LABOUR IS LOSING BRITAIN
In a hugely significant intervention, the Labour peer who was Ed Miliband’s closest mentor issues a grim verdict on his party’s election meltdown
TONIGHT’S European election results will leave no doubt as to the temper of the people of Britain. Nigel Farage has benefited from a huge surge in support from the angry and disaffected, which has shaken the underpinnings of the three-party system. This is difficult for me to accept.
However, UKIP has done us all a service in one key respect: it has forced the elites to confront the flaws in our democracy.
The EU has expanded and grown and people need to be given a choice.
There are many things still to cherish – in this cynical age we frequently can’t see the miracles in front of our eyes.
We should value our special inheritance of democracy and liberty that are the birthright of all who are born in the UK.
We are a great self-governing nation and a beacon to the world.
We have managed to keep a monarchy but limited the power of the king.
We have a national church but are tolerant of all faiths.
We are an open nation which has preserved our traditions. We are Britain and not Russia. And, as a staunch Labour supporter, I would include my party as one of those things to cherish.
But – and it pains me to say this – I have come to the conclusion that Labour is in danger of losing the battle. Let me explain.
ALL my relatives left behind i n Russia, Poland, Romania and the Ukraine were killed by the Nazis. But Britain saved our lives and gave us life. It gave us more. It gave us the freedom to follow our religion and a democracy where we could build a common life with others. It opened its doors to our work and dreams. My mum left school at 13 and went to work in a factory. All four of her children went to state schools and university.
I was drawn towards the Labour Movement, which was created i n reaction to the fact that the country was run by the rich who kicked people off their land and let them languish in terrible conditions in the new cities.
The working people of England, Scotland and Wales did not pursue bloodshed, revolution and hate but came together so they could house each other and feed each other.
The Labour Movement healed the rupture between immigrants and locals, Catholic and Protestant, religious and secular in all our cities and built a movement that was shared between them. That was unusual too.
Above all, it asked that the voice and interests of working people be heard, that they were also part of the nation and should have a seat at the top table.
Working people wanted to be recognised as an essential part of the nation, and not simply the plaything of their bosses and their rulers. Labour pursued this for 100 years with a gentle stubborn persistence.
But – and it is a big but – the cohesive world which the movement helped to create has now fallen apart.
People are isolated and lonely, and feel both dispossessed of their inheritance and abandoned by their rulers. It is no surprise, therefore, that so many core
UKIP benefited because people feel so powerless
Labour voters – people who work and are members of a real village, not the global one, who love their country and their family – feel abandoned and neglected by the party that was established by their forebears.
That is why it is not just the Conservatives who are bleeding support to UKIP. The votes for Mr Farage, both in English and Welsh council elections and the European elections, should serve as a sombre reminder to my party’s leadership that the people of Britain have not lost their desire to govern themselves – and still feel the basic urge to turn their individual fate into a shared destiny through our historic democracy.
UKIP has benefited because people feel powerless.
The dispossession they feel is not an individual complaint, but a shared grievance.
I believe that this Government is incapable of responding. The Conservative party is nowhere near conservative enough. It is a liberal party that serves the interests of those who already have much.
Neither the Conservative nor Liberal parties are held in the hearts of people as the local election results show. They lost seats by the hundreds.
I believe that Labour can meet this challenge by developing leaders from within the communities we represent, who can speak from their experience and shape our programme. We used to have a word for it – organising. Labour’s policy review is built around three themes: family, place and work. That is what people care about. Only through coming together for a common good can a decent human life, based on faithful relationships and an attachment to the people you live and work with, be forged. It is an active task not a passive policy.
Immigration and Europe, which are closely connected, have ruptured Labour’s relationship with its own supporters. We need to heal that rift.
PEOPLE feel powerless because we do not control our borders, we cannot shape our destiny and we have lost our sense of political community. We need churches and unions to find a common good between them to support people to fulfil their obligations to their loved ones and ensure normal dramas don’t turn into a catastrophe.
The future is based on skilled work and respecting work, and preserving our proud inheritance of shaping our own destiny together. My personal sense of history is crucial to this vision. We beat Fascism at home and then we beat it abroad.
Unlike Germany and France we don’t need to be protected from our own people. We are about generosity and not geno- cide. It was in the war that we learnt to trust each other. People don’t want to lose that. This is not about policy its about politics. Alone in the world we defended the small virtues rather than the insane demands of extremist ideology. We showed great courage but we didn’t boast about it. When the war ended we helped our enemies rebuild their countries. The stakes were high and we were up to it and up for it. It was our finest hour and I am grateful for it.
I am proud of Labour’s achievements, such as creating the National Health Service so that the miracles of modern medicine could be shared by all our neighbours as a common inheritance that came from political participation. We also created ‘social security’ so that the blows of injury and unemployment could be softened. We extended education to all.
But the UKIP surge shows that we risk losing this heritage.
I stand by and believe in Ed Miliband. Contrary to the anonymous briefings and undermining, I know him to be a good man with a deep sense of commitment to working people and a love of his country. He now needs to live or die by that and tell a story of our country and how Labour can make it better. He knows there is a need for change and needs to show that Labour is with people in their concerns about family, place and work.
Unless we’re straight with ourselves, our people and our language, then in the words of Bachman Turner Overdrive – You Ain’t Seen Nothin Yet.