Margaret Curran: New leader must reclaim lost votes

Published on Friday 25 June 2010 13:29

IN JUST a few weeks, the Labour Party will go to the polls for the first time in 16 years to elect a new leader. The vision, policies and character of that new leader will be central to our electoral fightback and the stakes are high; we are voting not just for the next leader of the Labour Party but for our next Labour prime minister.

The Tories might have failed to win the election but there can be little dispute that Labour certainly lost it and a cursory glance of post-election analysis makes for some depressing bed time reading for any Labour supporter. At the election we lost a million votes from 2005 and returned to parliament with 13 fewer MPs than in 1992. But the reasons behind our painful defeat are not simply to do with one man or one moment in the campaign. We lost the election because too many people no longer felt that Labour offered them the best plan for the future.

The difficult process on which Labour is embarking - of examining our defeat, listening to voters who have left us, and seeking to regain their trust - is one that I went through two years ago. After having lost the Glasgow East by-election in 2008, I was resolute in my determination that we could not simply assume that the mythical political pendulum would bring Glasgow East back to Labour, or that somehow voters had not understood what it meant to break their lifelong commitment to the Labour Party. Over the past two years, I have had the opportunity to engage with thousands of voters, workers, families and businesspeople, and heard at firsthand what the reality of 13 years of a Labour government has meant for them.

There is little doubt that a Labour government has brought about genuine and lasting change to British society - a rising minimum wage, targeted and substantial support programmes to those most in need, devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 900,000 pensioners lifted out of poverty, and more young people than ever before are attending university - all great achievements of which Labour can, and should, be proud.

However too often during the campaign I listened to voters that told me that hard-working families felt that we were no longer on their side; they were angry that as a party we lacked real courage to properly regulate the banks and in the process allowed bankers to get richer than ever before while failing to address the growing gap between rich and poor. They were frustrated that we let our internal leadership disputes consume our party politics to the detriment of focusing our attention on creating a more just and more equal society, and we cannot shy away from the fact that we lost an awful lot of trust amongst the British public following our invasion of Iraq.

The worst thing you can hear as a politician is: "you don't understand our lives".It is vital that as a party we understand why people said that to us: we must face that accusation head-on, and be honest with ourselves about the truth in it. If 1997 is to be repeated, we need to be more representative of those we seek to represent.

I took the decision to back Ed Miliband for leader as I believe he has developed a prospectus that is both inspiring and commanding, and that will re-energise our party back into power. Most importantly, he has been clear for the need to place the fundamental values of fairness and equality back at the heart of Labour's political vision for the future. Indeed, whether it is by fighting for a living wage that will ensure we reward those in work with more than the legal minimum, or by placing a check on the salaries of high earners through the introduction of a High Pay Commissioner, Ed has sought to bring fairness back into the pay structure of our workforce.

What's more, just because we find ourselves in opposition does not mean that we don't have a critically important job to do. The people we met on the doorstep are now facing deep cuts to the public services they depend upon, the spectre of unemployment and rising prices. We need to be their voice in parliament, and it needs to be a strong, coherent and forensic voice that articulates what the coalition's spine-chilling measures will mean for hard-working families across the country. Ed Miliband is an engaging and genuinely warm individual but also has the steely determination necessary to return the party to power. He is the voice Labour needs in parliament to hold this coalition to account.

It is fair to say that there is a real and growing momentum behind Ed's campaign throughout the UK and particularly in Scotland, where he has won the support of many Scottish MPs and MSPs. Particularly encouraging is that the majority of fundraising for Ed has come from small donations from members throughout the country, while a big push in the use of SMS campaigning is characteristic of a campaign - and a candidate - that is contemporary, forward looking and determined to re-engage the party with new communication techniques that will cut across traditional party hierarchies to connect with the modern voter.

Labour's focus on returning to power must be razor-sharp and relentless. Too many lives will be blighted by this government's actions: look at George Osborne's Budget and you will find the recipe for another "lost generation"; look at the studies that show the disproportionate impact their measures will have on women, minorities, the poor, and Scotland.

It is imperative that the Labour Party regroups to win the next election to stop this outrage and mitigate the effects of what could be a very long five years under a Tory-led coalition government. In five years' time, the prime minister must be Labour, and Ed Miliband has the best chance of achieving that.• Margaret Curran is MP for Glasgow East and MSP for Glasgow Baillieston