
  institutional processes.
• In 1997 the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) was
  established, replacing this arrangement, but a
  troubled organisation widely regarded as failing
  to respond adequately to the critiques of
  audit.
• In recognising the pathologies but also the
  legitimacy of audit, the objective of critics
  like Michael Power is to seek its reform.
• Seeks move from Type A low trust, mechanistic
  and ineffective or counter productive forms to
  Type B, high trust, dialogical forms of audit

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Powers Two Types of Audit

• TYPE A TYPE B
• Quantitative Qualitative
  
• Single Measure Multiple
  Measures
• External Agencies Internal Agencies
• Long Distance Methods Local Methods
• Low Trust High Trust
• Discipline Autonomy
• Ex Post Control Real Time
  Control
• Private Experts Public
  Dialogue

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Reform

• A reflexive debate on accountability and audit
  in higher education prompted by critics such as
  Power is an emerging system with less mechanical
  systems of audit and greater trust
• Subject reviews, previously conducted by the QAA
  and formulaic, will now be the responsibility of
  institutions, expected to make use of external
  reference points such as the Qualifications
  Framework and Subject Benchmarks provided by QAA.
  
• Institutions also to publish a wide range of
  data, including summaries of internal reviews,
  examiners reports, student feedback, together
  with quantitative data on entry qualifications,
  retention and progression, including degree
  results and employment data.

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Subject Benchmarks

• Originating with Dearing
• Subject Benchmarks state the outcomes to be
  expected from particular subjects.
• Designed to provide frames of reference for use
  in programme specification and in the
  identification and assessment of learning
  outcomes.
• Provide a reference point for external examiners
  and for subject assessors appraising standards of
  provision.
• Provide public information about subjects
  intended to be useful to students and employers.
• Can provide frames of reference to promote
  reflexive internal and external discussion of
  provision.
• A key issue is whether Subject Benchmarks can
  overcome their association with disparaged
  aspects of QAA processes and contribute to the
  public accountability and enhancement that a
  Third Way higher education policy seeks to
  obtain?

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Changing methods

• In terms of Powers Two Types of Audit, changes
  in QAA methods involve movement in the direction
  of Type B Audit, including expanded internal and
  public dialogue
• Often academics (e.g. Ryan, 2004) deny any
  benefit from quality processes or accountability.
  But researchers into universities as
  organisations (e.g. Becher and Kogan, 1980) have
  long noted a producer interest and a persistent
  lack of social responsiveness of universities
  left to their own devices.
• An enhanced focus on learning and teaching in
  contemporary higher education has owed a good
  deal to the presence of the quality processes
  extended and fine tuned under New Labour.
• The Third Way rhetoric is a far from closed
  rhetoric and capable of being taken further by
  academics as well as stakeholders .

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Four drivers of general UK HE policy

• 1. Research improvements in the research base,
  especially via world class institutions, to be
  achieved by increased selectivity in research
  funding
• Teaching and learning maintaining and enhancing
  the quality and reputation/international market
  value of learning and teaching
• 3. Enhanced engagement of higher education with
  the community, including knowledge transfer
• 4. Widening participation (and also achieving
  fair access to elite institutions) by
  increasing institutional funding to support
  students from under represented groups and by
  increasing the diversity of institutional
  missions and concentrating new courses on 2-year
  Foundation Degrees.

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Third Way elements of the HE White Paper

• Both the White Paper and the HEFCE Strategic Plan
  are replete with earlier Third Way language,
  themes and managerial devices including a
  continuing emphasis on accountability and the
  measurement of performance.
• But also noticeable is the presence of the newer
  emphasis on the themes of Progressive
  Governance referred to by Giddens (2003).
• These include a focus on such themes as policy
  delivery, transformative leadership,
  partnerships, enhanced stakeholder involvement as
  well as a further foregrounding of social
  inclusion,
• The documents also begin to address the decline
  in funding per student of 36 per cent in the
  period 1989 and 1997 and an 8 billion investment
  backlog in investment in teaching and research
  facilities and promise an annual increased real
  funding of 6 per cent
• All four of the main policy drivers central in
  both documents seek to confront the issues facing
  governments seeking to manage the transition from
  elite to mass higher education.
• Misplaced to suggest, as does Collini (2003),
  that the White Paper is simply an exercise in
  managerialist language and empty rhetoric. In
  confronting and attempting to reconcile the four
  drivers the White Paper can be seen as a
  radical paper.

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Potential contradictions between the four drivers

• Drivers 1 can support 2 learning and teaching
  excellence in top-ranking research universities,
  but 2 is threatened by the reduction of a
  research presence in universities in which
  research funding is already limited and subject
  to further proposed reductions
• ? Difficulties in realising 3, a strong regional
  research role, in non-research intensive
  universities subject to reduced research funding
• ? The association of 4 especially with research
  weak and teaching only universities accentuates
  an already existing perverse access in which
  students from under represented groups are
  increasingly located disproportionately in lower
  status and less well resourced institutions.

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Problematic resolutions of dilemmas

• The White Papers proposed resolution of such
  contradictions is an increasing acknowledgement
  and encouragement of diversity of institutional
  mission.
• This resolution is advanced with the best of
  intentions to meet the diverse requirements of
  the global economy and to enhance social
  inclusion and social justice, but the potential
  contradictions are obvious.
• If only a relatively few institutions are funded
  fully for research, a separation of teaching from
  research will become the reality for other
  institutions. Although largely accepted for Big
  Science, for most other subject areas the
  appropriateness of extreme research selectivity
  and a separation of teaching from research has
  been widely challenged (e.g. UniversitiesUK,
  2003).
• Whilst widening participation is now a central
  aspect of current higher education policy
  including a unified Aim Higher Programme of
  outreach and partnership activities such new
  access for previously underrepresented groups
  risks being even more a perverse access if it
  occurs mainly in second class institutions and
  is associated only with second tier of graduate
  or non graduate careers.
• Advantages may exist in a limited reputational
  range in university provision that must be
  weighed in the balance against any more extended
  hierarchy.

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But confronts dilemmas

• Although it can be critiqued in the above ways,
  it is characteristic of the White Paper that the
  dilemmas of higher education expansion are
  confronted even if it can be argued that the
  White Paper sometimes resolves these largely
  rhetorically.
• What the White Paper can be commended for however
  is its recognition of the requirement for major
  system change as part of the worldwide transition
  of higher education from an elite to mass and
  to an increasingly universal system (Trow,
  2005).
• This contrasts with a much commentary critical of
  the White Paper that responds to higher education
  change only with traditional higher educational
  mantras.
• The prominence of such nostalgia and a seeming
  denial of any necessity for change found
  especially in the UK reflects the previous
  exceptionalism of UK higher education, its
  relatively delayed passage to a mass system and
  an, in some ways, beneficial attempt to run an
  expanded elite system seen notably in a
  unitary conception of the undergraduate degree.
  However, this mind-set can become a limit on
  discourse, restricting imagination in envisaging
  reforms
• A modernising Third Way rhetoric offers instead
  an expanded context for discussion of the future
  of higher education in which the dilemmas of
  expansion can be debated.

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The 2004 Higher Education Bill and the Third Way

• Main debate about the 2004 Higher Education Bill
  focussed on three of its proposals
• Legislation to allow universities to charge
  top-up tuition fees of up to 3,000
• 2. a deferred, income-dependent graduate
  contribution to the costs of higher education to
  the costs of higher education
• 3 the creation of the Office for Fair
  Access (OFFA) charged with approving individual
  agreements with institutions intending to charge
  top-up fees on their proposals to improve access
  from underrepresented groups, including provision
  for scholarships and bursaries.

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Third Way logic of the proposals

• In underlining the the Third Way logic of these
  proposals we can note the support for a graduate
  contribution expressed by Anthony Giddens (cited
  in Goddard, 2003)
• Higher education will be free at the
  point of delivery. I think theres a principle of
  equality. Its crucial that universities get more
  funding and the proposal is equitable. The
  current scheme is like a middle class subsidy.
• The overall justice of New Labours proposals
  also arises from a generous provision for
  bursaries, scholarships, maintenance grants, and
  access funds for students from poorer
  socio-economic backgrounds. This is substantially
  the case also argued by the then Education
  Secretary, Charles Clarke. Giddens reiterates,
  as does Clarke, that renewal is essential.
• Critics of the policy of a student contribution
  (Callender and Kemp, 2002) point to debt
  aversion and less family support for students
  from lower socio-economic groups as likely to
  deter participation. But such research is not
  conclusive and there is no direct evidence of a
  deterrence effect. In so far as top up fees
  represent a further increment in the
  marketisation of higher education that may
  exacerbate perverse access, this will need to
  be kept under review and there are proposals to
  do so in association with the Bill.

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Giddens on Current Policies Generally

• For Giddens and New Labour The contemporary
  left needs to develop a dynamic life-chances
  approach to equality, placing the prime stress
  upon equality of opportunity (Giddens, 2000
  86).
• As clear in The Third Way (Giddens, 1998),
  despite its revaluation of the terms of Left and
  Right politics, equality, remains a highly
  important aspect of the renewal of social
  democracy.
• It is crucial especially with respect to its
  implications for social inclusion life
  chances, a personal sense of wellbeing and
  self-respect are directly at stake
• A democratic society that generates large-scale
  inequality is likely to produce widespread
  disaffection and conflict (Giddens, 1998 42).
• Giddens notes that from 1975 and 1995 the
  percentage of total national spending on
  education declined but has increased under New
  Labour.
• Since educational success reflects economic
  inequalities, family income support and
  pre-school provision is also crucial. Hence the
  continued emphasis by New Labour on the
  importance of successful programmes such as Sure
  Start and Family Tax Credits aimed at supporting
  young families especially in areas of
  deprivation.
• Without an emphasis on a more general uplifting
  of opportunity and social justice a 50 per cent
  enrolment in higher education may exacerbate
  social exclusion by creating a new education
  divide.
• Nevertheless the goal of a 50 per cent
  participation rate remains emblematic of New
  Labour higher education policy and the Third Way,
  compared with Conservative higher education
  policy which is to end expansion.

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Giddens on Current Policy

• Significantly Giddens (2002b 2003) refers to
  the necessity of a more ideological Phase 2 of
  the Third Way that supplements the investment
  state with an ensuring state.
• In more general terms, the Third Way is
  reasserted as involving a defence of the public
  interest and the public sphere, and the provision
  of public goods.
• This does not mean always eschewing markets but
  it will require a renewal of trust in the public
  sector, which more satisfactory forms of
  accountability can help to realise.
• As Giddens insists, endorsement of a market
  economy does not imply endorsement of a market
  society.

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Conclusions My argument is that

• In viewing New Labours higher education policy
  in Third Way terms its coherence is apparent.
• In the Higher Education 2003 White Paper and the
  2004 Higher Education Bill, the Third Way focus
  of New Labour policy has been significantly
  extended.
• A previous over emphasis on efficiencies ended
  and funding increased.
• New managerialism and a recourse to management
  tools continues, but these tools has been refined
  and the harder forms of top-down management
  counterbalanced by a greater recognition of the
  importance of working more with the grain of
  academic subjectivities in pursuing Third Way
  objectives.
• The Office for Fair Access can be viewed is a
  crucial part of a compromise on top-up fees and
  is a departure some previous performance-oriented
  policies in that it will aim to achieve its
  objectives via dialogue with institutions rather
  than by imposing targets
• Marketisation and resource competition continue,
  but these represent strategies that seek to meet
  intractabilities and genuine dilemmas in higher
  education policy exacerbated by global pressures
  on UK higher education. New Labour higher
  education policy can be commended for facing up
  to these.

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Conclusions

• Reservations exist even among supporters of the
  generality of New Labour higher education
  policies (Scott, 2004).
• Nevertheless, although it should be acknowledged
  that management tools such as performance targets
  can be associated with unwanted unintended
  consequences, it should also be recognised that
  they have played a positive part in focusing on
  the enhancement of both teaching and learning and
  research.
• An enlargement of the ways in which the student
  voice can be heard such as the national
  student questionnaire can be viewed in a
  positive light as advancing Third Way objectives.
  
• Compared with a previous donnish dominion and
  the producer interest that has sometimes
  prevailed in higher education, an emphasis on
  students as critical consumers (Blackstone,
  1999) The ivory towers have been breached and a
  much more inclusive system created (Bahram
  Bekhradnia, 2004)

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Conclusions

• The Third Way is far from being the contentless
  rhetoric its critics sometimes suggest.
• Even if it remains in part merely a rhetoric, it
  is a rhetoric that provides significant space for
  debate and further policy developments.
• There is in the Third Way a recognition of the
  difficult dilemmas posed by global context of UK
  higher education provision, that the goal of
  social inclusion and social justice on the one
  hand must be counterbalanced against the aim of
  an enhancement of UKs global market position on
  the other. The hope of 2003 White Paper is that
  the two goals can be complementary although it is
  clear that contradictions exist.
• A crucial ongoing issue will be how far the
  current policies in fact achieve a satisfactory
  balance of elite and mass provision. For example,
  an increase in positional advantage may be the
  paradoxical outcome of democratisation in which
  free markets always risk leading to
  winner-take-all outcomes.
• Thus a higher education system that seeks to
  minimise unnecessary accentuation of positional
  advantage must be the objective of a Third Way
  policy. An emphasis, for example, on improving
  fair access to elite institutions should not
  distract from the wider objective of limiting to
  what is strictly necessary the institutional
  hierarchy and perverse access within a
  functionally diversified but, in fact, socially
  divided higher education system.

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Conclusions

• The merit of Third Way policy is that it links
  economic necessities and social justice.
• With the demise of the old left, no other
  current political context offers this possibility
  or confronts the dilemmas in higher education to
  the same degree.
• This is the sense in which the Third Way can be
  seen globally and for the UK as the only
  show in town with any prospect of continuing the
  enlightenment project of an emancipatory social
  democracy.
• It is for this reason that it can be suggested
  that no alternative currently exists to working
  with the broad flow of a global Third Way and
  that the Third Way may represent the best way
  forward for a higher education that meets
  national needs within the whilst attending to
  social inclusion and social justice.
• Particular formulations of the Third Way need not
  be accepted uncritically. I would argue that it
  is integral to the Third Way that it can be
  reflexively refined.

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Critics, Questions

• Critics
• Unraveling?
• Alternatives
• But real alternatives?
• Correctible - Giddens cf Blair. Toynbee

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Postscript 1 The 2005 Schools White Paper

• Raising standards for a globalised world
• Audit and information and accountability (but
  lighter touch)
• Diversity and choice
• Partnerships and new providers
• Rights and responsibilities, e.g. parenting
  contracts

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Postscript 2 Cameron and New Conservatism?

• Kettle requirements for a successful Tory leader
• Cameron
• End to oppositions for oppositions sake
• A new consensus?
• Miliband and Alexander
• Different values traditional values in a modern
  setting (Prescott)
• Texas (tone and personality) not Islington and
  Third Way
• Ideology, e.g. no return to selection on
  ability
• The Tories do not believe in equal opportunity

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Martin KettleDecember 3, 2005 Guardian

• 1. Set a new tone and set it now.
• Cameron must announce himself unequivocally and
  immediately as a different kind of Tory and a
  different kind of leader. He needs to make a
  clear choice between wanting a low-tax/low-spend
  party and wanting a current-tax/current-spend
  party. He should choose the latter - and then
  stick to it.
• 2. Stake a claim as Tony Blair's successor.
• Cameron's main priority must be to push Labour
  off the centre ground by embracing Blair's agenda
  on the public services and economy while
  positioning the Tories, not Labour, as the party
  that delivers without conceding to vested
  interests. Offer Blair's goals without Blair's
  methods.
• 3. Don't misread Gordon Brown . as the "block
  to progress", Labour's next leader will always
  outsmart them and make them look silly. Brown's
  vulnerability is in the way he works. Attack him
  as a control freak whose plans don't work.
• 4. Attract voters back from the Lib Dems
• More than a million voters have abandoned the
  Tories for the Lib Dems in the last decade.
  Cameron needs to invite them back to his changed
  party.
• 5. Embrace electoral reform.

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Martin KettleDecember 3, 2005 Guardian

• 6. Offer a home to green voters.
• Environmentalism should be at the heart of a new
  conservatism, broadening and modernising the old
  Tory obsession with farming and hunting to
  include climate change, conservation and support
  for cleaner public transport.
• 7. Modernise on foreign policy.
• Leave both the obsessive anti-EU and obsessive
  pro-US stances behind. Develop a more moderate
  and pragmatic internationalism, sceptical of both
  federalist Europe and neocon Washington alike.
• 8. Rebuild the Tories as a national party.
• The Tories need to look like the rest of the
  country, with more women and ethnic-minority
  representatives.
• 9. Don't pander to the party.
• Ditch old obsessions about Brussels, Ulster,
  the West Lothian question, immigration,
  Gibraltar, the BBC, Ken Livingstone, the
  Guardian, Gypsies, shooting burglars, and the
  rest of it. Make use of Ken Clarke.
• 10. Hope for the economy to go bad
• Yes, it's still the economy, stupid.

41
Miliband and Alexander December 8, 2005 Guardian

• In the last three elections Labour has reflected
  the progressive instincts of the British people
  in favour of quality childcare, greater
  investment in achools and hospitals and the urge
  to make poverty history