By the time you read this the leadership election will be over. On a grey cold day in September, as the calendar ticks to 13, Jeremy Corbyn slipped through the door of Victory Mansions.
And yet, this is not a piece about Corbyn.
This is a piece about how opposition can work for Labour. And perhaps, a piece about optimism – from the most relentless and pragmatic parliamentary candidate Labour fielded in 2015.
For most of early 2015 the polls might have been on our side – the psephology, and the conversations never were.
When times are tough people vote for security. And they very rarely vote to end a single-term government at all.
And what does security mean during difficult times? It means economic competency. People vote for the party they trust to provide the best stewardship for the economy.
Whether it is fair or not, in 2015 they did not trust Labour.
We did not get the results we wanted in Stafford, but we outperformed the trend, and we did so by running a campaign with an almost obsessive focus on competency; focusing every day that Labour would govern locally more effectively and more thoughtfully than the Tories.
To the party’s horror, I put my house on the line to launch one judicial review after another; challenging hospital downgrades, privatisation and service closures. In the publishing of the contracts on the £1.2m privatisation of cancer and end of life care, and the subsequent dropping out of the local NHS trust, we racked up the biggest campaign victory of the 2015 election.
That contract remains live, but it will never be awarded. Legally, it cannot be.
We did not win in Stafford, but we won the competency argument, and we shored up a struggling base. We were able to do so because we never wasted time on saying we were the party of effective government. We showed it.
Four out of the five new voters Labour will need in 2020 are Tory swing voters. To win them over, we need to win the competency argument. In opposition, that is a very difficult thing to do.
As part of an ineffective opposition – one which fails on scrutiny and the presentation of a realistic alternative – it will be almost impossible.
Life is normally tough at the extremes; in Labour it is going to be tough at the centre. Those of us still focused on making the competency argument – in the interests of the millions who simply find life better under Labour – will be working against the instincts of the leadership.
Thankfully, our problems at the centre contrast with the vibrancy and the creativity, and, yes, the sheer damn-it-all competence of Labour local government. From Richard Leese in Manchester to Albert Bore in Birmingham, Labour regions are leading the rewriting of our relationships with a state which – under the Tories – has broadly given up on us. In local government Labour leaders are taking a devolution born of laziness and turning it into a liberation. Local government is no longer about keeping the lights on. It is electric.
The most exciting project in the NHS is Devo Manc, the programme by which the Greater Manchester Authority will take ownership of its entire £6bn budget. Labour leaders in Manchester say they can deliver services more effectively, based on their greater understanding of local need. They plan to focus on prevention, introduce dementia and mental health support programmes and bring health and social care budgets together in exactly the way Labour campaigned for.
Andy Burnham said that the plan risked making a ‘swiss cheese’ of the NHS. Well sure, there are risks, but Devo Manc is a better NHS – a more Labour NHS – than anything the Tories will deliver.
Corbyn says devolution is a ‘cruel deception,’ a distraction from additional cuts. He argues that Labour should not engage – a view which at base is a variant on the idea that Labour councils should refuse to present budgets if the alternative is trying to make reduced services work.
The cuts are happening anyway. Local government is already at the point of a sword: the least we can do is untie the hands of our champions.
Labour leaders are preparing their ‘asks’ for devolution now. As they focus on housing, transport, health or simply exploring the new municipal bond market, we should support and celebrate them. And we should learn from them – the new heartlands of Labour’s competence in power.
———————————-
Kate Godfrey was parliamentary candidate for Stafford in 2015. Formerly a consultant working in international development and capital projects, Kate has returned to advisory work with a focus on health, and is also retraining with the goal of becoming a barrister specialising in judicial review. Kate lives in Derby, where she is a trustee for local charities
———————————-
John Rentoul, Hopi Sen, Dan Hodges and Luke Akehurst are all extremely busy; attacking the Labour leadership, on twitter and in their articles/blogs. Do we put this down to:
1. The implosion of Blue Labour.
2. The total misreading of the Party membership and supporters.
3. The erroneous predictions.
3. The composition of the Shadow Cabinet.
When will it all stop? Or in the immortal words of David Cameron: “Calm down Dear”.
Kate everything you say is correct but there is one very small point which people like Crudas likes to gloss over, cross their fingers or hope that it will not be the main thing they consider before they place the cross on the ballot paper. It does not matter how credible the economic plan if people wrongly believe that voting Labour could lead to another recession judged on past misconception of mismanagement of the economy. The Tories won three elections between 1979_97 because people feared that their jobs and family security would be at risk by voting Labour. So Labour can never win until it exposes the lie and defends its economic record in the correct way – head on and specifically using stats.