I had never attended a Compass event before and so I was interested to see who was there. My impression, gleaned from the contributions from the floor, was that it was mostly trade union officers and intellectuals. Other than a couple of women from one of the city's council estates the working class were missing from the audience. Also missing were ethnic minorities. I counted one black face and no Asians.

Of the speakers, John Harris was witty and engaging and there was much support for his request for ministers to talk more about core values. Hilary Wainwright was worthy and thoughtful and outlined some interesting ideas about industrial democracy and local participatory democracy which, while certainly open to critique, were  worth thinking through some more on the way home. She was also the only one to talk about the need for institutional reform. And then there was Ed. I know he was bound by the need to adhere to collective responsibility but really, this was a poor effort. He compounded his poor performance by simply ignoring difficult questions on Iraq, Trident, faith schools, academies, detention without trial and so on. Instead he preferred to focus on the public services and the need to move beyond the 1945 settlement without ever being very clear about what a new settlement would look like.

By the end of the meeting I was left with the feeling that a lot of words had been uttered but that perhaps even Compass was unsure about what a 'progressive consensus' would look like or how it would be built. Having sat through it however, I would offer the following as a tentative starting point.

As the largest progressive party in Britain any progressive consensus must have Labour playing a central role. That means that the leadership must trust the membership more. My party card says that the Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. Who do I sue for misrepresentation? The 'S' word wasn't mentioned once at the meeting and the party leadership also never utter the word. The last party conference also effectively brought to an end any semblance of democracy. So a progressive consensus must begin by renewing the party, making it once again a democratic party on the centre left.

Within political science it is almost axiomatic to say that structures constrain if not determine outcomes. If we want to build a consensus then we need structures that make that possible. That means, as Hilary Wainwright argued, electoral reform. There will be fewer Labour MPs undoubtedly, but those that are elected will be able to make a better and more progressive contribution. Freed from the limits imposed by the logic of the Median Voter Model that determines present day political positioning, a coalition of Labour and a progressive Liberal Democratic Party could deliver far more in the way of progressive politics than we have managed alone since 2001. In the longer term, a red-green coalition could take us even further along the progressive road well beyond what we can imagine from the standpoint of today's politics.

On policies, I think we already have the basis of a consensus. Most progressive opinion is opposed to trident replacement, ID cards and the war in Iraq. Add to that significant agreement on civil rights, the EU and support for public services and we have a starting point. Without reform of the party or reform of the institutions of state, however, building that consensus beyond Compass talking shops and taking it into government may prove sadly elusive.