One hundred days into the coalition and the direction of our new rightwing government is pretty clear.
But while much of Labour’s present focus is understandably on our leadership debate, and on how to win next time, we mustn’t assume that losing our majority at Westminster means that we are powerless.
Most crucially, in the European parliament, Labour still has politicians in a position to legislate for the whole of the UK.
It’s true, of course, that the 2009 European elections were a disaster for Labour, pushed into third place behind UKIP with less than 16 per cent of the vote, and with a Labour group reduced to just 13 out of 72 UK MEPs.
However, that’s just part of the picture. Labour doesn’t sit alone in the European parliament. Our alliance with social democratic parties from across the EU means that we are part of a 184-strong grouping, more than twice the size of any of the groups with which the other British parties are allied.
And the decision-making process in Brussels means that individual MEPs in a major grouping often have far more power and influence than backbenchers in Westminster.
That means Labour MEPs – despite being fewer in number than ever before – have still been able to play a crucial role in speaking out and acting on behalf of those people who stand to lose the most from the new government’s dogmatic application of free market, laissez-faire economics.
Since this new British government came to power, Labour MEPs have been standard bearers for progressive politics.
Last month we acted against excessive risk taking in the banking sector. Labour’s Arlene McCarthy spearheaded the European parliament’s work in setting new rules on bankers’ bonuses.
The votes of Labour MEPs and of our colleagues from like-minded parties around Europe helped achieve tough new rules to tackle the reward-for-failure culture that led to the current financial crisis.
In another case, the US authorities wanted carte blanche to view financial data about European citizens. It was Labour’s Claude Moraes who was instrumental in rejecting calls from the right to acquiesce, and who helped negotiate a new deal to help tackle terrorism without trampling over our civil rights.
There is much more. Labour MEPs, individually and collectively, have been at the heart of action to stop the trade in illegal timber in our fight against deforestation and climate change. We’ve defended the Working Time Directive, putting a stop to attempts to allow self-employed lorry drivers to operate without any limit on their overall working hours.
And when the food industry came to Brussels with a massive lobbying effort to prevent new rules to give people more honest information about the food they buy, it was Labour MEPs battling – and often winning – for people’s right to know.
But we don’t always win. For example, on food labelling, we lost a crucial vote that could have introduced mandatory traffic light labelling for processed foods. The proposal was backed by the British Heart Foundation, Which?, the British Medical Association, and even big supermarket chains like Asda, Sainsbury’s and the Coop. Academic research shows that it would be a major tool in the battle against obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
But the European parliament’s rightwing majority sided with the food industry. With the new Tory health minister making clear his commitment to the food industry’s arguments, our chance to introduce a powerful measure to improve public health was lost.
So we don’t win every battle, but we can still make a difference for working people, for consumers, for those people who will be left behind by the Tories.
So yes, 100 days into the coalition, let’s looks at how we can win back a majority in Westminster. But let’s not forget that political decisions are also made in other places, and in the European parliament it’s Labour who is playing a crucial role in setting the progressive agenda.