It’s Time for Change

By Stace Williams / @stackee

If this were an episode of Sesame Street, today would be brought to you by the letters ‘C’ and ‘P’ and the number ‘9’.

9 – or 9% – represents the number of MPs currently in the House of Commons from a working class background.

Shocking, isn’t it? And, I suspect, if you were to change the parameters to those under 45, this number would be sliced in half.

And so it’s time to Change (that’s ‘C’, by the way).

We – as a country, but most definitely as a party – need a fundamental shift not only in how we address communities, but in who we choose to do so.

Why do we look to the Laurie Pennys and Owen Jones’ for leadership and opinion validation? I am not for one second suggesting their opinions are worth any less, but the harsh reality is – and this is where the ‘P’ comes in – is that politics is about perception.

If you’re sitting at home on your much-maligned estate, and see a relatively well-off, well-educated, middle class person championed by a political party as the future, it doesn’t fill you with hope or faith, it just re-affirms everything you ever thought about life to be true.

Do these kids dream of writing books on class divides, or writing articles for middle-class papers full of synthetic activist anger? No, of course they don’t.

They dream higher, they dream bigger – athletes, business owners, even Prime Minister. What they need to see – and what we should be showing them – are these people. Those who grew up where they did, who suffered the same problems they did but, somehow? They broke the cycle.

Labour have been responsible for many, many policies that helped them achieve this – yet we’re allowing ourselves to allow those who have never benefited from any of this help to say how great they are.

We should be championing the Wes Streetings and the Luke Boziers of our party; not lambasting them for wanting to help explain government policy on tuition fees to help get more kids from deprived areas into university, or for backing Tory policies that would benefit business owners and self-starters over other measures. This doesn’t make them Conservative, it makes them practical – we may not agree with everything they say, but they should be listened to.

They know what does and doesn’t strike a chord in the hardest hit communities because they grew up a part of them; they know what it’s like to see the government say one thing but experience another; they know how people think and what people feel when things go wrong – or even go right.

These are the guys I connect with and respect, if not always agree with.

You’ll find the majority of people aren’t interested in internal party politics, or wonkishness concerning stats and records; what they care about – what they know – is no matter who has been in power over the last few decades, things haven’t changed for them. It’s as if everyone promises them the earth, but the deeds never arrive.

It’s time we, as a party of the working class, started to reflect that – in our actions, in our policies and, most importantly, in our representatives.

The Tories were right – it’s Time for Change.