Have we forgotten the importance of our people?

By Darren Jones / @darrenpjones

This leadership contest has given us the opportunity to reflect, debate and assess our defeat and our future as a party, providing a timely opportunity to iron out any creases from being in Government for thirteen years. But whilst we’ve had policy debates I’m left with a lacklustre feeling on the debate on how we regenerate our party to become, in the eyes of the electorate, a party of Government once again. I’ve recently wondered if our leadership contest has highlighted a deeper, more intrinsic problem within our party. A problem at the root of our very establishment that may, if true, cause us more severe problems than we can gauge by purely the extent of our electoral defeat alone.

The media have openly criticised the “white-middle aged-oxbridge-special advisor” nature of our leadership candidates (minus Diane Abbott, of course) and I wonder if they have something more than just a newspaper headline.

I’m a few years off having been involved in the Labour Party for a decade and I, like many of us, have been active on the doorstep, in the plethora of meetings, in student politics and more recently in local and national elections as a candidate. I’ve learnt a great deal, I’ve been inspired by many and I continue to be passionate about our party and the progressive future that we all campaign for.

But I’ve witnessed things I don’t like too – a lack of grassroots engagement, the decrease in power on policy via conference and constituencies, elements of central control and a potential clique party elite – and it makes me wonder if the party of the people is in fact disconnected from the people, disconnected from the communities we strive to represent and disconnected from the people that really matter in our party – those hard working members who ask for nothing in return but who work hard every time we need them to.

I’ve seen parachuted candidates, career politicians working constituencies with ulterior motives because of their desire to become an MP for MP sake and with the support from senior figures in our party based on prior established relationships. Geographically too, we have become London centrists, at times forgetting that we are a party of government, of Britain – not a party of traditional strong holds – and when a leadership contest neglects to even consider the South West, where I come from, until they are lobbied to do so, we know we have a problem on our hands.

I should add a quick disclaimer – I know MPs who were ‘parachuted’ in to their seats and who have been fantastically hard working representatives for their communities and this discussion isn’t a criticism of our leadership contenders; we are where we are and I’m sure that our next leader will do a great job but I implore the leadership candidates to consider these arguments, for I fear that it is the elephant in the Labour Party room, an elephant that may keep us in opposition longer than we want to be.

Is it a naive dream to want to see active policy discussion in our CLP meetings and actually see our input translate into national policy? Is it a naive dream to want to see candidates selected based on their real local stories, their genuine concerns and histories within their communities and not their manipulation of winnable seats, or senior party position, in order to create a sense of entitlement in order to fulfil a selfish dream? Imagine if our leadership candidates had a story like Foot or Bevan – wouldn’t that be exciting? One of the reasons for our defeat was because many of our supporters felt neglected by our party and felt unable to make a difference – how are we to win elections if our supporters and voters can’t connect with us as representatives, as leaders, as comrades?

This argument is not from the viewpoint of a traditional ‘left winger’ either for I am a product of the New Labour project, whose brand may be tarnished but whose values are still crucial to our future, both electorally and in our policy. We must remain a broad church and work to prevent the coalition from using the progressive message, as they did in the budget; how we can let them wave the flag of modern progressivism I just don’t understand. To do this we must re-establish the importance of localism, we must select candidates who are authentic and leave careerists at the door and we must be true to our founding principles to ensure that we are indeed the party of the people.

I can only really remember a Labour government and I can’t stand to see us nearly powerless in opposition but I pray that we utilise one of the few positives of being the opposition by using the extra time we now have to debate and solve these problems. We need to reconnect, we need to re-energise and we need to rebuild our bases right across the country – these are not the sound bites of a leadership contender but words with real meaning – if we do not we will remain in opposition and we will fail to recreate an exciting, member engaged party of our progressive tomorrow.