The Labour Party is trapped in the past The latest film from the director Ken Loach, The Spirit of "45, is an encomium to the Labour government that presided over the flowering of the welfare state and the birth of the National Health Service. Left-wing commentators have thrilled to this nostalgic reminder of their finest ideological hour, yearning to recapture the spirit of the Attlee administration that Loach's documentary evokes. What it has also done, however, is to highlight one of the Left's most unpleasant characteristics: its insufferable sanctimony. Labour and its cheerleaders in the media have long displayed a proprietorial attitude towards the NHS and the welfare system, howling down anyone who has the temerity to suggest that, 70 years later, they might need fundamental reform. Yet this emotional attachment to the achievements of the Attlee government has blinded successive Labour leaders, with the notable exception of Tony Blair, to the key lesson of the party's landslide victory in 1945. In ousting Winston Churchill from office despite his wartime heroics, voters showed one thing above all: they were not to be swayed by sentiment, but by a hard-headed assessment of what was best for them. Attlee offered hope. The late Philip Gould, one of the key strategists behind New Labour, once observed that parties could only win elections by persuading the electorate that they were planning for the future and not fixated on the past - Labour's key task, in the words of Hugh Gaitskell, was "to avoid becoming small cliques of isolated doctrine-ridden fanatics, out of touch with the life of our time." When he became leader, Mr Blair enthusiastically embraced this approach. The traditional support for the restrictive practices of trade unions, and for unreformed public services, was ditched. The constitutional commitment to nationalisation was abandoned; Labour turned its back on high taxes and excessive spending; and it recognised that reform of health and welfare was overdue. The government of 1997-2010 failed to fulfil most of its promises largely because Mr Blair entrusted their delivery to Gordon Brown, who was ideologically locked into the party's past. And so, too, is the current leadership. For instance, the reaction of Ed Miliband and his team to the implementation of the Coalition's welfare reforms has been an extraordinary blend of condemnation and complacency. They have opposed each and every change to a system that the country - especially the people who use it most - knows is desperately in need of an overhaul. The appalling case of Mick Philpott, the father jailed for life this week for killing six of his children, raised legitimate questions about the way in which feckless behaviour is subsidised by the state. Yet when they were addressed, in a sensible and circumspect manner, by George Osborne, Labour launched a full-throated denunciation of his alleged callousness and cynicism. This suggests that the party is utterly out of touch with public opinion, not least among its own voters. Similarly, it seems incapable of understanding - let alone addressing - the problems that immigration inflicts on the working-class communities the party purports to represent. This week also saw the reawakening of another dinosaur from Labour's Jurassic past: the threat of a general strike by two of the country's biggest trade unions, Unison and Unite. Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, said: "It would be a landmark in our movement's recovery of its morale, strength and capacity to play a leading part in a society crying out for credible and honourable leadership." This fixation of the wider Labour movement on its past is the Tories" great opportunity. People want a better future for their children, not a bankrupt nation living on the promissory notes from a bygone age. Conservative MPs are too readily browbeaten by the Left's stridency on social policy matters and too easily panicked by poor opinion polls. In fact, the ideological incoherence of the party opposite should embolden them and their leaders to make the case forcefully for policies that move the country forward, not back. To paraphrase David Cameron's taunting of Mr Blair, Labour was the future once. On the evidence of the past week, it certainly isn't any more.