Leading Article: Give us a sign, Mr Smith

JOHN SMITH, the Labour leader, and his advisers appear to have learnt nothing from the cool reception given by the public to the Prime Minister's heavily oversold Carlton Club address on the latter's version of Conservatism. Yesterday's speech by Mr Smith - the first in a projected series - was also sold as a defining statement. But there was little in it that could not have been said, albeit to more restive party audiences, by Hugh Gaitskell in the Fifties, Harold Wilson in the Sixties, James Callaghan in the Seventies or Neil Kinnock in the (later) Eighties.

Market research demonstrated last year that key voters find Labour a depressingly collectivist party. Even so, Mr Smith felt it necessary to balance his assertion that Labour's aim must be 'the advancement of individual people' by a commitment to 'a strong and supportive society'. It is hardly radical revisionism for the leader of the Labour Party to suggest that 'we should see the merits of the mixed economy'. And it takes no great courage or vision to insist nationalisation is no longer the panacea it was once assumed to be. Years ago such remarks would have caused uproar within Labour's ranks. Now they provoke squeaks of alarm from an impotent handful. For all the talk of learning from the Democrats' electoral revival, Mr Smith sometimes seems to be fighting the battles of a bygone generation.

Last summer, when John Smith was formally elected to office, we suggested that he would have only one shot at reaching 10 Downing Street. It would be necessary for him 'to get his party and his policies right first time'. His first task was to ensure that Labour's conference this October will endorse a lasting internal settlement involving the creation of a one-person, one-vote party, in which union power would be severely reduced and the block vote abandoned.

The Labour leader avoided public comment on this issue yesterday. Similarly, Mr Smith ignored the question of fundamental electoral and constitutional reform, although he confirmed his commitment to a Bill of Rights and a Freedom of Information Act. There was no mention of tax policy and no discussion of whether, say, the principle of universal social benefits should be relaxed in favour of targeting those most in need. (Last December, Mr Smith revealed his personal antipathy to targeting.) Nor was there mention of the need to compete with the emerging super-competitive economies.

Mr Smith's advisers might argue that he has commissions, working parties and the like, beavering away on many of these matters, and that it would be wrong for him to pre-empt their findings. He believes in debate and discussion, followed by decision. The Labour leadership is, moreover, said to be determined to avoid drafting a detailed election manifesto more than four years before it is necessary for the Government to call a general election. This is wise of Mr Smith and his colleagues - but no one has suggested that they do otherwise.

What is becoming increasingly urgent is for Mr Smith to give firm and unambiguous signals to his committees - and to the public - about the advice he expects from them. It ought not to be incompatible with his style for him to indicate his preferences in the course of the campaigning speeches he intends to deliver in the months to come.