Hazel Blears’ roots go deep. Growing up in a working-class family in Salford, in ‘a traditional working-class street, with children playing outside terraced houses, and neighbours who looked out for each other,’ has made her passionately proud about her Northern constituency.
The Labour chair’s optimism, enthusiasm and commitment to the government have earned her a reputation as a ‘chirpy’ minister who cannot fail to see the positive side of life. Despite the views of her detractors, it is a quality which she thinks will work to her advantage in her bid for the deputy leadership: ‘I’m dynamic and energetic, and I think I do connect with people and talk in fairly straightforward terms.’
So how would she rise to the challenge of replacing John Prescott? ‘One of the main roles of this job is to be the campaigner-in-chief for the Labour party,’ she says. The second aspect of being deputy leader, she argues, is being ‘the minister for delivery’, because ‘increasingly the problems that’ll face us will be cross cutting. People’s problems today are not simply about housing, or just about education or work. It’s usually
a combination of those things.’
Like the other female candidate, Harriet Harman, Blears is clear that having a woman would be a step forward for the Labour party. ‘If we can have a woman and a man at the top of our party in a modern democracy in the 21st century, then I think that is a good thing. Most people’s working lives now tend to be about men and women working together, solving problems, and people would like to see that reflected in their politicians.’
But she’s dismissive when we suggest that there might be a conflict between her position as party chair and
running for the deputy leadership. ‘I’ve got a job to do making sure we do the very best we can in preparin for the elections,’ she says. ‘I’ve got quite a big role to play in making sure we deliver the Warwick agreement.’ She is also leading on ‘the issues around party funding, and getting a long-term settlement for the future funding of political parties’. Blears assures us that she doesn’t ‘have an advantage over any other candidates’, and that she doesn’t ‘have access to any data that anyone else doesn’t have’.
Some, however, view Blear’s hitherto unwavering loyalty to the government as a potential barrier to her bid for Labour’s deputy. So would she stand up for the views of ordinary party members if they happened to conflict with those of the government? ‘I think it’s a two-way street,’ she replies. ‘The deputy leader should be the voice of the party in government, saying “look, we’ve got a problem here, the party’s not happy with this”. But also sometimes to say to the party, “look, these are the constraints we’ve got”.’ So what about all those members who wish Labour would renationalise the railways? Blears is clear: ‘It’ll cost billions of pounds to renationalise the railways, so you have to ask, would you rather spend that money giving it to the shareholders and putting it in their pockets, or would you rather spend that money regenerating our deprived communities?’
Labour’s chair argues that the policy-making process is still the best channel for engaging with party members’
views. As a founder of the National Policy Forum, she is keen to reinforce the importance of dialogue. ‘Even before we won in 1997, the party came to a realisation that if you’re going to be in power then you’ve got to have a more open dialogue between government and party. That’s why we moved away from the adversarial, resolution-based mode of politics.’
But she admits that ‘the whole policy-forum process needs to work better’. She hopes that an outcome from the Hayden Phillips funding review will be ‘increased state support of political parties, which should go into better policy-making and more connection with the party, particularly at local level’. In particular, Blears is keen that members get proper feedback, with ministers getting in touch to say ‘this was a great idea, we’re going to do it, or actually this just isn’t tenable’.
With membership of all political parties in record decline, however, Blears believes the challenge facing Labour to reengage the public goes much deeper. ‘I think the party has to reflect the way in which people lead their lives today,’ she says, otherwise Labour risks becoming ‘increasingly irrelevant’. She says that members often complain to her they’re going mad spending all their time ‘in small meetings, in the same place, with the same people, often discussing the same issue’. It needed to be this way 100 years ago, she explains, as ‘a lot of people couldn’t read and write, so the only way you could get information is if someone told you what had happened’. But the times are changing. Peoples’ lives ‘are not structured so they can go to a meeting every second Thursday’.
Blears thinks the party is keeping up with this shift, ‘despite the financial problems we’ve had in the last year’. She claims that ‘we will be ahead of the Tories in terms of our database, our messaging, our segmentation, and our voter ID’ come the next election. She’s also proud that ‘every party member has their own personal webpage through which they can communicate. We’ve just launched “Pin to Win”, where members can put up every by-election, fundraising event and policy discussion,’ so members can ‘take part in events whether or not you live in that geographic area’.
But it’s not all about e-engagement, the party chair argues. ‘I don’t think it’s a substitute for knocking on people’s doors, ringing them up, talking to them.’ Blears believes that the party needs to be much more active at a community level. Local residents are thinking, ‘right, I need a crossing patrol, we haven’t got a GP in our area, where do we go?’ The natural answer should be the local Labour party. Otherwise, she believes that ‘our politics will almost be on a parallel track towards people’s lives, and unless you’re connected to their lives, why should they vote for you, campaign for you and be proud of you?’
Having pride as a politician is a theme Blears warms to. ‘I think government has got to be prouder of party politics,’ she says. ‘There’s a sense in this country now that if you are active in politics you’re in it for yourself, not for the public, and that it’s a dishonorable thing to do. But if you want to be a democracy, you can’t just have single-issue pressure groups.’ She continues: ‘Bless Richard Taylor from Kidderminster, he’s a lovely man, but you can’t have 600 independents. You need a platform, you need a programme for your manifesto.’
Another quality Blears believes politicians need is optimism, something she feels currently to be ‘in very short supply, at a premium’. ‘I’m actually proud of our Labour government,’ she continues, ‘a weird thing to be in the middle of a third term.’ But she’s clear that you don’t win elections with ‘gloom and pessimism’. Instead, we must have ‘the belief that we’re doing the right thing, that we’re giving people a chance to do things with their lives that they never would have dreamt they’d have a chance to do, particularly young people: going to college, going abroad, meeting new people, learning new skills, all of that. It’s fantastic.’