When I asked Progress’ new strategy board to elect me as the organisation’s chair this week, I made clear I thought we had to move on from our longstanding label as ‘the New Labour pressure group’. I have spoken about the need for change in the Independent newspaper today.
New Labour’s instincts are alive and well in today’s Labour party, thanks in no small party to the vibrancy and commitment Progress members bring to our movement. We will only succeed in winning back the trust of the British people and changing the country if we embody the spirit that won three elections and apply it to the new challenges we face.
The next Labour government will face an economic environment far tougher than the last. That means we must be even more determined to be robustly on the side of the public not vested interests, and even more focused on enabling people to create sustained wealth and jobs as well as debating how we share prosperity as widely as possible.
So our values remain the same, but if we continue to attach ourselves to a name that is now part of our history, we allow people who want to marginalise us to claim (wrongly but persuasively) that we are wedded to policies that have had their day.
Instead, I want us to be explicit and proud of the fact that the change we brought as New Labour means we are now the organisation that reflects the views of mainstream, grassroots Labour activists. We make a vital contribution to the battle of ideas and the battle on the doorstep to win in 2015, and Progress members are helping ensure Ed Miliband’s changes make Labour more inclusive, outward-facing and reflective of the communities we seek to represent.
Progress membership has grown considerably in the face of nonsense from a small but vocal minority claiming we are factional and not a proper part of the Labour family. But I want us to be even bigger and bolder in the years ahead. Moving on from a label that risks anchoring us in the past will allow us to play an even stronger role shaping our party’s future.
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John Woodcock MP is chair of Progress
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Photo: Dominic Campbell
Quite right, John.
I joined Labour in 2000 and when asked why, I said I’d joined because at last Labour was starting to put its tribalism behind it.
I didn’t know that Progress was the tribe leading the charge on this. When I found out, I joined Progress.
It’s great to be in the tribe to end tribes. Especially when the tribe is the mainstream.
“One Nation” under Labour is at best a fanciful, wishful thought and shall remain a pipe-dream so long as splinter movements are playground-fighting within Labour’s top management.
Inconsistency [changing the Party’s name every few years] and slapping down previous Party stalwarts [TB] can lead . Voters, like myself, thinking ‘what goes on here?’ We are a fickle lot, us Voters, but we are also creatures of habit and changing orders [as in : March ’em up the hill. NO! Wait! March ’em down the hill] leaves us loyal supporters of Labour thinking its the Liberals who do that, not us.
Vacillating, changing direction is plain dangerous with only a year to go to 2015GE.
I get worried that the Labour Party’s in-fighting casts doubt on its main objective which is to serve the People first and sort out internecine petty squabbles later.
I happened to like Tony Blair et al and the old New Labour Team. “Love is not Love when it changeth find changeth” [ apologies to Willy the Bard]
Just saying as I would not like to see Labour splintered all over as was and is the case with the Liberals of old and their New Lib-Dem image.
As Bill Clinton said recently: the People [voters] come before Policy come before Politics.
(Congratulations MP Woodcock on your appointment at Progress, you’ll have my vote, I am just unclear on the ‘why’ all the in-fighting bit between brothers and sisters down at LHQ?)
“the public not vested interests”.
Interesting bit of code there. I wonder how far the vested interests concerned overlap with the public?
In the context of austerity presumably we are talking about people who would like to work, be paid for it, and have a say on how things develop.
Seems like these people need more listening to, not less.
First, I must wish you, as the new chair of Progress, the best of luck. Progress makes an important contribution, but I am not sure it has yet got its image with the wider public right.
I am not tribal, old or new, Labour, but I joined the Labour Party because I thought I could help get its thinking straight on economic matters. Although I had a career in the City and with small business, I consider the culture of neoliberalism that appears to have enveloped all political parties to be unChristian and, therefore, to me not acceptable.
The three elections that Labour won were won on a tide of neoliberalism.. The financial crisis, and Labour’s part in it, have made it a very uphill battle for it to regain support of the electorate.
The key will be to convince the voters that neoliberalism has got nothing for them any more and that new policies, untainted by it, are being created.