I always thought it was suicidal to go round saying “a period in opposition will do us good” before the election as some did, but I guess that is the situation we are now in thanks to the ConDem stitch up/ collation/ sell-out so we must use it to our advantage. As the saying goes “don’t get mad, organise”. We need a proper leadership election now, a contest, not a coronation. After days of seeing men in suits cook up deals on the television news I would hope at least one woman would stand and all wings of the party be represented.
Rupa Huq
The ConDem coalition proposal for five-year fixed term parliaments is a major power grab. Fixed term parliaments are a fine idea but only dying administrations hold on for the full five years. They should be done properly with a four year term. Anything more and you’re excluding the people from the democratic process. No one voted for a five-year fixed term parliament. No duration was specified by the Lib Dems, the Conservatives didn’t mention it at all in their manifesto. It increases power for politicians and excludes the people. Is it any surprise they introduced it the day after the election?
Will Parbury
Our most important challenge is to really understand why we lost people’s support. That will raise hard questions. We need to go to where the voters are, and that means changing ourselves in ways we don’t yet fully understand.
Each leadership candidate should then set out their vision for earning the support of a broader swathe of voters again. Delivering that will be the main task of the next five years.
Immediately, we need to pay attention to the value of sustained, local campaigning and ensure party organisation is built around recruiting and inspiring members to be active.
We have a great deal to learn from some of the best campaigns in this election about a community based style of politics, and the success of those campaigns needs to be applied to the seats we lost last week.
Hopi Sen
Step back, reflect and then regroup.
Listen to voters, rather than telling them what you think they are saying. They want fairness, and in some areas they aren’t getting it. For example… Face up to the problems of immigration, acknowledge that some tax credits have become a passport to too many benefits and are seen as unfair, and that taking more people out of paying any taxes at all by increasing thresholds is a good thing.
Don’t fight each other inside the party – acknowledge when the Tories and the Lib Dems are doing something good – and then regroup and defeat them at the next election.
Gisela Stuart MP
The alliance between Social Democrats and Liberals finally unwound last night with the formation of a coalition government where the Orange Book finally tied the knot with the Big Society. The next key event will be George Osborne’s first budget, where big cuts are promised. Labour’s first task will be to provide a coherent alternative to this budget, and this will be a big first step in defining our new agenda in the long run-in to the next general election. My expectation is that not only will our agenda change with the renewal that will culminate in the election of our new leader, but we will look to new ways to get this message out – in part a reaction to new media, in part a response to promised electoral changes.
Julian Ware-Lane
I agree with Gisela. i would also add that the party needs to distance itself from unelected fixers and some old hands such as the former DPM. These bullish people put off many voters.
Will is right about the length of the fixed-term parliament. There have been 18 general elections since 1945. Six have taken place after a five-year parliament, eight after four years. If there is a norm, it’s four years. We need a pretty good justification for changing this norm and we haven’t heard one yet, even though it seems the decision has been taken.
The new government is not a day old and Cameron has already dropped his pledge to ring fence the NHS (see the FT Westminster blog). How can he break such totemic election pledges so easily? Surely the public can never trust Cameron or Clegg again?
I have joined Labour to protect our NHS and keep it our NHS.
Gisela’s comment that tax credits have become a passport to other benefits displays a breathtaking ignorance of the Welfare Benefits system. People who receive Tax credits find that the amount they receive reduces their entitlement to other benefits like Housing Benefits.
Please learn about the benefits system before swallowing Daily Mail nonsense
Richard: FT Westminster got their facts wrong. I think they had acknowledged this before you even posted your comment. Funding for the NHS will be raised in real terms.
Phil, thanks for the update. However, it still does not make me feel any more reassured. Oliver Letwin, David Cameron and Andrew Lansley have all said that they will “invite in the private sector”, note not competitive tendering, but “invite in”. That means that the private sector will cherry pick the services that make a surplus. Such surpluses currently cross-subsidise other services in a hospital so if the surplus generating service becomes a profit making service for a private company then that is money taken out of the NHS. Taking money out of the NHS is a cut.
Time for reflection and a re-visit of what we are trying to achieve. I think we must focus on issues that reflect our core values (e.g policies that produce a radical reduction in inequality), and talk more of the politics of hope than fear. As a recently re-elected Cllr, I know there are great ideas, great people in our movement that rarely get heard. At the same time, we need to keep grounded and in touch with peoples’ everyday concerns and issues, and the only way to do that is to talk to the voters all year round, not just at elections.
Party activists and grandees must take some of the blame for our defeat, first for putting the boot into Tony Blair, then for doing the same thing to Gordon Brown (not to mention the public rubbishing of our efforts to form a progressive coalition).
We have a big enough problem fighting our enemies through the prism of a largely anti-Labour media, without those within our own ranks adding to it by turning their guns on us for narrow sectional reasons.
As a floating voter and staunch union member can I say that Labour lost the election because of its ability to get the back up of the voters. You failed to address the unfairness of devolution, (scottish mps voting on english only matters); immigration and the welfare dependancy that now seems endemic in some parts of this country. Your became more bullying and if anyone dared question they were accused of racisim, xenophobic and biogitry. You were telling the public what to think…and they hated you for it. You need to remove the poision from your system, that is the Ed Balls, Mandleson Campbell! These three blatant power grabs have destroyed what New labour was meant to be about.
Gisela Stuart’s comments are very worrying. Analysis by Left Foot Forward and the IFS has shown that raising tax thresholds is a bad way to tackle poverty, because it’s a move that’s worth less to those who earn less – e.g. the Lib Dems’ £10,000 threshold is worth £700 a year to anyone on £10,000 – £100,000, but less to someone on £9,000, less again to someone on £8,000, and nothing at all to someone on £6,500 or less. Thus the overall effect would be to raise the median income by more than the incomes of the poorest – increasing the gap between the bottom and the middle, and therefore levels of relative and absolute poverty. Furthermore, most of the benefit would go to above-average earners – about £12bn in the case of that Lib Dem proposal.
By contrast, tax credits are worth more to those who earn less, thus helping to pull the incomes of the poorest up towards those of middle earners (and, crucially, over the 60%-of-median poverty threshold). By the same token, of course, they’re worth less to those who earn more – so someone on £50,000 or £100,000 doesn’t get the exact same benefit as someone on £10,000 or £20,000.
That’s not to say it could never be right to raise a tax threshold, but complementary measures would certainly be needed to ensure that such a move didn’t leave the poorest even further outside society’s mainstream, and that the money spent on such a move didn’t end up mostly in the pockets of the better off.
Gisela Stuart’s 3 main points are all ignorant, and could have come straight out of the Daily Mail.
The change to tax threshold benefits middle-to-high income earners, as the IFS shows. Worse, the ConDems will pay for this by lowering employers NI while hiking employees NI.
Tax credits target help to the poor, and unemployment fell even as the credits rose, belying the idea that welfare encourgages joblessness
And she must know, or ought to, that immigration numbers cannot be controlled because we are members of the EU, as even the ConDems acknowledge. They are only therefore talking about controlling the numbers of people with Black or Brown faces. We have to face up to the fact that immigration is an economic positive, and that it requires investment in schools and housing to make lives tolerable for both the newly arrived and the established sections of our community.
We need to challenge the ConDems, not capitulate to them.
Like Ahmed (13 May) I also disagree with Gisela Stuart’s comments, “listen to voters” is nothing but a lamentable meaningless cliche. The problem was not the labour party turning a deaf ear to the electorate but the electorate not hearing Labour’s message. Why? Choose from the following: 1) too much dissention, back-stabbing and in-fighting in the PLP, 2) organisation of propaganda that was too little, too late, 3) a constant and sustained attack on Labour and Gordon Brown (often despicable and personally abusive) by most of the media (Press and TV) and 4) a lack of guts and fighting spirit from both ministers and MPs (including you, Gisela,) not only to defend Labour’s achievements but also to praise Labour. We all knew that our backs were to the wall, so where was the passion, the fight, the guts, the ‘blooded-but-unbowed’ resolution to win this heavyweight contest? Whose corner were Gisela Stuart, Diane Abbott, Kate Hoey, John McDonell etc. supporting?