My party should learn the lessons of last week’s elections and reconnect with the people it was founded to fight for
There’s no getting away from the need to learn the lessons of last Thursday’s elections. As the dust settles, it’s clear that sitting governments in Wales, Scotland and England received a boost and there are undoubtedly other significant factors at play – the vaccine bounce has helped the Tories in England, and former Brexit party voters were decisive in many of Labour’s losses.
There was good news too, though. The Welsh Labour government was handed a renewed, increased mandate. Across England, of the 13 mayoral elections, Labour won 11, including two gains in the former Tory strongholds of West of England and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
As a party, we must learn from both our challenges and successes to turn this situation around, so that people feel we speak for them again, and trust us with their votes. That is the lesson from places like Wales, where the first minister, Mark Drakeford, set out policies that will transform people’s lives – like a pay rise for care workers and a guarantee of work, education or training for all under-25s. That is the lesson from Greater Manchester, where Andy Burnham showed the difference that Labour makes in power: he connected with people and showed that he was on their side.
Politics is not about the language of parliament or party processes. We need to show those who have lost faith what we stand for that we are on their side and that we will stand up for them.
We will show the difference between Labour and the Tories when it comes to the economy. That means jobs, opportunities, pay and rights at work. This is not about tweaking a failing system, but changing it so that it works for working people. As a starting principle this means a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work and good, well-paid jobs in every community.
Over the past few decades, in large parts of the country, the jobs that you can raise a family on and that provide a sense of identity and dignity have been replaced by insecure, zero-hours and agency work that offer only poverty wages and the exploitation and mistreatment of workers to squeeze out every last penny of profit. Labour is, and always will be, the party of workers and our trade union movement. For us, the future of work will mean shifting the balance back towards working people, ending fire and rehire and building an economy out of this crisis that works for everyone, not just Tory donors or the health secretary’s pub landlord.
The recent scandals are not just about ministers’ mates. They go directly back to the bigger scandal of taxpayers’ cash wasted by outsourcing. So the difference between Labour and the Tories is also about our public services being run by the public sector – and in the public interest.
