The Labour leadership contest offers not just the party but the public an opportunity to look at where the progressive left should go in the future. Not since 1997 has Labour wanted to lend its ear as much to the voting public and this should have been done more in government.

Although in terms of votes cast the election was one of Labour’s worst nationally, locally we had one of our best nights since 1997. This clearly shows that when Labour looks at where it should go from here, it shouldn’t be looking across the political spectrum, it should be looking down and re-engaging with the centre left voters who left us nationally. ‘New Labour’ may be dead as a label but its principles – social justice whilst supporting economic prosperity – remain much of what this country wants in its government and rightly so. Therefore the leadership contest should be about who is the best person to keep the party focused on what the public wants from a Labour government in the future and not about the old arguments of left and right of the party.

We should apologise for not taking seriously people’s concerns over immigration, the tax system, the agency workers’ directive and the unfairness in our benefits system. However, more worrying for me is that we just begin debates with our arguments with what went wrong, continue the debate on what went wrong, end the debate acknowledging what went wrong without forging coherent messages about what we got right.

An example of this is the government’s attack on what it calls ‘Labour’s debt’. As soon as that has been mentioned in the Commons or during interviews Labour MPs seem to squirm and struggle to answer or attack the concept.

Let’s get this straight – it was Labour who introduced tighter regulation to financial services which was fiercely attacked by opposition parties. The Tories said that tougher regulations would destroy the City. Now those same parties are attacking us for not been tough enough.

Another attack line is that Labour spent money instead of ‘mending the roof whilst the sun was shining.’ It should be pointed our far more aggressively that this clearly shows that after 18 years of Tory government there were roofs to fix but also that we have spent the last 13 years building the foundations, walls and roofs of actual schools and hospitals after 18 years of cruel Tory neglect. I remember sitting next to a bucket in one of my lessons during a thunderstorm because the classroom roof was leaking as well as having to mop up benches near the windows because the windows were leaking. This is what the Tories left us in 1997 and quite rightly the Labour party’s instinctive response was that this shouldn’t be happening in 21st century Britain.

Overall in my opinion, we need clearer, distinctive and more coherent messages supporting our polices in government which has made the difference to people’s lives; but yes quite rightly we should apologise or acknowledge where we got it wrong – but it has to be the right balance and we have to strike it now.

Photo: gari.baldi 2006