If it wasn’t clear before, the local and London elections hammered it home with a clunking fist. “New” Labour is dead. The question now is whether Gordon Brown is determined to stagger through the next two years in some sort of grimacing deathlock, clinging on to the policies of the past while attempting to give the appearance of change.

The Prime Minister says he is now going to listen, a faculty not uppermost to observers in his range of characteristics. He listened to the outcry over the abolition of the 10p tax rate. But only just enough to avert a Commons defeat of the Budget and to affect a public U-turn, the substance of which is yet to be clarified, let alone understood and found adequate. Was Mr Brown listening when MPs, councillors and members warned him of the likely effect of the tax abolition? Was the receiver off at last year’s party conference when a motion calling for a change in policy was ruled out of order on the grounds that it did not qualify as a contemporary motion? Did his hearing fail over the notorious 75p pensions increase, another catastrophe which still resonates on the doorsteps?

But, of course, that was then and what we have now is a changed Gordon Brown. So is he listening when the Director of Public Prosecutions says there is no need for measures to allow 42-day detentions? Or when the unions warn, as Community’s Terry Leahy does on page 5, of the damage exploitation of temporary and agency workers is doing to the fabric of society? Can we expect to see a sudden reversal of the Post Office closures?

There is no point in listening if nothing comes of it. Failure to listen and act on the 10p tax rate, at least in spelling out precisely what is going to be done, before the Crewe and Nantwich by-election will find him listening even more intently to the sound of a fourth term sinking under the weight of a Tory revival.

It has become voguish to talk of “dog whistles” in connection with the delivery of political messages, as in the Tories’ dog whistles on immigration to the outer London boroughs, as Claude Moraes, explores on page 14. So where was Labour’s dog whistle to its core supporters, the one that said: We stand for you. Drowned out by the competing bullhorn of a message that said: No, we don’t any more. Mashed in the astonishing 10p tax decision. Extinguished by the privileges laid on the rich. Squeezed out by relentless “triangulation”, tacking ever-closer to the right with free marketing zeal designed to outflank the Tories and policies which have fractured society at the same time as bringing all three main party leaders to the same Blairite ground.

On issues such as civil liberties, social cohesion, a fairer society and even on poverty, the nation has begun to stop listening to Labour as represented by Mr Brown and his Cabinet.

It is the lower social groups, potential Labour voters, who pay the heaviest price for the insecurity and hardship caused by flexible labour markets, lack of affordable housing, food and fuel price rises, exploitation because of inadequate workplace protection and, of course, the ever-widening gap between rich and poor.

That makes change imperative, not for the sake of a hollow victory at the next election, but for the lives of the people Labour was elected and founded to improve and defend. Expecting Gordon to change is a tough ask, as they say. But, as we said last week and will continue to repeat, he has one great advantage and that is his party. We need to press home now the need for a fairer tax system, with those at the top paying their proper share, for a reversal of the £75 billion Trident system, for adherence to the targets to end child poverty, for an end to the privatisation of public services, for swift and comprehensive plans for affordable housing, and for a plan to rebuild a shattered party through greater and more effective involvement in decision-making.

Listen. That renewal must start now. The alternative is to do it in Opposition.