A future fair for all: Labour launches its election campaign with massive focus on grassroots movement

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

At Labour’s pre-election campaign rally tomorrow, the Party will unveil its election slogan: “A future fair for all.”

In an interview with the Guardian, election co-ordinator Douglas Alexander, who today joined the social media site Twitter to canvass feeling within the Party at the grassroots during the election battle, told the Guardian:

“Their [the grassroots} key campaigning insight in an age of cynicism about politicians is word of mouth. The Conservatives are fighting a broadcast election in a networked age. What we are going to offer is not a one-way communication, but one-to-one communication.”

The #LabourDoorstep initiative, launched by LabourList last year, is also to become a key part of that strategy – with party insiders telling me a new online focus on the activists’ hub tag will follow.

The election campaign will be themed around a choice of two opposing versions of the change for the future. Douglas Alexander said:

“We must not allow the Tories to frame the election as a choice between status quo and change. What we want is a choice between two competing visions of the future.”

“The Conservatives have not achieved what a serious party of opposition should achieve at this point, which is to colour in that vision of what a Conservative Britain would look like. If you take change off the table and ask people what Cameron would do for your family, there is a blank.”

At tomorrow’s event, the PM and Labour’s team of ministers will meet with apprentices, nurses, Sure Start workers, anti-poverty and climate change campaigners both at the Coventry event and right across the country to kick start campaigns and “mobilise this wider movement for the future.”

Cabinet ministers will be visiting every region and nation of the UK and joining thousands of party members out on the doorstep.

Codenamed “Operation Fightback”, the ongoing organisational strategy of the Labour general election campaign will include new grassroots and online strategies to fight the election “street by street, hospital by hospital, school by school, Children’s Centre by Children’s Centre and workplace by workplace,” an internal Party email says.

Constituency Labour Parties are being sent thousands of Operation Fightback packs. These include magazines, stickers and key doorstep messages for campaigning with. In addition the Party is mailing hundreds of thousands of swing voters in the key areas over the weekend.

Voters are due to receive a magazine which lays out the choices for the election and the themes being launched on tomorrow, which are outlined below:

Securing the recovery not putting it at risk

Labour’s choice was to take action, with job-boosting measures and extra help for families on middle and modest incomes.

Thanks to our action, and to the shared efforts of the British people, repossessions in Britain have been around half the rate at which they peaked in the Tory recession of the 1990s; and the rate of job losses has been four times lower.

Today the economy is still recovering so we need to maintain our support. When growth is secured, we will halve the deficit over four years and we will do it fairly. But the Conservative plan for immediate cuts would choke off recovery – leading to a decade of low growth and austerity.

Protecting frontline services not putting them at risk

In schools, we will give every child the guarantee of a good education, from catch up tuition so that all children leave primary school secure in the 3Rs, to the right to a sixth-form, college or apprenticeship place for school leavers. In the NHS we will create legally enforceable guarantees for all patients: a maximum two-week guarantee on cancer referrals, and a maximum 18-week guarantee for hospital treatment, as well as rights to free health checks and to evening and weekend access to GPs.

And over the next five years we will focus on early cancer diagnosis, giving GPs direct access to ultrasound and MRI scans, to create a right to diagnostic tests, with results, within one week – saving up to 10,000 lives a year.

Standing up for the many, not the few

Crime and anti-social behaviour cannot be allowed to ruin people’s lives. That is why we have introduced a neighbourhood police team in every community. This is having results: crime is falling and more criminals are being caught.

Today, new technologies, from CCTV to DNA evidence, can prove controversial but they can save lives and catch the most violent offenders.

New Industries, future jobs

Labour has transformed not just the skylines of our towns and cities but their ambitions too. The challenge on the new horizon is to be at the forefront of the green revolution and future technologies that will bring jobs to Britain, cut emissions, and make it cheaper and easier for people to heat their homes.

This year’s election will be a big choice about the kind of change we want for Britain. The Conservatives threaten an age of austerity – a change you can’t afford.