Why I’m backing David Miliband for leader

The Paul Richards column

Some years ago David Miliband wrote in a book called Re-inventing the Left that:

“politics in the advanced capitalist world has rarely been held in lower esteem. Whether measured by opinion polls or by the rise of protest parties, the formal institutions of politics, and the politicians who populate them, are held in low regard. At best, they seem as impotent in the face of economic complexity and social change; at worst, they are part of a conspiracy to defraud the general public.”

That was in 1994, the year that Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party. After the landslide in 1997, New Labour attempted to answer the challenge as described. It tried to make markets work to create the wealth that could then be shared by all through improved public services and enhanced public spaces. It introduced measures such as the national minimum wage. It reformed the constitution, to bring power closer to the people. Health and education got better. Crime went down, employment went up. It was a successful period of office, buttressed by a popular manifesto authored by David Miliband.

But today, in 2010, the problems of the collapse of trust in politics is, if anything, worse than it was in 1994. The expenses scandal meant that the people really did believe that politicians were ‘part of a conspiracy to defraud the general public.’ The Conservative Government, and its ‘useful idiots’ the Liberal Democrats, are dismantling much of the New Labour legacy. The budget shows that Cameron’s end-point is the same as Thatcher’s: rolling back the frontiers of the state, until it is smaller. Those years he spent in the 80s in the cauldron of Thatcherism, the Conservative Research Department, were not wasted.

The responsibility falls on the Labour Party once again to provide an alternative to Conservatism, but more than that, to articulate an alternative view of society which is attractive, compelling and capable of winning a new coalition of support.

The choices we make in the coming months will either create that new coalition, or further fracture what’s left of our support following our terrible defeat earlier this year. It’s worth remembering that our share of the popular vote went down to 29%, only slightly above the debacle of 1983. Nearly a million people who voted Labour in 2005 did not vote Labour in 2010. In 2005, Labour was 18 per cent ahead of the Tories amongst 25-34 year-olds. At this election, Labour was five per cent behind.

Seventy per cent of the 938,000 votes Labour lost were in the east, south east, and south west. Labour’s share of the vote in the south east (outside London) fell by a third to just 16 per cent (roughly the same as the Conservatives’ dismal share in Scotland). Labour’s share in the south west was 15 per cent and in the east of England it was 20 per cent.

If you leave London by way of the Labour constituency of Edmonton in the north of the city, and travel due north up England’s spine, the next Labour seat you come to is Grimsby, on the banks of the River Humber.

In selecting a Leader, Labour must make a choice about whether it wants to govern again, and quickly, or whether it prefers a long period of opposition. Add 10 or 15 to your age, and see whether you’d like a long period of opposition. If we aim to win next time, we must not retreat into a comfort zone. The appeal of comfort zones is their comfort. We can relax whilst our non-threatening leader speaks our language, tells us what we want to hear, plays the old soothing tunes, and comes up with some old time religion at party conference. That’s what the Tories did when they elected Hague, then IDS, then Howard as their leader. Only Cameron understood the need to challenge his own ‘nasty’ party, and colonise the centre-ground, as it turns out as a purely cosmetic, vote-winning exercise.

You don’t win elections from your comfort zone.

Today, we need a leader who grew up with the Labour movement, represents a traditional Labour seat, who understands Labour values, but who can apply those values to the modern world. David Miliband has shown throughout his time in politics that he can apply Labour’s values to contemporary challenges. As secretary to John Smith’s Social Justice Commission he helped put social justice centre-stage, and developed policies like the child trust fund. As local government secretary, he came up with ‘double devolution’ as an answer to the democratic deficit. If it hadn’t been stifled by Labour centralisers, this could have been ample answer to the Tories’ claims to be the party of devolution. As foreign secretary, he has operated at the highest levels on the world stage, in a time of war, and proved capable of taking tough decisions.

When asked who the greatest leader Labour never had was, recently on TV, David Miliband answered without pause for thought: Tony Crosland. Crosland was a Labour revisionist who placed, not abstruse economic doctrine, but socialist values at the heart of his politics, and the belief ‘until we are truly equal, we will not be truly free.’ I see something of Crosland’s commitment and passion in David Miliband.

His current campaign for the leadership is supported by people like Alan Johnson, Douglas Alexander, Liam Byrne, Jim Murphy who know him well, by new Labour MPs such as Stella Creasy, John Woodcock and Gemma Doyle, and by MPs who gained seats for Labour this year like Nick Smith and Simon Danczuk. It is also supported by thousands of party activists and trade unionists who want to see an end to this Conservative Government as fast as possible. But this is no traditional campaign: by recruiting and training one thousand community organisers, he aims to build a movement for change.

It’s easy to see this election as being about choosing the leader most likely to become a Labour prime minister in the not-too-distant future. That ability to reach out to new supporters is essential, and unique amongst the contenders, possessed by David Miliband in spades.

But the choice is about more than likability and electability. It’s about how and why we should govern, what the purpose of a Labour government is, and which values should underpin it. We are choosing the ninth Labour leader of my lifetime, and the sixth since I joined the Labour Party. No leader is perfect; all have feet of clay. We make our choice this summer with eyes wide open. I will voting for David Miliband in first place on the ballot paper, not because he tells me what I want to hear, but because he doesn’t.