A long slog, especially for new MPs

By Lisa Nandy MP

The last week in parliament before the summer recess brought mixed feelings. The rush to push the academies bill through the commons continued to cause a storm, though many MPs were demob happy at the prospect of having a bit of time off. It’s been quite a long slog, especially for new MPs, who have had to find the stamina for the selection process, the election campaign, and then a bewildering and busy first term.

The confusion over “Building Schools for the Future” continues. In Wigan we are still waiting to hear why our projects, which had reached financial close, have been cancelled. On Wednesday an unrepentant Michael Gove told the Education Select Committee (of which I am a member) that he thought the decision to cancel projects on a purely financial basis was fair and seemed not to accept that the individual decisions, from the outside at least, still seem arbitrary and potentially discriminatory. The only slightly cheering thing was the sight of Mr Gove being pursued around London by the Daily Mirror chicken, who is challenging him to fulfill his promise to go to Sandwell and apologise to the children who will not now have the new school they were promised. I hope the chicken will have more success than we have in the house.

It feels like the defiance on show from the education secretary is being replicated across government. I watched a clearly irritated Nick Clegg being repeatedly skewered at a raucous Deputy Prime Minister’s Question Time on Tuesday – inevitable after his disastrous performance at last week’s PMQs. My fear is that as this right wing coalition pursues its aggressive and ideological agenda and the Liberal Democrats get further into the mire, they, like their Tory counterparts, will become increasingly defiant and irrational. The challenge for Labour is to ensure that we fight them hard, but fairly. An ideological battle reminiscent of the 1980s, where nobody seemed to speak up for the majority, would be a disaster.

Many of the commentators, and particularly those in the right wing press, seem to think the best way to avoid this is to opt for David Miliband as party leader, who they argue is less left wing than his brother. As someone who is proud to be on the left of the Labour Party I find this attempt to characterise Ed Miliband as a ‘dangerous leftie’ quite bizarre. It simply cannot be the case that a candidate who argues for more house building, fairer treatment of immigrant children and a restored sense of pride in our relationship with the union movement is likely to lose us support amongst the wider public. In Wigan during the election people looked to us for leadership on better living standards for people on low incomes, more housing and a sense of fair play. I suspect in this first test of grassroots opinion since the deputy leadership contest the Labour Party membership will prove that they also think those things are the key to our future success, not a liability.