Jacqui Smith Articles

I am beginning to think it is time to bin my pledge card. Like John Prescott, I still have the 1997 pledge card which I handed out in thousands in our 1997 campaign. To remind you, the pledges were: We will cut class sizes to 30 or under for five, six and seven year...

I joined the Labour party in late 1979 and had to wait another 18 years until we were in government. And I lost my seat in 2010 so I know what it is like to be on the rough end of our democratic system. I frankly have not got time now to wait another 13 years for a...

For many the run-up to the 1997 election saw us clutching our pledge card in one hand and our copy of Will Hutton’s The State We’re In in the other. In How Good We Can Be, Hutton once again seeks to provide not just an analysis of the deepseated problems with the...

Anybody who is reading this is probably taking a short break from phoning, leafletting, doorknocking and poster-erecting. My message to you is ‘Keep at it – it is working’. Last week I experienced the election campaign equivalent of Peter Mandelson’s old mantra that...