Now’s the time for leadership

By James Valentine

In my constituency, we’re a week away from the GC meeting which will be an opportunity to brief our conference delegates before they travel to Liverpool. The question is, what do we brief them about?

There are no substantive NPF policy documents to vote on, because policy documents haven’t been written or discussed. The NPF process has, as far as I can see, stalled. There could be emergency/contemporary resolutions for discussion but I haven’t heard of many yet.

A key event at conference will be a debate on the Refounding Labour document. But apparently even NEC members will not see detailed proposals until September 15th at the earliest, so it seems unlikely that we can see it before our meeting. And for most other CLPs it’s certainly too late.

Those of us that go to conference will, as ever, queue up on the Tuesday afternoon literally with fingers and toes crossed, hoping that the leader’s speech will go well. And I have no doubt, based on last year’s bravura performance, that it will. There is nothing to compare with the euphoria in the conference hall after a good leader’s speech – partly driven, one must say, by a feeling of relief.

But what of those – the vast majority – who don’t attend? They could be left feeling let down, disenfranchised, powerless – exactly the problems which the consultation exercise was supposed to be addressing in the first place.

When our delegates return they usually address the constituency party again and feed back their experiences. Conference can be a lot of fun and our hard-working delegates will have a productive time, but this doesn’t help those who can’t go to conference themselves, yet wish to contribute their ideas.

Leadership means not just talking about participation, but making it work. Debates are always healthy and the upcoming publication of an interesting set of essays is a manifestation of this. But party and public alike now expect a clear line.

Blair/Brown have been criticised endlessly and of course there was some notorious infighting, of which Darling’s memoir is another reminder. But what they understood was that once you agree a line – and much of the time we did – you repeat it time and again so that people get the message. At the moment, even with the economy wobbling and the government carrying out one U-turn after another, the Labour line is mostly vague.

There are exceptions. For example Yvette Cooper has published detailed pieces about elected police commissioners and the further danger of postponing this flawed policy until November. Excellent stuff, but as Mark pointed out in last Wednesday’s PMQ review this issue is not the highest public concern.

The economy, jobs, the banks and the health service are key. We need a strong, consistent, campaigning line on all of these, which needs to involve every parliamentarian, every councillor, every constituency party. Surely we can pluck up courage to push against an open door.

If the leadership can’t at this point resolve a clear line on these fundamental issues for British politics, then we’ve got a problem. As I said, Ed’s speech will undoubtedly blow us all out of the water, but it also needs to signify the end of navel-gazing and the start of real opposition.