Ukip is vulnerable to Labour attacks, Caroline Flint tells Robert Philpot and Adam Harrison

When Caroline Flint was shifted from the party’s local government portfolio to the political backwater of energy and climate change in autumn 2011 it appeared she would soon suffer the fate of those other Blairites and veterans of the last Labour government who have been stealthily sacked or demoted by Ed Miliband over the past two years.

Instead, Flint now finds herself on the frontline of the political battle over energy prices, the cost-of-living agenda, and Labour’s relationship with business – a key lieutenant to Miliband on the terrain on which he has staked the party’s hopes for next year’s general election. But the shadow energy and climate change secretary – of whom one journalist once wrote ‘only Tony Blair has purer Blairite credentials’ – has managed to square the circle of steadfast loyalty to Miliband’s political project without any apparent abandonment of those credentials.

While the energy price freeze – the centrepiece of Miliband’s conference speech last September – had a major political impact, both in terms of reviving the party’s flagging political fortunes and forcing action from the government, critics contend that, when added to attacks on the banks, housebuilders and pension companies, it appears to play into a wider anti-business Labour narrative. Flint, however, dismisses such concerns and paints her plans as part of a ‘better business conversation’. The ‘big six’ energy companies, she contends, ‘inherited a customer base that any business would give its right arm for’ but ‘there have been a catalogue of examples where they didn’t treat those customers well [and] lots of different investigations that have taken far too long … and that’s why we’ve got a problem with the regulator. But it seems to me that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if they hadn’t given the ammunition … by the way they’ve treated their customer base.’

Anxious that Labour’s agenda not be presented as a return to 1970s-style price controls, Flint argues that her aim is to ‘open up the market’. ‘We want more competition,’ she says. The energy sector is very different today, she believes, from where it was at the time of privatisation. ‘There are some exciting opportunities presenting themselves in terms of energy that lends itself to more businesses playing a role whether that’s on the generation side or the retail side.’ Flint thus wants to break up the energy and generation sides of the ‘big six’, introduce a pool exchange where electricity can be traded transparently, establish a new regulator and create a new Energy Security Board.

First elected in 1997, and having served in the Blair and Brown governments as a Home Office, health, housing, welfare reform and Europe minister, Flint has been around long enough not to panic at small and ephemeral movements in the opinion polls. But with those polls tightening and the general election just a year away, surely Labour must be looking at the boost the energy price freeze provided to its political fortunes last autumn and considering offering a series of similar gambits. Does Flint think the party should, for instance, pledge to freeze rail fares and water bills? ‘I think we should campaign as we intend to govern,’ she responds, ‘and that is not necessarily thinking that there is a simple answer to every situation.’ Indeed, Flint seems wary of suggesting the energy price freeze could be repeated elsewhere. ‘I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all [solution] because some of these different areas are protected in different ways,’ she argues. ‘Water is protected in a different way to electricity and gas. The way in which train companies operate and the bus companies operate, the regulation around this is different.’ Instead, Flint suggests, the party should subject such markets to the test of ‘transparency and openness and fairness’.

‘I don’t agree with this … 35 per cent strategy. I think we should go out to win those votes’

Flint’s apparent reluctance to prescribe price freezes beyond the energy sector reveals her anxiety that Labour not find itself enslaved by too many hostages to fortune if it forms a government after the general election. ‘Over the next year there’ll be all sorts of pressures coming from all sorts of directions on Labour to have an answer to every single concern that people raise. It would be very tempting to come up with some sort of easy answers to those requests of us and we have to be very disciplined about being honest about what we can and cannot do. Nick Clegg said “we will under-promise and over-deliver”. He didn’t and we must,’ she argues.

The shadow energy secretary does not accept that, with wages beginning to outstrip prices, Labour’s cost-of-living agenda may pass its sell-by date before next May. Britain has had 50 months where this was not the case, she says, while Miliband is also ‘talking to a wider concern that, in previous times, when recovery came back everybody shared in the benefits and we aren’t seeing that at the moment.’ Nonetheless, Flint argues that, alongside the cost-of-living agenda – ‘this is the other half of what people want to hear’ – Labour needs to show it understands the importance of fiscal discipline. ‘People are still very concerned about the deficit and getting government spending on track,’ she says.

Labour’s commitments to stick to the government’s 2015-16 spending limits, cut the deficit and reduce debt during the next parliament, and conduct a zero-based review, are all important in this regard, Flint believes, but they need greater emphasis. ‘Not just among those of us in the leadership of the party but throughout the movement we have to be prepared to speak as strongly about the things around, for example, deficit control, pay restraint, making priorities for what we spend money on, as much as we talk about foodbanks and getting rid of the “bedroom tax”. We have to give equal volume to those parts of the debate.’

Flint has been a persistent critic of those who suggest that Labour can win next May simply by relying on the votes of disaffected Liberal Democrats. But what does she say to those who argue that Labour only needed to attract the support of Tory voters in 1997 because John Major polled such a high vote in 1992, but, now, with David Cameron’s more modest 36 per cent in 2010, Labour can worry less about those who voted Conservative at the last election? ‘I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with this … 35 per cent strategy. I think we should go out to win those votes,’ Flint argues. ‘If someone votes Tory in one election we shouldn’t necessarily give up, [and assume] that they won’t vote Labour on another occasion,’ she suggests. ‘The majority of people across our country are in the middle ground, they are on low-to-middle incomes, work hard, play by the rules and actually for them it’s about “What does politics mean to me?”, “What difference does it make to our lives”, “Do people understand our hopes, have they got the ideas for us to realise them?” and we need those votes in order to do other things [like] tackle the “bedroom tax”, tackle issues around dependence on foodbanks because without those votes we won’t be able to do that. I feel very strongly that part of our politics should be reaching out, not saying that there are ‘no-go’ areas for Labour because clearly there shouldn’t be.’

It is not just Tory voters that Flint has in her sights, however. All the mainstream parties, she argues, ‘should be concerned about the traction that Ukip seems to have got’. And while she believes that Nigel Farage’s party has been ‘let off the hook’ by the media – ‘but I’m not going to bleat and wring my hands about that’ – Flint believes ‘Ukip is getting a hearing partly because they are feeding back some of people’s concerns and insecurities.’ ‘I think the way we deal with it is to take the fight to Ukip, just like I think we should take the fight to the Tories.’ Voters should be reminded of Ukip’s support for a flat tax, its plans to undermine statutory holiday pay and put the NHS out to private tender, and the fact that its members of the European parliament ‘take the euro to pay for their expenses and then don’t bother turning up to vote on important matters for the UK,’ she suggests.

Does Flint believe the party’s election posters are racist? ‘I think the implication in them is to encourage racism,’ she replies cautiously. So does she think the party itself is racist, given the comments a number of its candidates have made? ‘I think the nature of their platform is going to encourage those sorts of people, to be honest, because it is playing to all the scaremongering they do around British jobs [and] immigration.’ Nonetheless, she draws a sharp distinction between the party and those considering supporting it. ‘When I meet people on the doorstep … who say they’re thinking of voting Ukip, I don’t assume that that person is racist, not for one minute, because when I’ve had conversations with those people some of the things that they’re concerned about are legitimate concerns and they sometimes feel that the mainstream politicians aren’t talking about those concerns and those worries that they have.’

Flint’s ministerial career came to an abrupt end five years ago when she resigned from the government and accused Gordon Brown of ‘running a two-tier government’ and treating her like ‘female window-dressing’. With Labour’s election hopes next May resting on its ability to maintain a strong lead among women voters, is she concerned that there are no women in senior positions in the party’s election campaign team? Flint loyally replies that she and other female members of the shadow cabinet are members of the general election strategy group. But, she continues, ‘I think we should be mindful as we head towards the campaign in 2015 that women are not only heard but are seen to be heard.’ We have certainly neither heard nor seen the last from Caroline Flint.