Tree of Knowledge

THIS is an interesting op-ed.

In the context of Labour’s tanking electoral support and growing voices for a leadership change, an op-ed from one of the people who is frequently bandied about as a potential leadership replacement about how to revive the party was always going to cause a stir.

Miliband does a good job of articulating the message Labour needs to communicate to the electorate:

The starting point is not debating personalities but winning the argument about our record, our vision for the future and how we achieve it…..

Every member of the Labour party carries with them a simple guiding mission on the membership card: to put power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few. When debating public service reform, tax policies or constitutional changes, we apply those values to the latest challenges.

But 10 years of rising prosperity, a health service brought back from the brink, and social norms around women’s and minority rights transformed, have not come about by accident.

Miliband then zeros in on what should be the number one strategic priority for Labour over the coming two years: paring David Cameron away from the conservative majority of his party:

Now what are they offering? The Tories say society is broken. By what measure? Rising crime? No, crime has fallen more in the past 10 years than at any time in the past century. Knife crime and gun crime are serious problems. But since targeting the spike in gun crime, it has been cut by 13% in a year, and we have to do the same with knife crime.

What about the social breakdown that causes crime? More single parents dependent on the state? No, employment has risen sharply for lone parents because the state has funded childcare and made work pay. Falling school standards? No, they are rising. More asylum seekers? No, we said we would reform the system and slash the numbers, and we did.

The Tories overclaim for what they are against because they don’t know what they are for. I disagreed with Margaret Thatcher, but at least it was clear what she stood for. She sat uncomfortably within the Tory party because she was a radical, not a conservative. She wanted change and was prepared to take unpopular decisions to achieve it.

The problem with David Cameron is the reverse. His problem is he is a conservative, not a radical. He doesn’t share a restlessness for change. He may be likable and sometimes hard to disagree with, but he is empty. He is a politician of the status quo — even a status quo he consistently voted against — not change.

What is on Cameron’s party card? What is his vision for Britain? He doesn’t have one. His project is “decontaminating the Tory party”, not changing the country.

Do check out the whole article for yourself. There’s more sense in it than has come out of the Brown government in the past 12 months.

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