It’s been a weekend of speeches yes but also of debates, discussions and conversations and in that spirit I want to share with you briefly my thinking on the challenges of the next twelve months as a means of opening up the discussion this afternoon.
The task that has been set for us this afternoon is about where we want to be by the Coalition’s mid-term: say next summer.
And it’s set in the context of my own determination that we can and must be on the brink of power in a little more than four years.
That’s no easy task, it’s far from certain, and it would be to buck the historic trend.
When Labour lost in 1931, we were out of power for 14 years. After 1951, it was 13 years and 18 long years after 1979 that I remember only too well.
During those eighteen years we were frequently ahead in the opinion polls. At times, we were judged a popular vehicle of protest, but only in the years immediately preceding 1997 were we judged a credible party of power.
I would argue that it was only in those years and after the modernisation of our policy agenda and our political positioning, our finances and our organisation that people began to feel comfortable again with the idea of living in Labour Britain.
Of course, this is not to suggest that we should now return to the specific policy positions that brought us to power as New Labour.
Neither nostalgia about the past or naiveté about the future are adequate to overcoming the challenge we face.
As those mid-nineties modernisers stated repeatedly new times demand not old dogmas, but new approaches.
But this history is relevant to our future because the bar for an opposition party seeking to win a majority is high and is to my mind as much psychological as psephological.
The old aphorism is that “Governments lose elections” is true. But oppositions can lose elections too, if enough of the public are not comfortable with them once again becoming the Government of the country.
And that insight helps explain the rigour and energy that a previous “new generation” of Labour politicians brought to the task of bringing Labour to power.
For those mid nineties modernisers, making the party comfortable was never enough. The aim was always to make the public comfortable with the idea of living, once again, in Labour Britain Indeed, to move to more recent times, I would argue that it was this very “psychological” test, the “comfort” test if you will, that David Cameron failed to pass last May – despite being ahead in the opinion polls for many months, indeed years, before the election.
Because despite an economic crisis, an expenses crisis and 13 years of office all taking their toll on Labour support, David Cameron partial and unconvincing process of Conservative modernisation meant he wasn’t able to convince enough people that they wanted to live in Conservative Britain to secure a majority.
Enough of the past. What are the lessons for the future? What are the next steps on the road back to power?I believe the road to power, for a party consigned to a period of opposition, begins with you becoming a powerful voice, and ends with you becoming the popular choice.
Let me explain what I mean. Effective oppositions – on the road back to power – both amplify and anticipate the public conversation.
So the months ahead must be, in part, about giving voice to the public’s concern.
And I judge that we best strengthen our voice in the “public square” of debate in three ways: First, by talking about issues that chime directly with the public, like anti-social behaviour, housing and living standards.
Second, we need to be forensic in exposing the Government’s missteps.
Detailed scrutiny reveals their incompetence, as I’ve sought to demonstrate in foreign affairs in the last month.
For a Government Minister, confidence and competence are not the same thing.
Third, we need to begin the conversation with the public by listening – and then reflecting their concerns, rather than simply repeating our own comfortable and predictable preconceptions.
But let me make another point: the power of our voice in the public discourse is directly related to its credibility.
As I argued in an article in the Guardian at New Year, moral outrage is a laudable response to manifest unfairness but it is not an electoral strategy.
And how we give voice to the public’s anger in the months ahead with either demand that we are heard, or allow us to be dismissed.
Let me explain what I mean. On Friday evening in my constituency, as I do regularly, I spent two hours holding an advice surgery in the foyer of a local supermarket, talking to dozens of people who had just done their weekend shopping.
And the overriding sentiment people felt about the future was fear. What will the cuts mean for our local schools? How will my son get a job? Will the bank cancel my business’ line of credit? How much more will I have to pay, and how much longer will I have to work before I can retire? Public service workers – from teachers to social workers and Police officers – all felt they were paying the price for a banking crisis and resultant economic crash that they had no hand in at all.
Those people I talked with on Friday night – and the millions like them across the country – are anxious and angry. And they want us to be their voice – to speak up and stand up for them in the face of a Government agenda that fills them with incomprehension and apprehension in equal measure.
The very act of listening and talking these issues through not only lessens the risk of future “Gillian Duffy moments” – where the gap between the public conversation and the Westminster debate was so painfully exposed.
It also affords the opportunity to discuss the Government’s manifest incompetence, not through policy dossiers and press releases but on the common ground of issues that are of concern to the public.
So being a powerful voice in the months ahead matters. But winning the next election demands we also do something else.
We need to reach a place where the public know what a Labour Britain would look like for them, and judge it a credible and attractive alternative. That demands that we offer answers as well as anger: answers to the questions people will be asking in the years ahead.
Let me explain: There was another aspect of those conversations on Friday night that I think we need to hear and respond to.
Because underlying the anger and fear about the prospect of cuts and unemployment I sensed a deeper anxiety about how a town like Paisley and a country like Britain can pay their way in the world in the years ahead.
How will we make our living in the future? Where will the jobs come from? What will the future hold for our children? And so a big part of our task in the next year is going to be about influencing the questions the public are asking.
That’s a tough ask for a party in opposition. It means fighting for coverage every day in the face of the media’s natural focus upon the Government and its agenda.
But influencing the questions the public are asking matters deeply. It is a vital stepping stone on the journey from being a powerful voice to becoming the popular choice.
Take the central issue of the economy.
For the Government, the test in the public’s mind shouldn’t just be – as George Osborne would prefer – avoiding a double dip recession.
We need to be saying loudly and clearly at a time when China and India are both expected to grow by around 9 per cent this year, that the Government can’t get away with such a low bar.
For Britain, to move from stalling growth to slow lane growth isn’t good enough.
The test should be about avoiding years of high unemployment and growth that never really takes off.
The public understands instinctively that in the ever more competitive global economy Britain can’t simply cut its way to global competitiveness.
And so we need to be saying clearly and repeatedly that the Conservatives offer a politics of austerity that risks locking Britain into an economics of decline.
Why? Because each and every day the Conservatives are working to establish a different set of questions in the public’s mind. About our record. About the deficit. About necessity.
And so as well as giving voice to the public’s anxieties, starting to set the strategic frame in which the General Election will be contested will be a vital task over the coming year, and that involves defining the questions that we want the next election to be about.
As I’ve mentioned, our aim is nothing less than going from being rejected at the ballot box to winning again three times faster than at any time in our history.
On every other occasion, the mid-point of our opposition has come in the second or third term of a Tory Government.
We want to get to that place next year. That sounds like a very tough ask – and it is.
But let me conclude with a couple of reasons why I’m optimistic: there are a couple of changes in politics and economics that present a real opportunity if we’re strategic enough to seize them.
As Ed Miliband has highlighted, the rising cost of living is becoming the dominant economic issue in our country.
Earlier in the month I spoke to another Progress audience and said that the failure to raise living standards has led to sceptical, volatile electorates in different European countries.
Across the world, governments of different colours are struggling to deliver rising living standards in the face of global pressures.
As Simon Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network has argued about the United States and I have argued about the UK, this economic reality has a political consequence: this non-partisan punishment of incumbents and resulting electoral volatility.
The second change is in the news cycle, driven by new technology.
The events in North African and the Middle East in recent weeks have offered us the most dramatic examples.
On the 18th of December 26 year old Muhammad Al Bouazizi set himself on fire Sidi Bouzid.
On January 4th he died of his injuries. Ten days later the 23 year reign of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was over and he was fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
Social media is acting as an accelerator, turning loose bonds into powerful campaigns in a matter of days, sometimes hours.
And while some stories disappear from the 24 hour news if they don’t change on a minute by minute basis, others become a wall of detail that dominates politics for days.
Here at home, a politician’s performance can already be established a triumph or disaster on twitter before they’ve stepped out of the interview chair.
In a premiership of less than three years , Gordon refound his purpose in the global financial crash, only for a different question – the issue of the deficit – to eclipse that achievement in the public’s mind.
Nick Clegg went from being the most popular to the most disliked politician in Britain in a matter of weeks.
That combination of slow growth and fast news is creating volatile electoral politics driven by different grievances and disappointments.
The old advantages of incumbency are being replaced by a bear market for most governments.
So my argument today is this: Our challenge over a parliament is to become a powerful voice, and then over time become the popular choice.
We need in the months ahead not just to be expressing anger, but shaping the debates and influencing the questions that will define the next election, while building the credibility of Labour’s answers.
This is tough to achieve, but both the electoral volatility caused by falling living standards, and the acceleration of political cycles mean it is possible in one term.
In the next twelve months, the questions that define the next election will begin to take shape in the public’s mind.
There is an alternative to this Government and the course they have set for Britain.Let’s be honest with each other: it wasn’t the poll tax riot that ended the last Conservative Government.
Those 18 years only ended when, as New Labour, we undertook the vital but hard work necessary to be judged an attractive, credible, alternative Government.
That is our task once again.
It is the obligation we have to those voters in Paisley.
But it is also the obligation we have to the voters of Lincoln, Worcester, Chatham and Dagenham.
Not simply to be a fighting opposition but to be a credible alternative.
That is our obligation.
It is our responsibility.
And working together it can be our achievement.