1. Offer a clear message to the country about growth and jobs
It’s not surprising that the economy is still the biggest worry for people in Britain. Slow growth, poor job prospects, pay freezes, rising households costs, stalling investment in new jobs and small businesses – this grim reality is the one that we are living. And while many people are lucky to be in work, a ticking time bomb awaits those graduating from university in 2012. One in five 16- to 24-year-olds are unemployed. A whole generation of young people are now failing to secure work, despite spending three years, and thousand pounds on higher education.
For young jobseekers, and their families, Labour has to use conference as a platform to offer a clear message about jobs and growth. We must be the party of jobs – we should leave people in no doubt that we have a credible answer to reducing the deficit while restoring growth. It’s not an easy task when the global economy is so troubled, but it’s the only issue in town, and focussing conference on jobs and growth will help define Labour’s purpose and connection to voters.
2. Empowering our members
Conference has to be a morale booster for our members. Members flock to conference to talk, share, and learn. It is a great opportunity to empower all those activists who have been out working hard over the last year, give them training and other opportunities to discuss campaigning ideas and skill them up for the task ahead. Opposition is a lonely and difficult business, as many of us are finding out for the first time, and ensuring members maintain their energy levels and have faith in the party leadership is a crucial test for Ed and his team. Members should leave conference (or watch it on the TV) and feel a strong sense of leadership and direction at the top of the party. They should know what the party stands for and why they are giving up their time at the weekends to knock on doors. They should also have some muscle – the conference season is a vital time to offer up snippets of policy that allow members to go back to their constituencies with new something new and interesting to campaign on. We’ve seen successful campaigns on issues like the cuts to EMA, the NHS reforms, and local authority funding over recent months – these campaigns need momentum and direction from the top – and conference is Ed’s chance to remind people why we are campaigning on these issues.
3. Restoring trust in the political class
The political class and Labour in particular, have a lot of work to do to restore faith in our institutions and our politicians. The combination of the expenses crisis and the state of the economy has led some voters to conclude that no one is standing up for their interests. But the coalition’s failure to connect with voters with a coherent platform for government, and Nick Clegg’s perceived betrayal of his roots, has left a gaping wide whole for Labour to exploit. The PLP now have a real opportunity to demonstrate that politicians can be trusted, and that Labour is working hard to improve politics and clean-up the political system. The problem Ed faces here is that conference is traditionally a time for the unions to demonstrate their proximity to the party and the leadership. Ed should resist this at conference this year, and develop a new dialogue with the unions that openly addresses the problems in the relationship between them and the party. Cleaning up politics means cleaning up party funding, and for the moment this is an impossible issue for Ed to make progress on without addressing our relationship with the unions.
4. Demonstrate that we are ready to govern credibly again
On the doorstep last week I heard comments from voters that they believed Gordon Brown destroyed our economy, and why should they trust Labour with it again. This is a real problem for Ed. Showing people that Labour is ready for government again means showing that we have credibility on the economy and we take the responsibility of government seriously. I’m sure Ed’s advisers will be working hard to ensure he appears as statesman like as possible during conference, but especially in opposition this is more important than ever. The keynote speech and his media interviews during conference are a big bite at the cheery, and he’s got to make sure he strikes the right tone.
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David Chaplin is a former chair of the Young Fabians
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surprisingly naive take
Its simple he needs to adopt a more Blairtie approach, by being clear on our position, developing policy and articulating to the broad electorate how we would do things. The other key thing that we have to do as a party is put up candidates who have experience of life outside politics. The connection was lost at some point when we were in power and the public I believe are not content with so called career politicians. Peter Mandelson make this point strongly. The Future Candidates programme will be key to this even more so given the proposed changes to current boundaries.