I am no less proud to be a member of the Labour party than the day I joined. I am proud of everything we achieved in government. I am proud to be a party member today. And I know that the best hope for people in this country remains a united, radical and popular Labour party.
There is no contradiction between celebrating the success of our Labour governments and in understanding that we need to change. New Labour was, above all, about change. We won because we changed. We were able to use power to make millions of lives better because we changed. Changed our party from what had become stale in the past and changed to reflect the different attitudes of the modern electorate. That is what we have to do now. Have the courage to recognise that change is needed but to have the courage too to listen to what the electorate are saying.
We can’t either retreat to either an Old or New Labour comfort zone. We have to create something different, to renew and reinvent ourselves once again. As in Scotland, the way forward does not lie in holding on to old labels and past divisions, it come from offering a positive vision for the future.
It will be difficult but the alternative to changing is that the voters move on without you. And the way back only becomes harder. A lesson we learned the hard way in Scotland.
After an election defeat we always say we have to listen. We said it in Scotland in 2007 when we narrowly lost power. We said it again in 2011 after a catastrophic defeat. Last year we had another painful message from the electorate. The lesson for me is not that we should listen to the voters, we should prove that we are listening by acting.
That is why we have taken a new approach to organising our party, with a focus on our core values and priorities. We have taken action to bring in fresh talent and new faces. And we are taking renewing our organisation from the ground up.
We have an amazing opportunity with the thousands of new members not just to welcome them to the party but to use their energy and enthusiasm to engage with the electorate. To have a real conversation with them about what it is they want in their lives. Because our purpose is not to convert people to a particular strand of Labour party thought. It is not to argue with ourselves. It is to persuade the electorate that we understand their lives, their fears, their aspirations.
I have a challenge to the rest of our movement on behalf of Scotland. I am clear that I lead the Scottish Labour party. We are an autonomous part of the Labour family. But never forget that we are part of the Labour family. We need and want a return to Labour government just as much as any part of our United Kingdom. We need to get rid of the Tory government that has the wrong ideas for our future and to replace a nationalist government that has the wrong priorities and is stuck in the past.
The nationalists want progressives in the rest of the UK to believe that Scotland is ‘a different country’. Don’t believe it for a moment. We can’t do this alone, we can only do it together.
———————————
Kezia Dugdale MSP is leader of the Scottish Labour party. She spoke at the Progress Rally at this year’s Labour party conference