We need to sell something the public want to buy

By James Court / @JamesRCourt

“I will make Labour the party of enterprise and also the party of small business”. Of all the messages given in our new leader’s speech on Tuesday, that was the one that struck me as the most impressive, even more so than his comments on Iraq. We did not lose the last election because of Iraq – we lost it because we no longer understood a huge section of the population.

Small businesses are the bedrock of a country’s economy, and even more so coming out of a recession. SMEs make up over 50% of all private sector jobs, and there are 4.8 million small and medium sized companies in the UK. If in the coming year these companies grow, and half of those companies take on a new person, that’s 2.4 million jobs.

Yet the Labour Party has forgotten the vital role these companies play. We seem to either not understand or not appreciate both the employers and employees of SMEs.

Much was made of the ‘Mondeo Man’ of 1997, yet as anyone who has held a canvass sheet in the last few years know we are still clinging to the ever-decreasing high water mark of support from that election.

For many, we are seen as the party of the disadvantaged. While I am proud of the values I share, and the work this party does, fighting for the rights of the few, I refuse to be defined only by that.

The change from Kinnock to Blair made the party electable again, and while “I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old” is great oratory, and still has the ability to make your hair stand on end, it alienates millions of people who work hard and want to know what the Labour Party offers them.

This party was not founded on relying on the unemployed and public sector, but by the unions of hard working people, doing incredible work in unimaginably tough places. When did we lose sight of helping these hard working people?

While many of the factories, mines and docks are now gone, the sales and the service sector have replaced them – and we should never turn our noses at people who work long hours to eke out a living. They are, and always should be, the people that our party reaches out to.

The salesman in his company car. The small employer paying a handful of staff. The shop worker. We cannot forget that these people, and millions of others, also put in a hard day’s work. We need to think about what we can do to make their lives better, in the way that tax credits and nursery places helped many working families.

The coming years are going to be tough, tough on everyone. The Labour Party is going to have to fight even harder to ensure that millions of people are not written off by the coalition government. But we need to pick our battles. While we should be appalled by the emergency budget and the upcoming spending review, if all the voters can hear is us carping about reduced benefits and public sector jobs we risk being out of power for much longer.

We cannot rely on the better angels in voter’s minds to ensure they put a cross next to Labour – in the same way they are now salesman, we also have to be selling something they want to buy.