Although it does not really make any difference to my original argument (which was about
political quick thinking rather than the origins of the thought), it does seem that David Lammy has every right to be irritated that the idea of civic national service ended up as Tory rather than
Labour policy.
He first wrote on the subject for Prospect in April 2006 in a web article called Close Encounters. He returned to the subject just over two years later in the New Statesman after a conversation with me about a horrific
sexual attack carried out his constituency. He raised it again at last year’s Labour Party conference.
He then then took a certain amount of stick for his support for a Demos pamphlet on the subject at Christmas.
So I would suggest my point remains pretty solid: the Labour Party could have had this policy as their own. If senior figures in the party are not listening to their own ministers of state, it raises the serious question of where exactly Labour’s ideas for this election are coming from.
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