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What outcome should we hope for in 2010?

It's hard to feel love for Gordon Brown and his government now. Many Labour supporters are fatalistic, knowing not simply that that the game is up, but that it isn't worth playing. They feel the last ten years were a waste: New Labour enjoyed watching the rich getting richer, richer and even more rich while house prices inflated insanely, debt piled upon debt and a generation was lost that may never able to own. Prudence lightened her touch considerably, and now we face grim depression as the boom Chancellor has become the bust Prime Minister. His government seems aimless – and perhaps not worth having.

I don't share that feeling. I remember the things Labour government has achieved that its opponents never would have: a minimum wage; civil partnerships; a ban on smoking in public places; free national galleries and museums; improved maternity and paternity rights as well as rights to flexible working. These are just a few, but they're good examples of the building-blocks of the New Britain people chose when it was easy to support Labour, in May 1997. I still believe in the transformation promised then, and want it completed rather than risk a Conservative government whose commitment to social justice I can't help doubting and whose highest aim, I fear, may simply be one day to deliver tax cuts for the better off.

But how to rediscover the promise of '97? Of course I instinctively want a Labour majority but there must be a risk that, if Gordon Brown goes on, it's only to stagger through a few more exhausted years, achieving little while Conservatism becomes more certain, and less centrist. What Labour desperately needs is the renewal Brown promised but never permitted, New Labour Phase 2 with a new programme and new direction. I think victory requires that renewal now, but it could happen in power after a fourth term is won. It may, though, take electoral shock to force it.

I don't mean a Conservative win. I might dislike that government a lot, and it could mean all alternatives being unavailable for many years. A bad defeat in 2010 could grievously damage centre-left politics, with Gordon Brown the last Labour Prime Minister and the Liberals too weak for years to aspire to govern as they did under Lloyd George. But let's say Labour's majority is cut dramatically – that it ends up with a small majority, or even just short of a majority. That might well force Brown out, leaving a poor, brave, unloved thing, a Wilson-style or even minority government, a not-really-chosen government led for a few weeks by the departing leader - or acting Prime Minister Harman - until the new leader was in place, able to move Labour on and try to earn legitimacy and support for a clear new course. 

The other option, of forming a government with the LibDems - though I'm no keener in principle on coalitions than ThunderDragon - would, again, mean a change of Labour leader, and perhaps make Labour in government more conscious of its own instinctive priorities and aims. That could conceivably make for a sustainable centre-left alliance, completing Jo Grimond's realignment and offering policies most Guardian readers like me could be content with - or even inspired by. Finally, if Labour-led government was not possible, a hung or near-hung Parliament would offer a chance to play defence and watch the Tories and LibDems try to make a contract. A Tory-LibDem coalition might work well: they are closely aligned now in policy terms, except on Europe – and even on that, the need to compromise with Nick Clegg might suit a Prime Minister Cameron who will need to force Eurorealism on his MPs somehow. But that scenario would at least make Labour the only real alternative government, with time to rethink its challenge and a better chance of bouncing back quickly from defeat as soon as the Cameron-Clegg affair ran into trouble.

I expect to vote Labour, and I want Labour returned; but then, I also wanted Labour in 1992, an election many Tories now think was a good one to lose. That won't be the case in 2010; too much is at stake. I want Labour to rediscover its purpose with a win. But if it can't, it might not be a bad election to hang. Or nearly.

This post first appeared at The Wardman Wire.