It is a unique opportunity to be General Secretary of the Labour Party at the moment the party has been elected to a second full term with a decisive majority. It makes the challenges all the more important. The first term inevitably focused on demonstrating that a Labour government was a safer and infinitely more effective steward of the economy. It is easy to forget that for two decades such a claim seemed improbable to the electorate. And easier to forget that failure would have appeared to confirm the worst fears that we were unable to contain our aspirations within the bounds of secure public finances. The success of 1997 was only to be an enduring success if we showed no propensity to boom and bust. We had to start with care, to consolidate in order to rebuild our public services.
The foundations were laid for the second term in the combination of enterprise and compassion. As trust in economic management was justified, a huge redistribution of wealth was achieved with no mad run on the currency. No juddering halt in public spending ended the dream. And, as important, the UK understood that politics based on inclusiveness, on a fair share in the opportunities created by prosperity, spoke not only of a sense of justice, but of even greater prosperity. Only when the talents of every individual are realised can a modern economy accelerate and a better civil society operate. Because this was understood, the electorate endorsed our party – committed to public investment – and rejected an opposition bent on massive and ill-defined cuts.
This process may have yielded electoral success but it also provides significant challenges. What happens next in the Labour Party must reach beyond people’s dismay at the Tory years or the tough decisions of our first parliament. Facing the new problems demands realism not pessimism. We start, after all, from a position of historic victory.
First, we have set ourselves the fundamental task of launching a progressive century. I am not raising in code the issue of the size of the ‘big tent’, although it is essential to win commitment among broad groups of people to progressive politics. That approach won the last two elections. Rather, I am focusing on the progressive concepts and structures we need to lever prosperity, opportunity and decent civic values throughout our society. The goal remains radical; by no means everyone thinks of what ‘we’ can achieve together rather than the Tory lesson of what ‘I’ want for myself.
To make progress in a world of constant change demands a constant flow of high-quality ideas to renew the political agenda. To dominate a century will demand that we blend our values with a flexibility of mind able to generate these ideas and the means of delivering them. Delivery is not a simple test of efficiency although we will be tested that way. It will also test our ability to lead and drive innovation, to create new ways of doing things where old ways falter. Change can feel intimidating. If people are to embrace it they must understand it and trust those who advocate it. The bigger the changes, the more the trust needed.
I admire the organisations working on ideas in this ‘big picture’ sense, but most of all I want the party to be the author of the progressive century, in alliance with others, but a dynamic centre in its own right. There is nothing simply cerebral in this approach. It is fundamental to how we create policy, win members, fight elections.
Second, following our opposition years, the best leaders of our party found themselves in government. Their time could not be spent as extensively on the internal life of the party and we needed to grow again from the roots. In unions, local government, the societies and, vitally, in the constituencies, we will have to develop qualities of party activism and leadership that keep us as the leading force in local government and campaigns. The stark lessons of Conservative defeat in local government and the average age of the Tory Party’s members (mid-60s) demonstrate the cost of failure to renew.
We will renew with a series of programmes to develop the party, our members and supporters. There is a sound basis of good practice in a number of constituencies where younger people have become engaged without feeling they are having some orthodoxy pushed at them. There are outstanding community alliances in parts of the country, where in other places there are none. Spreading what works, learning from what does not, is not a mystery. Central to what works is so often the guidance of the MP and councillors.
Third, I think there is a tacit contract between the party and members. Most people do the hard work needed in unending cycles of elections because we want to see our party in power. But it is also ‘our’ party in the sense we want its policies to result from a dialogue in which we have taken full part. Nobody expects every one of their views to be adopted, but everyone expects to have the chance to argue their viewpoint. Partnership in Power is the central ingredient in this contract. Yet it needs, despite its successes, to take some new steps.
It could add more to the quality of debate in every locality. It can engage people before they become members if they experience themselves as ‘authors’ of policy rather than passive recipients. It will help us share in the creation of the ideas capable of motoring the progressive century. It must surely add another ingredient. There is too little satisfaction in sending ideas and practical programmes to the centre of the party if you then cannot tell what then happened to them. That is a monologue when we need a discussion. In the next round, I would like to see a full account go back to the members of what happened to their contribution to the partnership.
In this way, perhaps we can make the tacit contract more explicit, more rewarding. Perhaps to drive up electoral participation, we need to improve all areas of participation. The paradox seems to me to be that for all the media cynicism about how control is said to be exercised, there is a genuine hunger to see active engagement in real, mature political debate throughout the Labour Party. We have a leader who starts testing debates. Tony Blair plainly understands and intends that debate will then follow.
Education is our mantra in the country. It must also be central to our party. The Tory years did not encourage broad civil or social analysis – indeed society was pronounced dead. Even their free market economic radicalism was only really discussed in rarefied circles. We need a renewed capacity for tough-minded political thought. The processes of renewal and reconnection I have described, the qualities we can bring to communities, school governors, hospital trusts, local and national government, all of this needs more than fresh, younger volunteers. Like all vital jobs, these have to be done well, from concept to delivery. We will let ourselves down if we do not offer for all members, but especially young members, the basic tools to be the leaders we will need.
I am conscious that some of this will not sound like the tough tasks of winning elections or running councils. No Labour General Secretary can avoid being rightly obsessed with these tasks. But I know that in a period when many people do not vote, when activism appeals to far too few, when media convey a sense that all public life is cynical despite the evidence of selflessness about so much of it, that we must put energy into the fundamentals. It is as true for the unions, our partners in the movement where I have spent much of my working life.
The reason for optimism, alongside our stunning victory, is that the whole party intuitively knows both what we need and much of how to do it. Now, we must actually do it.