By Jacob Shteyman in Canberra

Labor has abandoned by its blue-collar base, claims a party elder who has lashed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government for a “deeply disturbing” lack of ambition.

Former Labor minister Kim Carr has called for the party to return to its core, left-wing causes in a new memoir scathing of the government’s small-target strategy.

Mr Carr joins a chorus of veteran Labor figures, including former prime minister Paul Keating and union powerbroker Bill Kelty, to excoriate the government for its apparent mediocrity.

It comes as the Albanese government continues to slide in opinion polling, with the prospect of holding on to its majority looking more uncertain.

A Newspoll, published in The Australian earlier in October, showed the coalition ahead of Labor, 51 to 49 on a two-party preferred basis, for the first time this term.

“You have to take the view that the Labor project is in trouble,” Mr Carr told ABC Radio on Friday.

The former Victorian senator said the party could not rely on identity politics to win broad appeal, with Labor increasingly struggling to capture the votes of working-class people who “need governments the most”.

“We need to be able to return to what I call humanist universalism. That is, our commitment to social justice, to economic equity, economic prosperity, to human rights,” Mr Carr said.

“We need to be able to appeal more broadly across the community to ensure that the Labor Party fulfils its historic mission to represent the whole country, but particularly people that are, I think, disadvantaged by life’s circumstances.”

Mr Carr singled out nuclear submarines as one issue the government had been weak on by adopting a project from the previous coalition government that was “unaffordable, uncrewable, undeliverable and undermines our national sovereignty”.

It mirrors the criticisms from Mr Keating, who claimed the AUKUS submarine program was likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States.

“The problem is that we have gone into office on the basis of what has been described as a small-target strategy,” Mr Carr said.

“So as a consequence, and it’s deeply disturbing from my mind, that many people don’t seem to be able to identify the ambition that’s needed to actually transform the country.”

Mr Carr retired in 2022 after almost three decades as a senator, having held multiple ministerial positions under the Rudd and Gillard governments.

He claimed the pair struck an agreement in his Canberra apartment in 2006, paving the way for Ms Gillard to take over from Mr Rudd after two terms, which she reneged on four years later when she rolled him for the prime ministership.