Citizen Smith nails the fading red flag to the mast

AT LAST, seven months after he was elected, John Smith has nailed his colours to the mast. The Labour leader has come out with a new definition for his party, allegedly the party of the individual citizen where traditional links with state ownership, hightaxation and union power will vanish.

Only a few weeks ago Labour was wooing the US Democrats, asking the Clinton team just how was it that their man was so electable while the Labour Party has failed miserably for the past 14 years.

Then last Sunday at Labour's local government conference in Bournemouth we had the answer. Mr Smith, the quietly spoken Edinburgh lawyer, said that Labour would win again when it embodied the hopes and aspirations of the ordinary people. He promised tobe ''bold, ambitious, pragmatic and practical'' on their behalf.

At one level it was what everyone had been waiting for - simply because party members and political pundits had very little clue as to whether the leader who replaced Neil Kinnock would be a traditionalist or go forward with a new-style Labour. He would seem to have chosen the latter course.

In effect he declared the famous Clause Four of the Labour constitution, that the means of production shall be put into the hands of the people. Nationalisation would be dead.

The debate about ownership of industry was irrelevant. There would be no commitment to nationalisation in Labour's future manifestos and the promises to take back the water and the power industry into state ownership, had been dropped.