The change that Britain needs
King Soloman Academy, London
August 28th, 2010
A week today voters in the Labour leadership contest will start to receive their ballot papers. A month today the Labour Party will announce the name of its new Leader. So things are now serious.
In fact they become more serious by the day. For our country and for our party. The economy is being given shock therapy; so is the health service; public provision is to be shredded; and the most vulnerable in our society are set to pay the greatest price.
At the same time the Government seek to plunder our politics, claiming the language of fairness, solidarity, responsibility and democracy.
So we have to fight back. Quickly.
Unlike in 1979, the public did not reject our goals or our values on May 6th. But they rejected us. And the coalition aim to make it permanent. Labour out of power for a generation.
The stakes could not be higher.
For the children no longer getting new schools; for the mothers seeing support for their families cut back; for the businesses shedding staff rather than taking them on; for the consumers whose confidence is tumbling as austerity turns from policy into self fulfilling prophecy; and for us as a political party.
Our leadership contest has had some extraordinarily positive features: packed hustings, new members, and civility and comradeship that has been the perfect antidote to the horror stories of Labour history and the psychodramas of the recent past.
You the members saved the Labour Party on May 6th. Since then you have humbled me with your resilience and inspired me with your passion. When Charles Smith told me in Chesterfield on Monday that he had been a party member for 74 years, that he had shaken hands with only one Labour leader George Lansbury, and that he was still fighting for working people today, I knew that nothing could break the spirit of the Labour Party.
But the debate has been too comfortable. Not enough acknowledgement of the challenges we face. Not enough sober recognition of how the land lies outside the tent.
We have spent too much time looking inwards and backwards, when we need to look forwards for new ideas and outwards for a new relationship with voters.
In the world outside, British politics is at a crossroads. We could be heading for a multiparty system of permanent coalitions. Or we could be in for a repeat of history’s trends – that when Liberals go into coalition with Tories, the two party system comes out stronger – and the Tories benefit
Look more closely and the future of Britain itself is up for grabs. We face challenges as big as those facing any government since 1945.
Changing World
The conventional answers of left and right, state and market, have little purchase on some of the most challenging social questions that have been raised at the hustings. We are a country that in the last few weeks has come together in a remarkable way, across lines of race and religion in a remarkable act of solidarity with the victims of the Pakistan floods.
But issues closer to home, where that solidarity is also needed; loneliness amongst the elderly, self harm amongst the young, the stubborn cycle of criminal behaviour, speak to a loss of connection and moorings. Each is about people, and their relationships, not programmes of government.
There is the economic crisis. We have one of the most diverse economies in Europe: more manufacturing than France, creative industries bigger than Germany. But there is a structural weakness. We are over-reliant on financial services and the South East. Under-powered when it comes to private investment, skills, the exploitation of new markets and the renewal of our national infrastructure. That is why growth rates have consistently come in under forecast over the last decade. It is key to tackling the deficit itself
The fiscal deficit is matched by a democratic deficit. This is about the expenses scandal but much more. International problems yet international institutions are too weak to cope. Politics is slow when answers need to be fast.
The new Government have alighted on some of the right questions. But their economic recipe is dangerous; their Big Society tells people sink or swim; their foreign policy has a shrivelled notion of Britain’s global networks; and their public service reforms will leave people powerless over the public services they rely on.
So we need an alternative.
The Challenge for Labour
The key to our future as a party is to understand that the fact that they are wrong matters less than the fact that we are not trusted. We are pigeonholed as profligate when we need to be frugal; we are seen as statist when in fact our mission is to empower individuals, communities and businesses; and we are seen as the Establishment when we need to be the radicals.
I know and you know that unless we are serious and credible as agents of change in Britain we will never win this trust back.
We need not just to oppose this Government. We need to defeat them.
To defeat this Government, to renew our party, and to revive our country. That is the purpose of my candidacy for the leadership of our party.
It means learning from the past but not simply repudiating it.
There is a palpable urging in the party for its leaders to stand up far more effectively for the change we achieved. I will stand up for our achievements because I am proud of them.
No Government since the war has left crime lower than when it came into power – except Labour since 1997. Nor done more for civil and social rights. Nor channelled more income to the poorest pensioners and children. Nor shown greater commitment to the poorest in the world. Nor raised educational standards faster. Nor seen higher levels of employment. We achieved great things.
And when I talk of Labour’s achievements I don’t mean ‘we’ the Government I mean ‘we’ the party. With a record that lives out the values of our movement and is a record we can be proud of together.
Yet it is also true that we lost on May 6th 2010 on an epic scale: it is not just the 29 per cent share of the vote that is our worst result since the second world war bar 1983; it is that outside the Labour heartlands we were given a drubbing. We lost 1.6 million low income voters between 1997 and 2010 and 2.8million skilled and lower middle class voters.
So we need to learn the right lessons. Proud of our record, humble about our mistakes too.
Tony and Gordon did great things. Really great things. But I know that in Tony’s time he did not focus on income inequalities, stopped devolution at Scotland and Wales when we should have carried it on, and too often defined himself against the party not against the Tories;
Gordon was wrong about the 10p rate, and wrongfooted in debates about the role of the state and the importance of crime and security as Labour issues. Both of them underestimated the extent to which the problems of the British economy had not been resolved by the 1980s.
The challenges we face are difficult but the answer is not impossible.
We are internationalists, and today we need stronger internationalism – from climate change to migration to terrorism. But today I want to focus on what we do at home.
The answer to our challenge lies within ourselves. It is written on our membership cards, radical words if taken to heart would result in a transformation of this country.
“Power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many not the few”. Inspiring words. It is our creed.
The redistribution of power, that deepens and strengthens democracy in our country, holding market and state to real account.
A moral economy, with much wider access to capital and wealth, across classes and across the country.
The promise of opportunity, true liberty, so people can live a life according to commitments and choices that they can authentically call their own.
We don’t need to be the generation that re-writes Clause IV. We do need a leader who puts it into practice with verve and imagination.
For too long we have viewed clause IV as a philosophical statement of values when in fact it offers a popular platform for Labour.
Our values can be the foundation for us to win again. With me there will be no false choice between values and power. By putting our values into action in the right way, Labour can be the change Britain needs.
The Redistribution of Power
Power in the hands of the many not the few. Because we are socialists not statists. And it is the promise of democracy to hold the market in check and the state to account.
I will never let the Labour Party again be in a position where the Conservatives are claiming the inheritance of the cooperative movement, mutual societies and the self organised community groups who built the labour movement.
These are not the fossils of our past; they are its treasure, the inherited capital which I will nurture and with which we will renew ourselves.
We have a government today which preaches localism without local government. We should be standing up for a vision of local government in which it has more power over housing, criminal justice and social service and health provision in the public sector; where it has a say over utility policy in the private sector.
But we have to go further. Empowerment means more than more power for local government. It must mean more power for people.
Real power needs decentralisation. It needs public servants as trusted partners in a shared enterprise, the holders of institutional memory and professional expertise. It needs the Sure Start centres and primary schools to be the hub of the voluntary as well as the public sector. And it means recognising the public don’t just want consultation; they want protection from risks beyond their control and power over the things that matter to them.
I saw for myself on Friday at the Holder House Allotment in South Shields disabled people helped to use their own budgets to decide what services they wanted. That is an empowering state in action. That is what we believe in.
And that is how we will expose the Big Society and build a Good Society. David Cameron says “we do less and you do more”. That is a very Tory contract. But never again will Labour offer more and more but demand less and less. We are in this together in a way the Tories cannot even begin to understand.
Spreading Wealth and Spreading Wealth Creation
Not just power but wealth and wealth creation spread throughout the country. That would be transformative.
Yes it would mean making sure the people who got us into the mess, in the banks, paying their fair share to get us out of the mess.
It would mean more support for manufacturing – and doubling the bank levy would save the investment allowances for manufacturing industry that the Tories plan to abolish.
London is the financial capital of the world. That is good. I want it to deliver for the British economy as well as the world economy, delivering capital to invest in companies across the country. That is why I support the creation of a British Investment Bank from part of the proceeds of the bank nationalisation. Never again should the Sheffield Forgemasters of this world be dependent on the U turns of Ministers.
In government we were too hands on with the state…and too hands off with the market. We mistook good times for a good system. That is why the scale of the financial crisis caught us out. But let’s learn the right lessons.
Our economic model has to be compatible with our wider vision of a society. A society where everyone puts in as well as takes out.
Because the legitimacy of a market economy depends on how money is made not just how much is made.
That is why I stand for a moral economy. People should not be playing games with other people’s money in the welfare state, but nor should they do so with our pensions on the trading floors of the City.
I believe in fairness all the way up and all the way down, and that is being betrayed by this Government.
They are storing up a massive jobs deficit. We need to extend the guarantee of a job for the long term unemployed beyond the 18-24 age range, not hack it back. That would be real welfare reform.
They are cutting back university numbers. We should have a plan to expand them.
They are wrecking the plans for green jobs in the future, from energy to transport. We need government to make Britain the heart of that new industrial revolution, not content in the slow lane.
And I will not cede ground to the Government when it comes to tackling the deficit. They are the ones in denial not us.
It is right to cut the deficit in half over four years starting next April. That would mean very difficult choices. But it is economically dangerous and socially divisive to take an extra £40bn out of the economy by 2014/15, vulnerable businesses and struggling families paying the price small state ideology.
The cuts the Tories and Lib Dems are choosing not just economically negligent but deeply unfair – starting at the bottom rather than the top. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies have shown today, the Chancellor’s claim that his was a progressive Budget has turned out to be a lie. From the government that promised you straight talk all we get is double talk.
It is now clear that every economic indicator about the state of the economy was improving before the election. But since the Budget the indicators of the future have gone in the wrong direction. On growth, employment, confidence.
It is not denial to point out the dangers of masochism. As a political party, and citizens of our country, it is our duty.
Inequality of Life Chances
Spreading power, spreading wealth but most of all spreading opportunity to the many not the few.
We must become again the innovators and reformers and not just the defenders of the public sector. When we said that schools should be accountable for performance we built confidence that our investment would deliver for pupils. When we said patients should be able to choose the time and place of their operation we improved the NHS.
The Government have reduced education policy to the freedoms of 153 already successful schools I say lets focus on the 23 000 schools in the system. We need to reclaim the territory of great teaching, strong leadership, an exciting curriculum and a diversity of schools that drives innovation and improvements.
For me crime will always be a Labour issue. New Labour did not target crime and anti social behaviour because it was popular; we did so because it was and is real, because it is wrong, because it afflicts most those most in need and those most vulnerable, and because it renders empty and fearful the most basic relationships which should be full of meaning and commitment.
I have the same passion for the National Health Service, there for every individual in every part of the country, every day of the year – and we will need to fight the most passionate and most effective campaign against Government health service changes because they threaten the progress we have made.
We saved the NHS after 1997 and we are going to have to save it again.
Building the Movement
Politics is about people and action not just policies and press releases. I want us to live that again. For that we need to change the way we do politics.
A bold programme of policies and ideas will be a flash in the pan unless it is created and carried forward by a renewed Labour movement.
We must express our political soul as much by the character and culture of our party, as any policy or programme.
Our movement was founded on the dignity of hard work; on family and respect for others; patriotism without jingoism; neighbourliness, place and belonging. Methodism more than Marxism.
Keir Hardie’s legacy is that we are not subjects to be pushed around by the state, nor commodities to be bought and sold by the market.
So the Labour Party must live among the people; share their hopes and aspirations; represent their voice in the democratic life or our nation.
To inspire people, to engage them, we must enfranchise them, learning from the Trade Union pioneers who built our party.
That’s why I want our party to be a movement for democracy in our country– government from the people for the people.
That’s why my campaign is helping people come together to bring the change Britain needs.
That’s why we have trained 1000 community leaders around the country. That’s why today there are campaigns for the promises of housebuilders to be delivered in South Shields, for recycling to be reorganised in Bryn Mawr, for school governors to be recruited in Ealing, for the security door finally to be fixed on the Ladderswood Estate in Enfield.
And that is why I would strengthen democracy and debate within our party, with an elected party chair dedicated to rebuild and reorganise our party in towns and cities across the country, starting in the 94 seats we lost in 2010.
Conclusion
The decision of the Lib Dems to join a Conservative Government creates a big opportunity for the Labour Party to realign the centre left of British politics. But for me, that’s not enough. I see the primary task for Labour as shifting the centre ground of British politics.
That means more than an agenda for changing Labour. It demands an agenda for changing Britain.
And that agenda – of Change for Britain – requires that we recognise that the greatest threat to the good society we seek is and will remain a Conservative Party determined to rule for a generation.
To win again we need working class voters, middle class voters, Conservative voters, Lib Dem and non voters as we drive the Tories out of power.
This is the sense of responsibility that motivates me. It brought me into the Labour Party 27 years ago, idealistic and open minded, when our prospects seemed bleak. It made me support John Smith in the search for new ideas after 1992. It made me run for Parliament in 2001. It made me turn down a big job in world politics last November. And it has made me stand for the leadership of our party today.
Still idealistic and open minded about what we can achieve together.
It is a big decision to stand for the leadership. It requires clarity about the conditions for success; and a reconciliation with the chance of failure. It asks a lot of the people you love; and an absolute determination to protect those that you do love.
For me, it is about understanding the time and place to take responsibility. Now is such a time.
I was born in 1965.
It was a time of recovery, but also vulnerability. For my family, the shadow of the holocaust was still much, much stronger than it seems today.
London, that ‘Mansion House of Liberty’ to quote John Milton, this great city, did not give us dinner parties; it gave us life.
Leeds, where I spent a formative part of my childhood and my dad was a teacher of politics, did not give us political theory; it gave us the middle class middle Britain security that comes from being part of a strong community, where you put in but you got out too.
Labour helped shape that post war period of security and opportunity. And a strong, renewed, reorganised Labour Party is vital to the future of our country today.
Three times in 80 years, in 1931, 1951 and 1979, an exhausted Labour opposition allowed either blinkered or complacent Tory governments to make the wrong choices and misjudge the key issues of the day – about Depression and the need to fight fascism in the 1930s, about democratising the country and rebuilding Europe in the 1950s, about social division in the 1980s.
We cannot allow that to happen again. And that is why I am standing for the leadership.
We need to buck the trend that when Labour lost in 1931, we were out for 14 years; that when we lost in 1951, we were out for 13 years; when we lost, as we know to our cost, in 1979 we were out for 18 years.
I am asking you to help make this time different from the rest.
Let’s write a new chapter that shows we are a party that doesn’t give in, doesn’t look inwards, doesn’t give up, doesn’t look backwards.
Change our party with our eyes firmly fixed on change for our country. Change to put power, wealth and opportunity into the hands of the many not the few.
That is the change Britain needs. That is the Britain we have to build. And that is the Britain we must build together.
King Soloman Academy, London
August 28th, 2010
A week today voters in the Labour leadership contest will start to receive their ballot papers. A month today the Labour Party will announce the name of its new Leader. So things are now serious.
In fact they become more serious by the day. For our country and for our party. The economy is being given shock therapy; so is the health service; public provision is to be shredded; and the most vulnerable in our society are set to pay the greatest price.
At the same time the Government seek to plunder our politics, claiming the language of fairness, solidarity, responsibility and democracy.
So we have to fight back. Quickly.
Unlike in 1979, the public did not reject our goals or our values on May 6th. But they rejected us. And the coalition aim to make it permanent. Labour out of power for a generation.
The stakes could not be higher.
For the children no longer getting new schools; for the mothers seeing support for their families cut back; for the businesses shedding staff rather than taking them on; for the consumers whose confidence is tumbling as austerity turns from policy into self fulfilling prophecy; and for us as a political party.
Our leadership contest has had some extraordinarily positive features: packed hustings, new members, and civility and comradeship that has been the perfect antidote to the horror stories of Labour history and the psychodramas of the recent past.
You the members saved the Labour Party on May 6th. Since then you have humbled me with your resilience and inspired me with your passion. When Charles Smith told me in Chesterfield on Monday that he had been a party member for 74 years, that he had shaken hands with only one Labour leader George Lansbury, and that he was still fighting for working people today, I knew that nothing could break the spirit of the Labour Party.
But the debate has been too comfortable. Not enough acknowledgement of the challenges we face. Not enough sober recognition of how the land lies outside the tent.
We have spent too much time looking inwards and backwards, when we need to look forwards for new ideas and outwards for a new relationship with voters.
In the world outside, British politics is at a crossroads. We could be heading for a multiparty system of permanent coalitions. Or we could be in for a repeat of history’s trends – that when Liberals go into coalition with Tories, the two party system comes out stronger – and the Tories benefit
Look more closely and the future of Britain itself is up for grabs. We face challenges as big as those facing any government since 1945.
Changing World
The conventional answers of left and right, state and market, have little purchase on some of the most challenging social questions that have been raised at the hustings. We are a country that in the last few weeks has come together in a remarkable way, across lines of race and religion in a remarkable act of solidarity with the victims of the Pakistan floods.
But issues closer to home, where that solidarity is also needed; loneliness amongst the elderly, self harm amongst the young, the stubborn cycle of criminal behaviour, speak to a loss of connection and moorings. Each is about people, and their relationships, not programmes of government.
There is the economic crisis. We have one of the most diverse economies in Europe: more manufacturing than France, creative industries bigger than Germany. But there is a structural weakness. We are over-reliant on financial services and the South East. Under-powered when it comes to private investment, skills, the exploitation of new markets and the renewal of our national infrastructure. That is why growth rates have consistently come in under forecast over the last decade. It is key to tackling the deficit itself
The fiscal deficit is matched by a democratic deficit. This is about the expenses scandal but much more. International problems yet international institutions are too weak to cope. Politics is slow when answers need to be fast.
The new Government have alighted on some of the right questions. But their economic recipe is dangerous; their Big Society tells people sink or swim; their foreign policy has a shrivelled notion of Britain’s global networks; and their public service reforms will leave people powerless over the public services they rely on.
So we need an alternative.
The Challenge for Labour
The key to our future as a party is to understand that the fact that they are wrong matters less than the fact that we are not trusted. We are pigeonholed as profligate when we need to be frugal; we are seen as statist when in fact our mission is to empower individuals, communities and businesses; and we are seen as the Establishment when we need to be the radicals.
I know and you know that unless we are serious and credible as agents of change in Britain we will never win this trust back.
We need not just to oppose this Government. We need to defeat them.
To defeat this Government, to renew our party, and to revive our country. That is the purpose of my candidacy for the leadership of our party.
It means learning from the past but not simply repudiating it.
There is a palpable urging in the party for its leaders to stand up far more effectively for the change we achieved. I will stand up for our achievements because I am proud of them.
No Government since the war has left crime lower than when it came into power – except Labour since 1997. Nor done more for civil and social rights. Nor channelled more income to the poorest pensioners and children. Nor shown greater commitment to the poorest in the world. Nor raised educational standards faster. Nor seen higher levels of employment. We achieved great things.
And when I talk of Labour’s achievements I don’t mean ‘we’ the Government I mean ‘we’ the party. With a record that lives out the values of our movement and is a record we can be proud of together.
Yet it is also true that we lost on May 6th 2010 on an epic scale: it is not just the 29 per cent share of the vote that is our worst result since the second world war bar 1983; it is that outside the Labour heartlands we were given a drubbing. We lost 1.6 million low income voters between 1997 and 2010 and 2.8million skilled and lower middle class voters.
So we need to learn the right lessons. Proud of our record, humble about our mistakes too.
Tony and Gordon did great things. Really great things. But I know that in Tony’s time he did not focus on income inequalities, stopped devolution at Scotland and Wales when we should have carried it on, and too often defined himself against the party not against the Tories;
Gordon was wrong about the 10p rate, and wrongfooted in debates about the role of the state and the importance of crime and security as Labour issues. Both of them underestimated the extent to which the problems of the British economy had not been resolved by the 1980s.
The challenges we face are difficult but the answer is not impossible.
We are internationalists, and today we need stronger internationalism – from climate change to migration to terrorism. But today I want to focus on what we do at home.
The answer to our challenge lies within ourselves. It is written on our membership cards, radical words if taken to heart would result in a transformation of this country.
“Power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many not the few”. Inspiring words. It is our creed.
The redistribution of power, that deepens and strengthens democracy in our country, holding market and state to real account.
A moral economy, with much wider access to capital and wealth, across classes and across the country.
The promise of opportunity, true liberty, so people can live a life according to commitments and choices that they can authentically call their own.
We don’t need to be the generation that re-writes Clause IV. We do need a leader who puts it into practice with verve and imagination.
For too long we have viewed clause IV as a philosophical statement of values when in fact it offers a popular platform for Labour.
Our values can be the foundation for us to win again. With me there will be no false choice between values and power. By putting our values into action in the right way, Labour can be the change Britain needs.
The Redistribution of Power
Power in the hands of the many not the few. Because we are socialists not statists. And it is the promise of democracy to hold the market in check and the state to account.
I will never let the Labour Party again be in a position where the Conservatives are claiming the inheritance of the cooperative movement, mutual societies and the self organised community groups who built the labour movement.
These are not the fossils of our past; they are its treasure, the inherited capital which I will nurture and with which we will renew ourselves.
We have a government today which preaches localism without local government. We should be standing up for a vision of local government in which it has more power over housing, criminal justice and social service and health provision in the public sector; where it has a say over utility policy in the private sector.
But we have to go further. Empowerment means more than more power for local government. It must mean more power for people.
Real power needs decentralisation. It needs public servants as trusted partners in a shared enterprise, the holders of institutional memory and professional expertise. It needs the Sure Start centres and primary schools to be the hub of the voluntary as well as the public sector. And it means recognising the public don’t just want consultation; they want protection from risks beyond their control and power over the things that matter to them.
I saw for myself on Friday at the Holder House Allotment in South Shields disabled people helped to use their own budgets to decide what services they wanted. That is an empowering state in action. That is what we believe in.
And that is how we will expose the Big Society and build a Good Society. David Cameron says “we do less and you do more”. That is a very Tory contract. But never again will Labour offer more and more but demand less and less. We are in this together in a way the Tories cannot even begin to understand.
Spreading Wealth and Spreading Wealth Creation
Not just power but wealth and wealth creation spread throughout the country. That would be transformative.
Yes it would mean making sure the people who got us into the mess, in the banks, paying their fair share to get us out of the mess.
It would mean more support for manufacturing – and doubling the bank levy would save the investment allowances for manufacturing industry that the Tories plan to abolish.
London is the financial capital of the world. That is good. I want it to deliver for the British economy as well as the world economy, delivering capital to invest in companies across the country. That is why I support the creation of a British Investment Bank from part of the proceeds of the bank nationalisation. Never again should the Sheffield Forgemasters of this world be dependent on the U turns of Ministers.
In government we were too hands on with the state…and too hands off with the market. We mistook good times for a good system. That is why the scale of the financial crisis caught us out. But let’s learn the right lessons.
Our economic model has to be compatible with our wider vision of a society. A society where everyone puts in as well as takes out.
Because the legitimacy of a market economy depends on how money is made not just how much is made.
That is why I stand for a moral economy. People should not be playing games with other people’s money in the welfare state, but nor should they do so with our pensions on the trading floors of the City.
I believe in fairness all the way up and all the way down, and that is being betrayed by this Government.
They are storing up a massive jobs deficit. We need to extend the guarantee of a job for the long term unemployed beyond the 18-24 age range, not hack it back. That would be real welfare reform.
They are cutting back university numbers. We should have a plan to expand them.
They are wrecking the plans for green jobs in the future, from energy to transport. We need government to make Britain the heart of that new industrial revolution, not content in the slow lane.
And I will not cede ground to the Government when it comes to tackling the deficit. They are the ones in denial not us.
It is right to cut the deficit in half over four years starting next April. That would mean very difficult choices. But it is economically dangerous and socially divisive to take an extra £40bn out of the economy by 2014/15, vulnerable businesses and struggling families paying the price small state ideology.
The cuts the Tories and Lib Dems are choosing not just economically negligent but deeply unfair – starting at the bottom rather than the top. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies have shown today, the Chancellor’s claim that his was a progressive Budget has turned out to be a lie. From the government that promised you straight talk all we get is double talk.
It is now clear that every economic indicator about the state of the economy was improving before the election. But since the Budget the indicators of the future have gone in the wrong direction. On growth, employment, confidence.
It is not denial to point out the dangers of masochism. As a political party, and citizens of our country, it is our duty.
Inequality of Life Chances
Spreading power, spreading wealth but most of all spreading opportunity to the many not the few.
We must become again the innovators and reformers and not just the defenders of the public sector. When we said that schools should be accountable for performance we built confidence that our investment would deliver for pupils. When we said patients should be able to choose the time and place of their operation we improved the NHS.
The Government have reduced education policy to the freedoms of 153 already successful schools I say lets focus on the 23 000 schools in the system. We need to reclaim the territory of great teaching, strong leadership, an exciting curriculum and a diversity of schools that drives innovation and improvements.
For me crime will always be a Labour issue. New Labour did not target crime and anti social behaviour because it was popular; we did so because it was and is real, because it is wrong, because it afflicts most those most in need and those most vulnerable, and because it renders empty and fearful the most basic relationships which should be full of meaning and commitment.
I have the same passion for the National Health Service, there for every individual in every part of the country, every day of the year – and we will need to fight the most passionate and most effective campaign against Government health service changes because they threaten the progress we have made.
We saved the NHS after 1997 and we are going to have to save it again.
Building the Movement
Politics is about people and action not just policies and press releases. I want us to live that again. For that we need to change the way we do politics.
A bold programme of policies and ideas will be a flash in the pan unless it is created and carried forward by a renewed Labour movement.
We must express our political soul as much by the character and culture of our party, as any policy or programme.
Our movement was founded on the dignity of hard work; on family and respect for others; patriotism without jingoism; neighbourliness, place and belonging. Methodism more than Marxism.
Keir Hardie’s legacy is that we are not subjects to be pushed around by the state, nor commodities to be bought and sold by the market.
So the Labour Party must live among the people; share their hopes and aspirations; represent their voice in the democratic life or our nation.
To inspire people, to engage them, we must enfranchise them, learning from the Trade Union pioneers who built our party.
That’s why I want our party to be a movement for democracy in our country– government from the people for the people.
That’s why my campaign is helping people come together to bring the change Britain needs.
That’s why we have trained 1000 community leaders around the country. That’s why today there are campaigns for the promises of housebuilders to be delivered in South Shields, for recycling to be reorganised in Bryn Mawr, for school governors to be recruited in Ealing, for the security door finally to be fixed on the Ladderswood Estate in Enfield.
And that is why I would strengthen democracy and debate within our party, with an elected party chair dedicated to rebuild and reorganise our party in towns and cities across the country, starting in the 94 seats we lost in 2010.
Conclusion
The decision of the Lib Dems to join a Conservative Government creates a big opportunity for the Labour Party to realign the centre left of British politics. But for me, that’s not enough. I see the primary task for Labour as shifting the centre ground of British politics.
That means more than an agenda for changing Labour. It demands an agenda for changing Britain.
And that agenda – of Change for Britain – requires that we recognise that the greatest threat to the good society we seek is and will remain a Conservative Party determined to rule for a generation.
To win again we need working class voters, middle class voters, Conservative voters, Lib Dem and non voters as we drive the Tories out of power.
This is the sense of responsibility that motivates me. It brought me into the Labour Party 27 years ago, idealistic and open minded, when our prospects seemed bleak. It made me support John Smith in the search for new ideas after 1992. It made me run for Parliament in 2001. It made me turn down a big job in world politics last November. And it has made me stand for the leadership of our party today.
Still idealistic and open minded about what we can achieve together.
It is a big decision to stand for the leadership. It requires clarity about the conditions for success; and a reconciliation with the chance of failure. It asks a lot of the people you love; and an absolute determination to protect those that you do love.
For me, it is about understanding the time and place to take responsibility. Now is such a time.
I was born in 1965.
It was a time of recovery, but also vulnerability. For my family, the shadow of the holocaust was still much, much stronger than it seems today.
London, that ‘Mansion House of Liberty’ to quote John Milton, this great city, did not give us dinner parties; it gave us life.
Leeds, where I spent a formative part of my childhood and my dad was a teacher of politics, did not give us political theory; it gave us the middle class middle Britain security that comes from being part of a strong community, where you put in but you got out too.
Labour helped shape that post war period of security and opportunity. And a strong, renewed, reorganised Labour Party is vital to the future of our country today.
Three times in 80 years, in 1931, 1951 and 1979, an exhausted Labour opposition allowed either blinkered or complacent Tory governments to make the wrong choices and misjudge the key issues of the day – about Depression and the need to fight fascism in the 1930s, about democratising the country and rebuilding Europe in the 1950s, about social division in the 1980s.
We cannot allow that to happen again. And that is why I am standing for the leadership.
We need to buck the trend that when Labour lost in 1931, we were out for 14 years; that when we lost in 1951, we were out for 13 years; when we lost, as we know to our cost, in 1979 we were out for 18 years.
I am asking you to help make this time different from the rest.
Let’s write a new chapter that shows we are a party that doesn’t give in, doesn’t look inwards, doesn’t give up, doesn’t look backwards.
Change our party with our eyes firmly fixed on change for our country. Change to put power, wealth and opportunity into the hands of the many not the few.
That is the change Britain needs. That is the Britain we have to build. And that is the Britain we must build together.
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