This morning, Ed Miliband will welcome and endorse the IPPR’s Condition of Britain report, which forms the backcloth to Labour’s manifesto.
The theme of his speech – big reforms not big spending – speaks to the dilemma Labour has faced since the crash: how to appear relevant and radical without seeming fiscally incontinent.
It also strongly echoes the central theme of The Purple Book, published by Progress, and written by many of Ed’s shadow ministers, that the next Labour Government must decentralise and devolve power away from the central state.
In his speech in Bethnal Green, Ed Miliband will say:
I have called for people-powered public services, giving more powers to parents in shaping the future of their schools and patients in shaping the future of their hospitals. And it is also why I support this report’s call for power to be devolved down to the most local level possible.
The report itself, the length of a Dan Brown novel, aims to repeat the success of the Commission on Social Justice, set up by John Smith after the 1992 defeat, and reporting to Tony Blair two years later. It formed the basis of the New Labour revolution.
The report of the Commission on Social Justice was written up by its secretary David Miliband. It contained four propositions: that the welfare state should be a springboard, not a safety net; that we must radically improve training and education; for real choices in work, leisure and retirement for men and women; and the reconstruction of ‘social wealth’ from the family to the local council.
Twenty years on, and the Condition of Britain calls for reforms to get NEETs into training or work; a higher rate of job seekers’ allowance for those who contributed for over five years; and greater powers for local authorities to solve the housing crisis.
Ed will say:
We face an economy where inequality is rising, year after year, and where so many people feel locked out of the chances that previous generations enjoyed. Turning that round is the mission of the next Labour government.
And we must do so at a time when to our country continues to confront a fiscal situation the like of which we have not seen for generations, the result of a financial crash the like of which none of us have ever seen.
So we can’t just hope to make do and mend and we can’t just borrow and spend money to paper over the cracks. Instead, we need big, far-reaching reform that can reshape our economy so that hard work is rewarded again, rebuild our society so that the next generation does better than the last, and change our country so that the British people feel it is run according to their values. That kind of reform is going to be tough but it is the way we change Britain.
The importance of this report is that it shows there is a distinctive and compelling answer to addressing the longstanding failures of our country which mean big changes, not big spending.
The report aims to neutralise the Tories’ main line of attack, that the next Labour government would overspend and create economic chaos. It also challenges the Tory argument that Ed Miliband is somehow a prisoner of the leftwing and the unions.
Instead, as Progress has been arguing since the 1990s, Labour can be radical without deserting the centre ground, transform life chances for the poorest, while retaining the support of the middle class, and govern for all, not merely in the interests of a few.
After a few bad weeks, this huge report puts Labour back on the attack, with some meaty analysis and some eye-catching policies.
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why do we need a Purple Book? yet again labour attacks ‘feckless’ youth.they ARE taking ‘jobs’
short term temporary,minimum wage,and zero hours.so how do young people pay to go to
interviews?and purchase clothes for interviews? No Labour’s answer.kick them when they are down.an idea where mp’s claim for everything,will get an 11% increase in 2015,where Lord’s get
£300 a day tax free.
labour has swung far right.london did get a double dip recession.the rest of the country has.
who do you think the parents,and grandparents will vote for again in 2015? labour is nothing but
tories in wolves clothing..my late grandfather was a party member he told me ‘Labour is the voice
of the voiceless’.now we kick them.what the hell does miliband and co know about real work? party people,never done a decent days work in their lives.career politicians.tories,but worse!well i know what you can do with The Purple Book.place it where the sun does’nt shine!
I accept that Ed Miliband will never be like his brother but it is important that he gets people around him who know the “people” and what they think. It is not any use citing a report written twenty years ago, Ed knows that the world has changed a lot since then. I remember 2nd May 1997 and wondered at the time how it would end. Forget the Blair/Brown infighting, the fact is they ignored the effect globalisation was having on the people who had voted for them, and did not care. Over five million voters stopped voting Labour between 1997 and 2010 and I do not hear Ed Miliband say anything that might bring them back. By all means inform the young that they cannot expect benefits when they have made no contributions but a guaranteed job after twelve months on the dole is something they might vote for. Similarly proper apprenticeships and further education might even encourage them to vote at all. This is already promised by Ed Miliband but the message needs to be restated at every opportunity and it is not. I would also like to remind Ed Balls that Scotland will still be involved in the 2015 election whichever way the referendum goes and he should be aware of his ability to put peoples backs up.
Ed Miliband has never been in a stronger position, and he knows it, or at least ‘feels’ it in is bones. When you see the Tories and mayor Boris [bless their little silk sox] resorting to ‘dirty tricks’ and personal attacks on current and past Labour leaders you know they are actually quite afrit that their time has cometh.
Cross-party talks and ‘bury-the-hatchet-for-now’ agreements are seen to happen in Parliament with trouble spots [Middle East] and both front benches are in general agreement that sectarian violence has to be stopped before it spills over in to Europe and rest of the World.
Pity our own Labour brothers and sisters here at home can’t find some common ground, and bury the hatchet –if only for the next 11 months or so, to enable a solid win for Labour in May 2015.
Showing a concerted and united effort happens in the House when we are at brink of another war — same should apply to the many an various fragmented-think-tanks within the Labour Party stuctures whose current divergent policies are tearing the Labour Party to shreds.
I personally think Ed’ is on the right track to the Premiership and more strength to his elbow. He has enough enemies with ultr-conservative Tories and ultra-liberal Liberal Democrat-coalition to contend with without fending off back-stabbing ‘comrades and union-others’ from his own captains and rank and file within Labour’s party ranks. Show respect or at least stand behind your elected Labour leader till this job is done next 7 May 2015. Or maybe you fancy another 5 years of this current lot at Nr 10?
Why wait till next May? Now might be a good time to get things moving? Or are the politicians just in ‘neutral-safeguard-my-seat’ mode till after the next election? Something has a pong in the state of somewhere if that is the case. Less vege’s more meat, Ma!