We know what real change is – and looking back and forward, only Labour has the answers

The Labour movement column

By Anthony Painter /@anthonypainter

David Cameron says that we need ‘real change.’ He is absolutely right. Having spent much of 2008 following, writing about, and experiencing a campaign for change, I’d like to think that I have a good sense of what change feels, smells, and tastes like. There was the candidate. He was different. There was the kinetic energy that moved millions. My first taste of the campaign was in a sports hall in Virginia. The people swaying and chanting in that basketball hall – 20,000 of them – seemed different. They felt like America but a new America. And when the big challenges came – in the form of an economic meltdown – the candidate, Barack Obama, responded with calmness and intelligence.

His opponent, John McCain, was flailing and getting bigger and bigger calls wrong. There was the ghastly and bizarre decision to put an inexperienced – and slightly barmy – running mate on his ticket. Sarah Palin was to cost him dear: ‘out of her depth’ didn’t begin to cover it. And then there was the equally peculiar response to the financial collapse a couple of weeks later. McCain lost debate after debate and had little to say by the campaign’s conclusion. He represented a status quo that had run out of ideas and had been left without answers.

And this simplistic framing of change versus the status quo is exactly the narrative that the Conservatives will seek to encourage. There are just two problems with this: David Cameron is no Barack Obama; and Labour is not the Republicans.

Quite simply, David Cameron’s Conservatives do not feel like an affirmation of a new Britain, fizzing with new ideas, and promising better path to justice. It’s sprinkled with a coating of Reaganite sugar and the language of hope and optimism, but feels mostly empty.

Barack Obama has demonstrated what real change means. Just look at the healthcare package he’s managed to get through expanding coverage to tens of millions of Americans. What is David Cameron’s equivalent of healthcare reform? Where’s the determination to not only shepherd the economy to recovery but also invest in the future? What really changes about the way we do politics with David Cameron at the helm? The answer is very little, apart from the addition of another portrait on the stairs at No.10 Downing Street. That’s not the change that Britain needs. And we haven’t even begun to talk about the risk to economic recovery should the Tories be in a position to put their repeated misjudgements on economic policy into practice.

‘The great ignored’ – Cameron’s latest hackneyed attempt at crafting a rhetoric for the election – sounds like a Delphic character from a fantasy blockbuster. But no, alas, it’s the latest manifestation of Richard Nixon’s ‘silent majority.’ It’s the oldest trick in the Conservative playbook. Remember, are you thinking what we’re thinking? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, vote Tory. Change? Don’t believe a word of it. It’s the same old tactics in a new setting.

And yet, Gordon Brown and Labour do offer change – the type of real change that David Cameron claims but fails to deliver. In the US election, the Republicans had no answer to the big challenges of the time – the economy, healthcare, rebuilding US in the world, and tackling climate change. But if you look at the big challenges that the UK faces, Labour does have something new and well thought out to say. It has a vision of an economy built on long-term investment in innovation, infrastructure, science, and skills; of public services where users have service guarantees; of a new politics with a new voting system and an elected House of Lords; and climate change policy that finally, and decisively, moves the UK towards a low carbon economy. Real change? You bet.

Then there’s the record. This government has not simply sought to make political capital out of social problems as the Tories have done with frightfully inaccurate ‘Broken Britain’ narrative. Labour has tackled crime and anti-social behaviour, with some success. It has not merely claimed to be concerned about unfairness and inequality. It has acted to remove 100,000s of pensioners and children out of poverty, introduced the minimum wage, and used tax credits to bolster the incomes of the least well paid. It has not just wistfully hoped that public services improve. It has invested to ensure this was the case. The result? More educational success, lower crime, and better and quicker treatment on the NHS. Whatever criticisms there are, this action constitutes real change. Can you imagine that any of this would have happened under a Conservative government?

Not everything has been right. Youth unemployment remains worryingly high, though much has been tried to reduce it, some communities still face an ongoing struggle, the balance between security and liberty has been difficult to get right, and many feel that the government has needed to show some more confidence in front-line professionals. This has to be taken on the chin and changed.

But Labour has a record to defend – a record that, on balance, has been positive. It also has to present a vision for the future. It has changed Britain in a way that would never have happened under the Tories and offers a real, substantive vision of change for the future. Looking back and looking forward, Labour is the change-maker.

So I agree wholeheartedly with David Cameron. This election is about ‘real change.’ We know what ‘real change’ is. It’s just that it’s not David Cameron and the Tories. It’s Labour. We have seen change for the better. We can see that Labour’s vision provides more answers for the next phase of our national story. Labour is real change. Real change we can believe in? You betcha – let’s go to it.

Anthony Painter is author of Barack Obama: A Movement for Change.