Please find below an article that
I wrote for Guardian's Comment Is Free following Gordon Brown's campaign launch:
We need to raise our gamePolitical artisans will have appreciated the professional technique of Gordon Brown's launch and the careful crafting of the speech. Like Tony Blair's farewell speech yesterday it was modest rather than boastful about the last 10 years.
Nevertheless if we are going to win a resounding victory at the next election, we are going to have to raise our game: to inspire people once again. This has to go beyond vague promises to listen, garnished with hints of change.
People certainly want substance not celebrity, but this substance must comprise a policy programme that not only acknowledges but corrects the mistakes of the last 10 years, and that offers new policies which reflect the real world we live in, not the political bubble inhabited by residents of Downing Street.
The problem with Brown's speech is that it does not accept the current reality. Therefore it does not make the right prescriptions that would represent the radical break needed to rescue Labour's electoral fortunes and inspire our supporters.
With a few minor policy tweaks, Brown's speech came across as largely business as usual on most of the key issues of the day. He identified many of the key issues including Iraq, the NHS, housing, child poverty and the alienation felt in our communities. We all largely agree the agenda, but his policy responses barely moved us forward.
On Iraq, there is no commitment on withdrawal and while the daily bloodbath of innocent Iraqis continues, inaction is not an opportunity. The illegal 2003 invasion had little to do with liberating Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Instead, the real freedoms and benefits were destined to go to corporations like Halliburton and others that stood to gain from the privatisation of the formerly state-owned Iraqi economy. Withdrawal would mean not only ending the military occupation, but also the economic occupation, so that Iraqis can rebuild their society with our support not our dictates.
The hints at further "reform" of the NHS will alarm both patients and staff alike. We need to arrest the damage that PFI has reaped, plunging trusts into debt and causing cuts in jobs and specialist units. We need an NHS with fewer managers, fewer contractors and more power (rather than choice) to patients - with the input of the real experts: healthcare professionals.
On housing, the chancellor acknowledges the crisis in affordable housing, but said nothing about how he would resolve it - as chancellor he has acted as a block on council's managing and building up the social housing stock. The solution is to give our councils control over social housing so that they can enter into dialogue with their communities about addressing local housing needs, and set a clear target for the hundreds of thousands of homes that we need to build and refurbish over the next five years.
There was an acknowledgement of the rise in child poverty. However, even in this core economic area, Brown offered no solution about how the economy over which he has presided must now be changed and how to now meet our target of eradicating child poverty.
I have drawn together a vision for 21st century socialism, Another World is Possible, which sets out a coherent programme to address all these areas and others such as the environment, the workplace and crime. While Brown offers the market as the solution, we are offering people greater democracy and control over their own lives.
18 Comments:
Yet another brilliant and informative piece, John. Thanks a million, Comrade.
John you are a man of integrity and good judgement. Next to Brown, there isn't a choice, you are the better candidate by far. Government would be better with you leading it. How anyone can support Brown or Meacher is beyond me. My hopes and prayers continue to go with you sir.
Hi, i ordered your book, paid by paypal ages ago, still haven't received it.
hope you get on the ballot
"21st century socialism", more like circa 1982.
If people want the country to be a Marxist state run by quasi SWP types such as those who run John's campaign, why then are the Tories ahead in the polls?
If people were all so rabid hard left the SWP would be in government.
We in Labour have won three elections because we modernised and ditched a lot of stuff which was not where people were in the modern world.
We need to renew but we dont (and thank god we wont) need to go back to a past where we simply lost elections instead of winning them.
Manning the barricades and shouting ya boo is all good fun but achieves nothing.
Even good old Dennis Skinner knows that.
Labour needs to return to its roots. Working people need representation within parliament. Most working people still look to the Labour Party, which is why the socialist sects make little progress.
It's time to throw the bosses policies out, and have a party to represent working people exclusively.
We don't have a democracy if all the political parties have the same watered-down appeal to everybody policies with no substance.
I've recently joined the Labour Party as it is clear there is a chance to return Labour to its roots, and that is something worth fighting for, to have a democracy again.
Anonymous said: "we ditched a lot of stuff which was not where people were in the modern world".
Yeah? Like opposition to privatisation and profit-making from healthcare? Like a commitment to comprehensive education for all? Like tolerance and inclusivity?
The real test of a political party is not whether it wins or loses elections, or how much power it acheives, but what it does with whatever power it's got. On that measure, the new Labour project has been a disaster for the people that the Labour Party was created to serve - working class people and their families.
A Gordon Brown-led government would continue all of that - he might win elections (although I doubt that, I think many, many people have woken up from the Thatcherite dream which led them to believe that only a proto-Thatcherite Labour Party could get elected) but he wouldn't serve our people with the power he won. He'd serve the businesses who make millions from PFI, from the pharmaceutical industry, and from war and weapons.
That's nothing to be proud of, and nothing to aspire to. I'm proud of lining up behind John McDonnell because of what he stands for. That's not something that any Gordon Brown supporter can say.
Nick
Anonymous,
Currently the Tories have postioned themselves to the left of our current administration - that and the fact that the traditional labour voter now sits on his hands has resulted in our last drubbing.
No point in being elected if we are a quasi-Tory party?
Keep up the good work John, MP's are begining to realise that without the mandate of a leadership election there will have to be a general election.
Tories "postioned themselves to the left of our current administration"
What utter rubbish, where did you read that in The Guardian?
I live in a deeply Tory area in the West of England and have done all my life.
The Tories here are deeply right wing and nasty and they love Mr Cameron to bits.
These are the people who will come to power, not some 'to the left of Labour' outfit.
You have no grasp of reality mate.
No, the comrade said the Tories have "positioned themselves" to the left of where they used to be. We know they're really the same old Thatcherite bastards. But face it, when the Tories can "position themselves" so people trust them more on the NHS (!!!) than they do Labour, Labour is doing something wrong.
whats all this 'comrade' stuff?
This is not Russia circa 1918 its Britain in 2007.
All very good for a history lesson but you people gave us nothing but election defeats for a generation and as a result let the Tories blight the lives of so many of us who were growing up in the early 1980s.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown transformed the country by being IN power, as a result kids growing up after 97 had transformed schools and people (my parents included) had better support than they ever had before.
But what about the negative aspects anon? They certaintly haven't gone any distance in addressing inequality.
In his closing speech, Blair said: 'look back to 97, and see how much better people are today'.
I'm certaintly not better off, and i suspect others on low incomes are in the same position - if you're middle-class (in income terms) or higher then i'm sure they may have noticed the difference - cutting the lowest tax rate (while cutting tax for people on the higher tax grading, student fees and top up fees, NHS budgets etc all affect people on the lowest of incomes and they just haven't done enough to help. Also, the minimum wage is just not good enough - with house prices soring which means rent soring too, £5.35 for over 21s is just measly, and how are people supposed to provide for themselves in retirement? if we actually get to retire!
Jon
For Anonymous from the BBC :-
On the policy front, he [Brown] has attempted to out-bid David Cameron on a couple of the big issues the Tory leader is attempting to take ownership of.
Specifically, Mr Cameron has been pushing the environment and green issues and, more recently, claimed tackling the housing crisis would be one of his priorities.
So Mr Brown is attempting to pip him to the post by announcing proposals to create five new eco-towns across Britain, killing two birds with one stone as it were.
Comrade? Anonymous you are clearly not a member of the labour party!
How about using the five Buxton Coefficients of Unemployment locally so that people do not have to migrate to find work? This policy of full employment would also reduce the North/South divide and minimise poverty.
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