'Clear principles vital for victory'

LABOUR MUST use the next year to make electoral victory possible by clearly setting out what the party stands for, Roy Hattersley, the former deputy leader, urged yesterday.

Assaults on the most unpopular administration this century were 'enormously enjoyable', Mr Hattersley told a parliamentary Press Gallery luncheon. But Labour had to do more than bombard 'soft targets' forever.

The party needed to open a second front by providing an unequivocal reply to the question 'What does Labour now stand for?' The answer was 'a society in which power and wealth are more equally distributed'.

Mr Hattersley's remarks follow criticism of John Smith's leadership from the Labour Co-ordinating Committee. Bryan Gould, the defeated deputy leadership contender, has also condemned the party's 'lack of direction, perhaps even a lack of vision'. Mr Hattersley was careful to distance himself from that - the committee's only success was persuading some journalists that it was important, while the new leadership had 'brilliantly' exposed the Government's inadequacies.

He said of Mr Smith's alternative Budget: 'The problem was not what (the Budget) proposed. The failure was our reluctance to argue, much earlier, for the principles on which the proposals were based. I do not believe that the Budget cost us many votes. But the fraudulent (Tory) campaign - ' pounds 1,250 tax increase for every family' - certainly did,' he said.

Those lies would be repeated in 1996, he said. Labour had to mobilise the latent instinct of people who wanted a better society - 'and in consequence convince those at the top of the income scale that they should contribute to a radical change in society. Then, having constructed our ideological framework, we can construct our detailed policies inside it. It is the only way to win.'