Don’t let Labour’s faint hearts put us off a progressive pact

By James Valentine

I welcomed Gordon Brown’s statement yesterday – it was an acceptance of the inevitable and brilliantly timed. It ensures that, subject to a Lib-Lab pact, he will continue as PM through the next few difficult weeks but will give sufficient time for the party to elect its new leader democratically – a fault with Brown’s own appointment that he must now recognise.

The parliamentary arithmetic of a Lib-Lab coalition is of course challenging, depending as it does on the nationalist parties. But that doesn’t make it illegitimate. That’s more or less the implication of the Tories and their surrogates in the media – that they have an entitlement to rule. Adam Boulton’s idiotic outbursts against Alistair Campbell and Bradshaw yesterday encapsulated this. How dare you little people think that you can hang on to power, he seemed to imply.

Beware the faint hearts on our own side. One of our defeated candidates said to me yesterday that we should let the Conservatives and Lib Dems go ahead, and by October they won’t be very popular. Let them fail, he says. But what about the electors who suffer in the meantime?

Yesterday’s airwaves were notable by the presence of a very loud foghorn called John Reid. The former MP is a man of highly traditional views. I remember him blocking a smoking ban proposal on the NPF, for example, and condemning us to another year of smoky pubs. Likewise his views on voting reform – he’ll go on believing in First Past the Post, literally until the grave.

And David Blunkett is sounding off. Not content with making defeatist noises on election night itself he’s still arguing that we should snatch defeat from the jaws of victory today, though his reasoning is obscure.

A number of Scottish Labour MPs have declared that they “won’t work” with the Nats but this is the time surely to put petty feuds aside, in the national interest. If they won’t accept the Labour whip, now’s the time to say so.

I think Jon Cruddas is right to call for all sections of the party to be consulted about the negotiations taking place; we need to tread carefully and of course it may not finally work out. But we must remember what a Labour government is for.

I have a personal interest. In the school where I’m a governor, founded in 1970, classroom spaces are generally small and lack adequate air conditioning and lighting. The sports fields are unusable for part of the year and the tennis courts are crumbling. The music facilities lack specialist space and storage. There isn’t a decent sized assembly hall, and the library is too small.

By coincidence, we have this week agreed our Strategy for Change document which is the first step to a rebuild under Building Schools for the Future. The Tories, with or without Lib Dem partners, would almost certainly cut this programme.

Politicians play musical chairs, but real people and real lives are at stake.