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Thank you for adopting me as your Labour candidate. I’m delighted to fight this election. We fight to win.
I’m sorry though to present myself with a missing front tooth as if I was a National Front Candidate or had just had an argument with John Prescott. I was listening to World at One yesterday where Michael Howard was promising more police, cleaner hospitals, lower taxes, school discipline and controlled immigration. I don’t know if you were thinking what was thinking, which was why the hell didn’t he do all this in eighteen years in power? But it was such a mean, malevolent, nasty collection of policies that I was grinding my teeth in anger. One broke and fell out.
It’s a shame to be toothless in such a crucial election because this one is vital to every Labour Party member. We’re idealists. We’re instinctively for the masses not the classes, the many not the few. We’re motivated by an idealistic vision of a fairer, more equal society where we advance together as a community to empower the people and provide them with the opportunities and the platform of education, health, jobs, welfare and rights which wealth has always provided for its own offspring. Building that better society is a Sysyphean task. Indeed since I`ve been an MP there seem to be as many reverses as advances, particularly in the eighteen Tory years of creative destruction intended to break the power of Labour and the Unions. These were eighteen years in the wilderness fighting a rearguard action. Indeed I seem to have devoted too much of my life to rearguard actions but the vision of the better society, of the perfectability of more of the btter deal ordinary people deserved, has kept us going. Now we`ve the opportunity of realising it in an unprecedented third term.
We got there because we reformed and modernised ourselves. The Tories fell apart because their polices failed as they were bound to. The people threw them out. That brought us to power to put things back to rights, to pursue our vision, to reverse the damage and improve public services.
That`s what we’ve done. We’ve done it more slowly than some of us, including me, wanted. We didn’t want to frighten or alarm but to take it slowly to show that Labour governent works and that we can handle the economy we we could put down firmer roots rather than try and do too much too quickly. So it`s been slow but very successful. First. We’ve delivered the economic growth which Tony Crosland used to argue is what socialism is about - jobs, affluence, more public spending to provide better education, health and welfare. We`re all better off thanks to Labour.
Secondly. We’ve reversed the damage the Tories did, particularly in manning the welfare state, with 19,000 more doctors, 77,000 more nurses, 28,000 more teachers and much better services.
Thirdly. We’ve tilted the balances of power and wealth back to the people with the Minimum Wage, redistribution through Tax Credits, the better deal for pensioners and for mothers and children, such as Sure Start, and a quarter of a million more children in nurseries.
All that`s a solid achievement and it`s been done without a substantial increase in taxes or borrowing. Both are lower than the EU average. Now we want to go on moving forward to build on that achievement. We won`t and mustn`t we let the Tories ruin it. Again.
The election is about our achievement. Its not about Iraq, the Council tax Yobs and Asylum seekers or any other of the problems the Tories are trying to string together as a manifesto. An election is a verdict on the performance of the government and a decision by the people on whether they want to operate the ejector seat of democracy or keep the government they have. Look at the big picture. Ask the big question and none of the problems matter. Look at that big picture and you’ll see that we’re all better off, Grimsby is better off. Just look around.
So what are the alternatives? The Tories who`ve learned nothing and forgotten nothing? I`m not even sure what the Tories stand for any more. They’re not conservative but raving radicals. They`re not a party born to rule but garagistes and arrivistes. They`re not paternalist but believe in the market.
They now propose to do all the things they didn’t do when they were in power and they’ve added voodoo economics to that. They claim they can increase spending while cutting taxes and presumably make water run uphill and pigs fly at the same time. Their`s are the politics of hate. Their approach is to squeeze every boil on the bum of Daily Mail readers ,collect the pus and call it a policy. It`s pathetic. If you’re thinking what I`m thinking you’ll tell them that they need another period in opposition to return to sense and the middle ground as we did.
The Liberals are a more promising party. The most promising in Britain because they can promise anything. They wont be in power to deliver it. So it`s pure escapism. Unless, of course, they achieve power locally as they have here. Then the Liberals became a nightmare with the kind of library and lavatory closures, the ending of advice services which benefit the people, and the brutal closure of Alice House which helps young mums to carry on their education, that they`ve gone in for.
I don’t consider either the Tories or the Liberals a threat. My real fear is apathy, a fall in the vote. With the Liberals siphoning votes off into irrelevance that could give the Tories power by default.
Which is why it`s crucial that we turn out, vote and win. We’ve laid the foundations of the better society. We’ve changed the mood of the nation towards altruism and community. We now need to build on all that and make the shift in the social balances towards the people permanent.
That’s Labour’s job. It`s only just begun. There’s so much to do: children in poverty, appalling housing conditions, poverty of ambition and achievement, particularly in Grimsby. It`s time now to get on with Labour`s historic task. Time to get an unprecedented third term. Time to win, not for ourselves, but for the people. |
