Labour needs first to recognise how badly we lost, and by that I don’t just mean the election result on May 6: under the circumstances it could have been a lot worse.
We need to recognise how badly we lost touch with modern Britain, we need to understand why five million people who voted Labour in 1997 progressively lost faith in us and why they gave up on us – most of them, by the way, by the 2005 election.
Although Britain didn’t want a Tory government on 6 May, they damn sure didn’t want a Labour one either. Acknowledging the problem is the first step on the long road to recovery.
During our last years in government, it was as if we’d forgotten why we were there. We’d become the establishment. We’d stopped transforming the country We were now merely managers of the system. We were managing the economic crisis and the global terrorist threat – pretty well, most fair minded people would concede. But only Alex Ferguson or Jose Mourinho would get elected for being good managers.
What we did succeed in doing, against all the odds, was depriving the Tories of their majority, and we can take some satisfaction from that. Though unbeknown to us in the immediate aftermath, we inadvertently caused what could be a fundamental realignment of British politics which presents both big dangers for Labour, but also opportunities.
It’s now becoming clearer by the day that the coalition government isn’t just a marriage of convenience. The Liberal Democrat conference showed that, as delegates jettisoned their principles and lapped up being in power.
There is a much bigger agenda at play here: this is a radical rightwing government determined to tear up the welfare state, out-source and downsize government, and restructure British politics by gerrymandering constituency boundaries in time for the next election.
Labour’s default position must not be any early coalition implosion. Liberal Democrat leaders (and increasingly, as we saw at their conference, their members) are working on the assumption that it would be suicide to go for an early poll. They are praying that their savage cuts programme will produce economic upturn by 2015, regardless of the pain meanwhile. So they are absolutely determined, come what may, to stay in power until 2015.
Although we must lead the resistance to their rightwing agenda, and look for any opportunity to defeat the government, either in parliament, or by mobilising public opinion, we must also focus relentlessly on policies that will matter for 2015.
Simply indulging in Con-Dem bashing is not sufficient. We won’t set ourselves up to win the next election unless we present ourselves as the party with serious answers.
It would be all too easy simply to take the populist route of opposing all cuts to public spending. That might win us some seats back in by-elections – remember, we were winning by-elections in the Thatcher years too, but we the lost general elections.
We cannot be seen merely as a repository of protest votes. We have to be a serious party of government with a serious alternative agenda.
Neither should we assume that the key issue of 2015 will be a choice between Tory and Lib Dem cuts on the one hand, and Labour expansion in public spending on the other. We can and should combine the best of public service reform – focusing on delivering the best for service users – while questioning if the way we deliver, and the pattern of delivery, is right.
That’s very different from the coalition’s ideological war against public services. In fact, it is the very opposite: asking how can we get the very best out of provision we collectively pay for. But it also recognises that the kamikaze economics of the coalition will have a lasting impact on the ability of the UK economy to pay for wide scale public service investment.
And above all, our programme for 2015 will have to be one for the long term. In reality it is likely that five years of coalition damage will take ten years for Labour to repair.
Meanwhile, there is much work to be done at every level of the party.
Locally, we must defeat Tory and Lib Dem councillors to undermine their base, demoralising their membership as we did to the Tories in 1980-1990s and they both did to us these last five to ten years.
In Wales and Scotland next year, we must fight to win by showing we are serious about public service reform within restricted budgets. We need to present a vision for the future of a high tech, high investment, high skill economy, in stark contrast to the coalition managing the decline of Britain. Labour need to be bold and ambitious, if we want our country to be a hi-tech manufacturing centre and we should be prepared to take some very radical steps to make that happen.
Meanwhile we should also stand shoulder to shoulder with local communities, with trade unionists, with faith groups, with charities, with voluntary organisations, to lead a great people’s movement for change against this rightwing government.
The greatest challenge yet for our movement is to achieve what New Labour could not: reoccupying the political centre ground and appealing to the millions of lost Labour voters in our heartlands. I am confident that under Ed’s leadership – we can do just that.
Peter Hain is shadow secretary of state for Wales and MP for Neath
Good that Peter recognise these problem, he must remember that repeatedly defended this policies when they were in power. It is good they now accept the mistake, that Labour lost in touch with ordinary voters. Now that he knew people lost faith in Labour, has he now identified where they got it wrong? He mention managing economic crises? This problem went beyond economics Peter, Labour failed to recognised that they have been pushing programme without proper evaluation of these programmes. The create opportunities for people from lower background to get into higher education without checking these leads to inclusion in labour market. Many that get the opportunity they will never get under Tory government get diluted by mass unemployment with the same group. They find harder to get job proper jobs. They end up doing job they would have got in the first place if they don’t have higher education. Britain become a retail and banking industrial country. Well, with new Leader Peter, Lobour needs to address this issue while in the opposition and let the country know they got it wrong and why they got wrong.
I am a Labour Party member.I haver not got the time to read and understand this presentation. Politicians and journalists are good with words, but 2010 ideas are totally absent. Wealth generation to support an ever increasing population is essential.What are the prospects for future generations? Jurnalism is so immediate. Words are all thoughts about today.
I have voted labour all my life and am 53 years of age.Labour did some good things like Pension Credit.But the attempt to reduce those on sickness benefit by American group ATOS and its Lima software that was and still is throwing genuinely sick people onto Jobseekers was and is a disgrace. Labour is in danger of losing its Poor working class base by bending over backwards to please middle Englanders. The Unemployed are not lazy.Well the vast majority at any rate.There was and has been mass unemployment since the early eighties when the likes of David Cameron thought Unemployment was a price worth paying.You may say the Poles come here and Work.Yes they can take low paid jobs when half a dozen share a house so they can save some money to take home.We need Job creation.If it means more in taxes so be it.In many jobs that I worked in when I was on a good wage I would hear some workers complaining about income tax.I used to say that I wish I was in a higher tax bracket.Why they would ask.Because I would be earning more would be my reply. You cannot use Laws of the jungle in a civilised society.The Tories and LibDems will reap the Whirlwind for what they are doing.Toxteth and Brixton will happen again somewhere.Then they will spend a site more on regeneration than they ever saved in cuts.
what are your ideas on wealth generation Denn. you’ve just used some words ,so you must have a few more,do you think it is just up to the Tories to create wealth ? do you think they might be too busy making money overseas,say with international oil trade,wheat trade,metals etc etc You see they can make money anywhere so why bother to make it here, through industry say ? we can’t make them do that ,can we? And if Banks won’t lend to small businesses and more stuff gets sold to people from overseas (Royal mail for example) do you think can we expect these people to care about British workers ? What do YOU think Denn?