Progress’ Question Time took place shortly after Ed Miliband’s speech to conference on Tuesday and as usual was wide-ranging, challenging – and controversial.
Panellist Michael Leahy, general-secretary of Community, the Union for Life, welcomed a relaxed and statesmanlike speech from the leader. He wanted to see a greater focus on policies to foster wealth creation – he saw little evidence of this by the government and wanted to see Labour doing more too. Our wealth redistribution agenda is dependent on creating wealth in the economy and we needed to prioritise industrial policy and building a balanced economy. He cautioned that trade unions need to moderate their language to avoid creating targets for others to attack Labour. He also wanted to see the unions, as advocates and skilled representatives, doing more to engage with their members’ communities – citing the work that Community itself does to support social entrepreneurship outside the workplace. Michael reminded us that community action is a part of the heritage of the labour movement, much more authentically than the Tories’ ‘big society’.
For Ivan Lewis, shadow secretary of state for international development, the One Nation theme of Ed’s speech was crucial as we know we can win when Labour’s values resonate with the values of the public. We are the only party which has representation across Britain but equally – we can only win with strong representation in all parts. He wanted to see more emphasis on the individual aspiration, the family and community in the party’s thinking between now and the election. He welcomed the focus in the speech on vocational training, describing Labour’s response to the Tomlinson report on 14-19 education as a ‘missed opportunity’ – but the key is that vocational education needs to be a high-value offer not something which is for ‘other people’s children’.
Ed’s conference speech had been set three tests by Phil Collins of the Times, who believed he had passed only one. First, to be taken seriously as a potential prime minister – passed, which means he will now be listened to by voters turning away from the coalition parties: the most important criterion. But on the scale of the economic chaos Labour would inherit and on the public service reform agenda, he hadn’t gone far enough and Collins felt in particular that a promise to repeal the Health and Social Care Act was a mistake and a diversion of time and energy (Though it is surely inconceivable that any progressive British government could live with an NHS redesigned to hike up revenues from private patients and to eliminate collaboration between its institutions?).
Margaret Curran MP, shadow secretary of state for Scotland, lauded for her own barnstorming speech to conference, was much more inspired by Ed’s speech than was Collins. Drawn to the message of national unity and coming together which underpinned the speech, she recalled the power of this theme in Barack Obama’s first campaign. On the economy, Curran warned that we abdicate our responsibility to the public if we underestimate the scale of the economic dangers we face and the impact on public spending choices –a dilemma explored by Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont in her recent speech, which she maintained could shake up the debate in Scotland and elsewhere.
Curran reminded us that it is only by being sharply focused on our values that we can navigate our way through the fiscal choices ahead.
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Jeremy Miles is a member of Progress and tweets @Jeremy_Miles