Seema Malhotra speech to Labour Women’s Network
Saturday 17 November 2012
In order to break through and be heard, political leaders have to capture the imagination. And political parties need to win hearts as well as minds. The winning formula is one of inspiring leadership as well as inspiring ideas, which resonate because they speak to how people feel and respond to the everyday needs they face.
Conference this year was a turning point for us. Labour is clearly now on the trajectory to becoming the next government. Ed Miliband’s One Nation speech was the story of the conference and captured people’s imaginations of a leader and a party that has a vision, and is mapping out a pathway to the future. It reached people who haven’t felt heard. It reached those who are facing growing insecurity and are wondering who is on their side. It threw the gauntlet down to the Tories who have yet to give a strong sense of what they are working to, rather than what they are dismantling.
Halfway through the parliament, disillusionment with the Conservative-led coalition is increasingly high – not least after the poor turnout in the PCC elections – an election that cost £100m but which the country was not ready for and did not want, with poor levels of communication and held in the winter when it could so easily have been in May. Students have felt betrayed. Women have borne the brunt – 70 per cent – of deficit reduction. According to the IFS, an average family income could be down as much as £1000 since the election. Growing criticisms of the government’s economic policy have led to calls for a ‘plan B’, and growing views that Ed Balls’ warnings in his famous Bloomberg speech that Osborne was ‘ripping away the foundations of growth and jobs in Britain’ were right.
This is a nation putting itself together after a crisis that was caused by a global banking crisis. It brought out the stark lack of accountability and transparency of the banking sector. We saw irresponsible lending by bankers on a very grand scale, and in the end it was ordinary people that suffered, and picked up the pieces. For politics to respond and say we will stand up for a more responsible capitalism is a courageous and bold step, and one that captures the imagination of the many.
This is also a nation that is proud of its diversity and has a sense of togetherness and nationhood. Whether or not you are a republican, the diamond jubilee this year sparked a public imagination of what it is to be British and saw street parties revived across the country. Neighbour met neighbour often for the first time despite living on the same street for years. This is what I saw and heard in my constituency where I attended over 20 events over the course of the jubilee weekend. The Olympics triumphed as an embodiment of this spirit, and it has been Labour’s One Nation vision that has captured that spirit in political discourse.
A winning offer from Labour would therefore be one that starts to reverse the feelings of insecurity in time of crisis, and strengthens that sense of belonging. An offer based on values – true values of equality and citizenship – where everyone has a stake in our nation, prosperity is fairly shared, and the institutions that bind us together are preserved.
One Nation Labour at the moment is leading the key debates around the economy and responsible capitalism. Two years ago Ed Miliband launched his leadership campaign at the Fabian conference based on striving for a twenty-first century social democracy where we have a more equal society. We needed change – change from Old Labour and from New Labour. In fact, responsible capitalism, and predators vs producers, has been so widely recognised and desired that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both tried to exploit the theme with their ‘moral capitalism’ and ‘John Lewis economy’ spin. But fairness can only be achieved with policies, not spin. A politics that looks to fairness at the top as well as at other levels in society. A politics that includes, looks outwards, and looks forwards.
Labour in parliament is leading the debate on responsible capitalism, in debates on reform of banking, energy prices, and the green economy. Labour is challenging the status quo. Labour has argued for older people to be put on the cheapest energy tariffs, the living wage campaign, and transparency on pay ratios between the highest and lowest paid in an organisation. Labour voted against cutting taxes for millionaires by £40,000, while everyone else pays more. By talking about One Nation and what that means in practice, it is not a theoretical narrative but a description of the kind of country we can be, and the route to getting there. It is about the choices we make, about how Labour would govern.
Labour knows that we need to rewrite the rules of our economy to reward responsibility, to produce more sustainable prosperity, and to ensure that we have an economy that works for working people – as Lord Stewart Wood described in ‘Responsible Capitalism is Labour’s Agenda’ in The Guardian (9 January 2012). There is a way to go, but we are on a journey, and a trajectory. And by moving forwards, staying in touch with the public and ensuring we keep capturing the imagination, we will have that winning Labour offer, underpinned by the relationship-based and values-based politics that is at our very heart.
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Seema Malhotra is the Labour MP for Feltham and Heston