Socialism isn’t a dirty word. It’s simply about wanting to make a fairer society | Will Hutton

Labour's leadership needn't struggle to define the ideology; it's in its very constitution

Socialism is whataLabour government does, pronounced Herbert Morrison, one of the titans of the Clement Attlee administration in the 1940s. It wasn't a very good answer then to the perennial doctrinal disputes about what constitutes socialism that have haunted the party since its foundation in 1900 - and it works no better in 2024.

So what is this socialism that Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, Darren Jones and Jonathan Reynolds were all asked about last week, whose tenets they purport to follow even as the party wrangled over the purge" of its left? Convincing, on-the-front-foot answers proved elusive.