The cost of opposition

By Luke Bozier / @lukebozier

There is a price for being the party of perpetual opposition. Many may find it comforting being on the opposite benches, but there is a cost to the complacency.

The cost is felt by families and schools and businesses across all over the country. While we sit around playing with our blank sheet of paper, and trying, as clever as we think we are, to ‘shift the frame’ of British politics to the left, the people we claim to represent are paying the price.

Schools aren’t being rebuilt, jobs aren’t being created and the Tories are leading the debate on every topic relevant to politics. They’re finishing off the job we started on public service reform, albeit in their own way; if it goes right they’ll take credit for some of New Labour’s flagship policies.

While the Coalition chooses how it wants to reform the NHS and the school system, we have no influence on the process. We aren’t able to target academy and free school openings in a way which will help people who really need them. The Government is charging ahead on welfare reform; an area which we shamefully neglected – while we sit on the sidelines and snipe about cuts.

New houses aren’t being built. David Cameron is leading the world on a liberal interventionist policy which one of our leaders started. The deficit is being cut faster than Darling’s more gentle plan would have provided for.

All of this happens, and we sit around playing games. Ed Balls woke up yesterday singing about fiscal responsibility. An important first step – but who would really believe that is little more than a shallow tactic? Ed Miliband’s intervention on tuition fees on Saturday was a ploy to get good headlines and a bounce among the English middle class; most people will see through that.

We have no vision as a party. No compelling narrative. Nothing to take to the country in return for a mandate. Our leader is seen by 7/10 people in the UK as being ‘unfit for government’, and only 4% of people think he’d be good in a crisis. No big vision, no compelling narrative, and a leader less popular than Gordon Brown.

The mood at Conference this week doesn’t seem to mind this status quo very much at all. Almost every politician I’ve heard speak, either on stage or at side events, seems perfectly satisfied with the direction of travel. Ed is the glorious leader, and our shadow chancellor is the most economically literate man in Britain. If we just highlight the cuts a bit more, and a bit harder, we’ll be fine.

The costs of opposition are adding up – not in lost ministerial jobs or fewer parliamentary seats, but on the backs of normal, hard working people.

The periods over the last century when Labour has been in power are like punctuation marks in a paragraph. We seem to take to opposition so naturally. It needn’t be this way. I simply can’t understand why we must have such a big soul-searching exercise every time we lose power; an exercise which no matter how many times we do it, never results in success.

We know how to win as the Labour Party, but we find it more comforting to take the old habit of glorious left-wing opposition (albeit updated for the modern age). As long as that continues, Labour governments will always be punctuation marks, and the price will be paid by people we seek to help the most.