Some suggest that Britain has reached the end of ideology; that there are no great causes left, that politics is no longer about a higher purpose for our country, but has become just a cynical competition between elites. I believe that analysis is profoundly wrong.
2001 was the first election for twenty years in which public services were the dominant issue; an election where people voted for public services in preference to the lure of substantial tax cuts and thus an election where public support for public services brought not just a victory for party, but a victory of ideas.
When we set out in the March Budget Labour’s choice for the country – ‘more investment not less, stability the foundation, schools and hospitals first’ – we were outlining a vision for our country which became the core of our campaign. In the election’s first week our message was that only Labour could deliver the stable foundation of a strong economy. In the second we seized on the revelation that Tory plans threatened £20 billion of cuts. In the last week we moved to ‘schools and hospitals first’, our message about our central idea of public services serving the public.
2001 was a victory for ideas for a second reason. Sometimes in the past Labour’s ideas have seemed radical without being credible; at others credible without being radical. But this was also the first election in a generation in which Labour has been able to credibly ask for a mandate to implement the radical goals at the heart of Labour’s purpose: full employment, the abolition of child and pensioner poverty, the opening up of higher education to the majority, a modern NHS free to everyone at the time of need, and action to tackle third world poverty and for sustainable development.
The lesson I believe Labour must draw from a lower turnout is not that ideas do not resonate, but that in every parliament from now on, not just in the four weeks of an election, but over the entire four years, we must defeat not just political conservatism, but another more insidious conservatism – cynicism.
The Tories in 2001 did not try to win the British people’s approval; they were content with their apathy. This accords with a view of politics – an extension of the ‘no-good-causes-left’ school – which suggests governments can never make a difference, politics can never be a force for good, a vote for anything positive doesn’t really matter. Allowing such an inherently negative view of the good that together we can do to triumph, would not only put public services at risk, but subvert decent, progressive instincts among the British people and defeat the very idea of a progressive public purpose.
It is true that around the major industrialised democracies turnout is generally falling and traditional civic participation, especially among young people, is less pronounced. MORI’s poll for the Electoral Commission shows that while 70 percent of elderly voters turned out, only 39 percent of the under-24s did and only 46 percent of those aged between 25 and 34. And while, in 1997, 89 percent received leaflets, only 69 percent did in 2001. In 1997, 24 percent were visited by a party, only 14 percent in 2001.
That is a challenge to address, not a reason for resignation. The opportunity is there with 83 percent agreeing, or tending to agree, that voting is a civic duty. We must demonstrate by our actions our belief in an active citizenship and the benefits of civic engagement. And in doing so, we must not only move from the over-reliance on traditional means of dialogue to new vehicles for ensuring their participation, but be prepared to empower communities and localities in a programme of wider constitutional reform. Moreover, if beneficiaries of the pension Minimum Income Guarantee and Working Families’ Tax Credit are reluctant to speak up, or fail to see the benefits of the new anti-poverty measures, then we must become a more widely heard voice for the voiceless.
Most of all we must defeat cynicism by our idealism, by emphasising our vision of the future: important national goals which working together we can achieve.
Our first goal is full employment for our generation: employment opportunity for all. And while youth unemployment has been cut by almost 80 percent and long-term unemployment by two-thirds, both to their lowest levels since the 1970s, this is only a start. Our task now, on which I hope we can work together, is to extend the New Deal to create and sustain full employment for our generation.
Our second goal is that not just a minority have access to higher education, but, for the first time, a majority. Once the privilege of an elite, education should be an opportunity enjoyed by all. This is not the old idea – a single chance to get your foot on a narrow ladder, one opportunity at school till sixteen, followed by an opportunity for only 20 percent to go into higher education and if you missed that chance, it was gone forever. But the modern idea of fulfilling potential – that all should have the chance in education from the nursery school to the third age to make the most of their talents.
People can only realise their potential if they have the best start in life, so our third goal is to halve child poverty in ten years on the road to abolishing it in our generation. Child poverty is a scar on the soul of Britain. Having lifted 1.2 million children out of the poverty the Tories consigned them to, we will not rest as long as there is a single child left out or left behind, hence our ambitious plans to take the next million out of poverty.
You judge a society not just by the way it treats its young, but its elderly. The work will go on until pensioner poverty becomes a relic of the past, so all pensioners enjoy a share in rising living standards.
And fourth, our goals for the public services challenge us to show that those who believe in the public services can modernise them and make them services that, at all times, genuinely serve the public.
Just as there are great causes at home, so too internationally. Our crusade against debt is the platform for building a virtuous circle of debt reduction, poverty reduction and sustainable development. So we have now committed, with other national governments and international organisations, to measures designed to meet the 2015 development targets: halving the number of people living in poverty, enrolling all children in primary school and reducing by two-thirds infant and child mortality rates.
I believe that these national and international goals set the agenda for the coming years and can inspire a wider audience. Such is the potential public support for these goals that they will become the yardsticks by which other parties will be judged and political debate conducted in the years to come.
In other words, we are shifting the centre of gravity in politics from the old Thatcherite agenda to a new Labour agenda. From now on the test of any party will be whether they accept that the old short-termist free market dogma, the flawed laissez faire in employment policy and the anti-collectivist agenda of Lady Thatcher, have been superceded. We offer instead an active industry, regional and skills policy, based on rights and responsibilities, that equips people for the future, as well as a willingness to match the necessary reform with the substantial resources needed to build the best public services and tackle poverty amongst children and pensioners.
In each area of policy, Labour is setting a modern agenda, blending enterprise and fairness, and other parties have to respond. So for us, we pursue these great goals, the work goes on, and the change has only just begun. Our great ambitions for Britain – prosperity and fairness together – will govern all that we do, now and in the future.