In politics one can never really separate the execution of a task from the value base which drove you to bring that task into the public policy sphere.
To put together a programme of government is to be engaged in matters of values and ideology, making judgements according to both, and turning those judgements into a plan for action.
You may have read the article I wrote last week for Progress, in which I gently observe that some Labour leaders, including myself, tend to have a certain background – often middle-class, metropolitan, liberal, university-educated types. My penance for this is to have been subjected to a number of lengthy conversations with people who are at pains to tell me that they are DEFINITELY NOT from such a background, who have more or less waved their whippets’ birth certificates in my face, and provided written testimony from their flatcap suppliers.
Not, of course, that this matters at all. What matters is our ability to understand what our value base is, and what our particular take on socialist or social democratic ideology is, and to analyse the extent to which that helps or hinders us. Some of the most value-driven, successful, practical and in-touch politicians I know have deeply working-class northern backgrounds – while, conversely, some of the most ideologically dogmatic people I know are multimillionaires from north London. I have no particular borough in mind, before Twitter burns itself out.
Barack Obama writes about listening to a Republican in the Illinois Senate get irate over a plan to provide school breakfasts to primary age children (on the basis that it would crush their spirit of self-reliance). Obama pointed out that he did not know that many self-reliant five-year-olds, but that he knew a lot of hungry kids who had ended up in the care of the state. He tells how the bill was defeated (as he puts it, ‘temporarily saving children from the debilitating effects of cereal and milk’ – until he later successfully introduced it), and remarks that ‘values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology ignores facts which call it into question.’
It was our value base in Blackpool Labour that saw us introduce school breakfasts for all primary school children in 2013 – faced with the facts of poor school attendance, poor exam results, poor behaviour, and hungry kids. It was ideology which caused the Conservative party to oppose it, and try to means-test it. Three years on, we serve 1.5 million breakfasts a year – a take-up rate of 80 per cent.
Our value base informed the decision to reduce the number of senior council staff from 36 to nine. It informed our decision to invest in building projects and public transport capital programmes which have a ruthless focus on creating jobs and bringing income to a poor town. Our value base informed our decision to pull down bedsits and one-bedroom flats which made council tenants’ lives a misery, and rebuild them. Our value base which has overseen one of the most comprehensive and successful programmes of selective and additional licensing, which is driving bad landlords out of town. Our value base means that we are just about to recruit our third cohort of young people with learning difficulties, whom we will support into permanent paid jobs – because we couldn’t live with the fact that 93 per cent of them were unemployed.
Does this mean that we’ve abandoned our ideology? Of course not.
Does it mean we are relaxed about TTIP, all in favour of Trident, and perfectly happy with the situation in the Middle East? Of course it doesn’t.
Now, more than ever, people are looking for value-based, practical leadership. Communities up and down the country do not know what the future holds, but are pretty sure that the bad guys have been given a boost following the European Union referendum.
We as a party need to think about how we deal with working-class voters who may well have been Labour voters their entire life, but who have always been to the right of most of us on certain social issues.
Many of them have chosen to lend their support to the Leave campaign.
I want them to be shown some national leadership now from a Remainer – someone who can competently and confidently reassure them that we hear what they have said, that we are not going to pretend that uncontrolled immigration is, or ever was practical or manageable, but by the same token, we will deal swiftly and decisively with anyone who uses the current situation to engage in hate speech, racism, bigotry or worse.
I want to hear national leadership that talks about the future, that has a plan of action to deal with the social and economic crises that are barrelling towards those who are least resilient and least able to withstand that storm.
How are we going to ensure our children have jobs to go to when they leave school?
How will we ensure that pensions and savings are protected?
How will we ensure that further public sector cuts do not take place, that taxation isn’t hiked, that housing remains (or in places like this, becomes) affordable and accessible, and how do we make sure supermarket shopping, getting the bus or putting petrol in the car don’t become beyond the capacity of single parents and pensioners?
If by the autumn, that national leadership isn’t a bit more apparent than it is today, don’t imagine that local and regional Labour leaders will be able to fill the void for much longer. We are here, with hundreds of examples of best practice, we are here with our chequebook, as the biggest individual funder of the Labour party – but most of all, we are here with our values, which are shared by the electorate. At this moment in time, ideology isn’t putting food on anyone’s table, but our values are.
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Simon Blackburn is leader of Blackpool council, chief whip of the Local Government Association Labour group, and Chair of the LGA Safer, Stronger Communities Board. He tweets @CllrSBlackburn