Thank you. First, please take it as read that I believe the Labour government achieved fabulous things, so I don’t need to list them for you.
Also, I won’t talk at length about my chapter in the Purple Book – save to say, it’s good. Buy it.
What I do want to say are a few points about where we are and we where need to be:
1. A long way to go
First, we are a long way from power with a long wait.
We have just started rebuilding … We are 91 seats short of a parliamentary majority, and that will not be made any easier with the Tories’ gerrymandering of this boundary review.
The 2011 local elections was half a step forward for Labour, we gained 800 Labour councillors but the Tories won more seats and a bigger share of the vote than Labour.
And we haven’t yet made the big inroads into the territories captured by the Tories in 2005 and 2010, critical to the successful election of a Labour government.
Labour must be a party of the nation, not just of our big cities and industrial heartlands.
2. Change and reform
In reaching out to the quiet majority our policies should be about change and reform not just about spending more.
• The way services are delivered on the ground;
• The control and power we share with others;
• The way we help people to advance themselves and their families.
Let’s be honest: government is riddled with too much internal reorganisation, renaming departments, costing money and doing little to change lives.
3. The competence test
Labour’s credibility hinges on our economic competence.
The public generally take the view that the cuts are going too far, too fast.
But there is also a strong perception that in government we spent too much and sometimes unwisely.
And that has been reinforced in recent weeks by select committee reports and news stories.
We face a challenge over the huge cuts councils are being forced to make.
We object to them being frontloaded and with the poorest areas being hardest hit.
But we should have shouted louder about the extravagant pay at the top of public services and quangos when we were in government. Our failure to do so offered the Tories an opportunity to portray Labour as indifferent to how taxpayer’s money is spent.
When attacked by government for mis-spending public money and not looking at ways to save, Labour leaders have plenty of examples to contradict that view.
But we didn’t and don’t broadcast it enough.
Perhaps part of our DNA is that we are not comfortable talking about efficiency and saving money. So it is no surprise that the public hear Tory voices talking the language of value for money rather than Labour.
We need to claim that agenda.
4. Big state v little state
It is a mistake if we allow the debate on public spending to be big state versus little state.
One of the successes of new Labour was when we promoted the consumer interest over the producer.
The GP appointments within 48 hours; choose and book in the NHS; the NHS walk-in centres, put the patient first and challenged GP working practices.
But, I certainly do not feel empowered by being a member of an NHS foundation trust.
The creation of academies in response to failing schools clearly challenged poor teaching and leadership.
I don’t want the Tories to steal the consumer agenda. I certainly do not believe that so called free schools are the answer; but i don’t want Labour boxed into the anti-choice corner either.
We must be a party of the supportive, consumer state, responsive to the individual, empowering communities.
5. Responsibility
Finally, our approach to welfare; to housing; to community should express our belief in responsibility, in something for something.
We have to reward and embrace those people who make an effort; who play by the rules; who give time to their community – and who, frankly, feel pretty squeezed between the super wealthy who play by one set of rules and the irresponsible at the bottom who play by nobody’s rules.
Labour must articulate our belief that we expect a contribution and that is the only way our welfare state can sustain itself.
I’m proud to have contributed to the purple book. But let’s not leave it gathering dust.
Let’s use each chapter of the Purple Book as the start of as debate; engage our members and let’s sign up those Labour supporters.
I’m headlining on Thursday, so don’t go home early.
Thanks – have a good week.
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Caroline Flint MP is shadow secretary of state for communities and local government
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Oh the whole a good speech how much I believe is the problem, then again under labour a young soldier had to go to court to get his compensation after horrendous injuries, and labour fought it for god sake how much do you want us to give.
The NHS dentist a lot of people still see this as one of the most shocking sell of the NHS to the private sector and labour allowed it, so you say to us the NHS is safe with us, I do not believe you.
I suffered a horrendous accident at work due to a well known company saving money on servicing equipment, I had worked for thirty years at rubbish wages , then I have an accident the company gets £17,000 fine and I’m left a Paraplegic, yet you lot say you can work, yet for eight years I’ve been attending job centers Remploy and the Shaw Trust to be seen by a nineteen year old kid who asked me to prove I’m disabled.
Nope sorry I do not trust you any more, I sure your middle England swing voters will come back in three or four terms.
Caroline, a very different position to your normal one and you have clearly been listening and have finally recognised where planet earth is which i thank you for.
1 You will not be winning the next election as the Tory strategy of responsibility vs popular is working, slowly and with a grind but it is working. Cameron has also been shrewed and attempted to open up Government to more scrutiny and has recognised the fundamentals on Constitutional Civil Liberties though he has further to go in developing and decentralising other powers and changing the nature of the relationship between the State/Corporate State (my term) and the individual.
I am not sure you are going to be making many inroads anywhere.
With the recession just beginning to take off Hain is already on the record saying he does not support the poor only the middle, well the middle are not going to see themselves as very rich and will be hurting and as a result have a more open mind towards others in a similar or worse plight, so you’ll be defending your traditional ground.
Of the Nation? How are you planning to regain Scotland? Most of you do not really understand (beyond camapaigning) how you lost it, how you came a poor third (under a campaign you “lead”) in Europe and left us with 2 BNP MEP’s.
I think you saw what people think of MEP’s (I highlighted on Labourlist in response to an article written by Claude Moraes MEP) four months back, never mind the Nepotism you yourself are still proactively encouraging at expense to the Party.
The public, the people who vote want parties to cleant hemselves a bit, not completely but reasonably and its Labours awful weakness at the moment that it lacks any grasp of normative reasoning and balance.
2 Change the way services are delivered on the ground? Can you be trusted with this?
For a start you have no business experience in the Shadow Cabinet and no ability to recognise genuine ability from facade and lack the judgement required. Secondly and worse still, we all remember the fudged “work” whereby service provision was predetermined by vested interest and dogma rather than by objective professional assessment when you had the chance to define yourself as something special. I’m sorry you blew it which was also confirmed wien the audience in Liverpool on Question Time sounded you out as they remember all tou well the officious arrogance and blatent poor policy implimentation on the ground. How can you prove to peopole things will change? Answer: you can’t and won’t, because you are not (and this is as much a compliment as an insult) not the sort to change her stripes.
My experience of you all has been that you cling to whatever shred of power you get regardless of the consequences to the Uk and its people I am not sure you can be trusted here by the public either.
I suspectr you mean MPs families and the sycophants you surround yourself with rather than members of the public who i doubt you have little more than disdain for.
3. Competence, is marred as much by self-interest and political prosititution than by any kind of ability. The public saw you all during the expense scandal and they know how intelligent you all are but its a low cunning that showed you all to be very basic creatures that no number of qualifications can compensate for. Margaret Hodge did a cracking job recently in exposing the millions wasted and has shown herself to be working in the interests of the public and that takes courage and displays a commitment towards accountability, transparency. Its a shame that those involved in such poor decision making walk away rewarded.
Not sure the public will even begin to listen to the PLP until self-interest is sorted out, because while you were all in Conference the rest of the Uk were finding out about the lovely thinks Tony Blair was and is allegedly involved and it was incredibly unpalatable.
Based on the poor positioning so far by the PLP I would suggest that there is still a cynical basic low cunning to go back to old bad habits as soon as possible and that kept the Tories out of power for a decade and they have still yet to win an election.
So you are all still in big trouble and have shown only a mean and minimal commitment to the electorate who still get to witness MPs on TV who screwed them over last year (as they perceive it), which means our party appears reckless (thanks Liam Bryne), unsympathetic and arrogant (sorry Caroline that means you) and detached from reality.
I don’t remember either you or James Purnell or any others hesitating about talking about tax cuts in the past quite publically.
4. Big vs Little State.
Its more complex than that and its the weird decisions that are not sustainable or practical made by the Trust here in Barking and Havering on drug availability based upon a false economy that almost damn well took me out. Complete madness and so i’ll agree with you here.
We need power dispersed whereever and whenever possible with NHS healcare where the patient is PRIORITY 1. People want reform they just don’t trust you to carry it out as you lack authentic people with an understanding. The wal- in centers are excellent but there is massive room for improvment as I have experienced hospitals in other countries that are more efficient, give you what you need and act as a pit stop and get you back into work again. There is too much fluff and not enough substance. I have loads of workable iodeas here but am keeping shtum because its your job to address this not mine.
5. You have changed your tune on Welfare a tad and that comes across as a deception and it was here where you were more than happy to barge in dogmatically and clumsily and upset a great number of decent people who depend on a messed up real economy not shareholder cuckoo land.
You had no idea what you were doing, pocketing our money whilst criticising people who were doing far less in the main. You lost all credibility as a result and appeared to be little more than a hypocritical bully.
yes the amounts of money paid to some people in expensive areas was deeply shocking – I agree I could not believe how much money was going to landlords and was indirectly fixing and supporting an unsustainable economic position. It was bloody wrong and unjust because it was a cop-out in addressing the deeper issues surrounding it. As for the way the vast majority of genuinly disabled people were treated, some ex-forces and worth more than twenty MPs in terms of their attitude and value to society and the UK, well that defined you all in a way most peoplke could never accept who live outside of a sewer.
You were all warned, bloated on power and self-delusion, taking your safe-seats for granted, not campaigning but sitting on your Royal backsides abusing your jobs in a far worse manner than any dole scrounger. The sad aspect is the utter blindness of you all to see how the public see you. Its truly incredible and shows a weird perception that is just completely off key and is something most people cannot accept or relate to.
When the austerity really kicks in so will your unpopularity, at the moment Labour is anchored by the fear of austerity not the joys of struggling and suffering to come. It will take a very long time for people to forget this, the attitude towards the public more than the actual corruptions themselves.
One day I hope to write something positive but this is reality and where we are and the intarverted, insular nepotist cultism at the heart of the PLP just puts people off, decent mainstream newies like me (and I am off soon and am no longer campaigning for Labour as you yourself have promted laziness and greed and slapped harder working members in the face), the public don’t support you either and they are right.
It’ll take a long time before we have normative MPs who speak language the people desire, because you can understand the situation as much as you like, steal the ideas of others and act as though you thought them up, peopledon’t trust you and the PLP have no idea how to build trust as its a commodity they little understand as they encapsulate the PLP in a bubble of pals and try their best to maintain the unsustainable lies, that you have become a party of privalage and reckless destructive self-interest at expense to the rst of society.
Nothing personal of course.
So if people are wondering why I am so dismayed with the appalling Leadership of our Party and am planning to leave and regrettably gutted to now not be joining progress here is your answer…yet another example of our Party being placed into disrepute, at least Flint and Abbott can say they have something in common…..http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046636/MPs-paid-thousands-appear-BBC-As-Corporation-cuts-politicians-given-licence-fee-cash-TV-radio.html
I agree with your viewpoint Ralph but if you wanted to be taken seriously, why would you ever link the Daily Mail to any intelectual debate? You need to find a trustworthy source of media mate.