Why Vote Labour: An extract

With just 32 weeks until Polling Day, this week marks the release of Why Vote Labour 2015. It is the latest in a historic series of books published before each General Election over the past half-century. Past authors have included Roy Jenkins, Neil Kinnock and Rachel Reeves, who wrote the previous instalment in 2010.

This year’s edition, edited by Shadow Justice Minister Dan Jarvis, brings together contributions from more than 60 shadow ministers, independent experts, parliamentary candidates and party supporters to make the case for Labour.

Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Jon Cruddas and Harriet Harman have each written for the book, which includes chapters authored by Andrew Adonis, Douglas Alexander, Bex Bailey, Polly Billington and David Hanson, Stella Creasy, Sir Steve Houghton, Liz Kendall, Lucy Powell, Steve Reed, Rachel Reeves and Chuka Umunna.

In an exclusive extract from the introduction, Dan sets some of the book’s big themes, why he chose Labour and the trust challenge the party will need to overcome next year.

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Why Vote Labour is a book about the future. It is about the future we choose for our country, about how Britain makes its way in the modern world, and the society we aspire to be in years to come.

At its heart is a simple premise: our country is on the wrong path and in desperate need of change.

There is so much that is right with Britain today. We have been through tough times over the past few years, but we are still a nation with a proud history and what should be a bright future. I find more reasons to believe that every week in my work as a shadow minister and a Member of Parliament.

I meet remarkable young people with big dreams, talented entrepreneurs with fresh ideas, dedicated public servants working in world-class institutions like our National Health Service, and tolerant communities full of good neighbours looking out for one another.

My concern, however, is that they are all being let down by a government that is drifting at best and taking our country backwards at worst. You only have to look at what we have had to endure since

David Cameron took office in 2010. Millions of families worse off and struggling to make ends meet, child poverty rising, and a National Health Service pushed to breaking point.

As the general election draws near, I fear what Britain might look like after another five years of a Tory government looking to the past and complacently insisting we can carry on as we are when we should be working for success and building for the future.

This book argues that Britain can do better. Our country deserves better and, with the right leadership, we will do better. Britain needs a Labour government.

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I am under no illusions in editing this book about the reality of our political landscape. I’ve knocked on enough doors in recent years to know that the key decision many people make on polling day won’t be whether they vote Labour, Conservative or for any other political party. It will be whether they vote at all.

We face big, difficult national challenges, but the greatest obstacle we face is the increasingly widespread belief that our problems have outgrown our politics. Many people have completely lost faith in the idea that politics of any colour can make a positive difference to their lives.

The natural and fashionable temptation is to blame this loss of trust on sorry episodes like the parliamentary expenses scandal. This certainly caused a lot of damage. I should know – I was elected to replace an MP who was sent to prison for expenses fraud. I’ve seen the impact the scandal had on my community and felt how long it takes before trust begins to come back.

My personal feeling though is that this disenchantment goes much deeper. Many of the most disillusioned people I speak to have been shaken by global forces beyond their control. Too many feel cut-off by an economy that simply doesn’t work for them, left behind from the rest of society and powerless to change their own lives.

Repairing these broken bonds of trust and restoring people’s confidence in the power of the ballot box to change their lives will be the biggest challenge for my political generation. It is a task that asks big questions of our politics. It requires honesty and humility too.

This should start with the basic admission that politicians can’t solve all our problems alone. We need to work to solve them together. My firm belief in this is rooted in the life I had before I came into politics.

I served for fifteen years in the British Army before I was elected as the Labour MP for Barnsley Central in 2011. Some people still ask me how a major in the Parachute Regiment could possibly be a Labour supporter. The answer is that my service didn’t conflict with my Labour values – it reinforced them.

I grew up in a home where both my parents went out to work every day to serve the public. My dad was a college lecturer, while my mum worked with offenders as a probation officer. The importance of community and the pride that comes from service were lessons that they and my wider family instilled in me from an early age. It was that belief in the value of service that took me into the armed forces and kept me there during some tough times.

I was commissioned from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1997, three months after Labour returned to government following a generation out of office. It was during another general election in 2005, as I listened to the results coming in over the radio from a bunk bed in the UK’s military headquarters in Kabul, that I first began to think that life after the army could maybe include serving the public in a different way.

A by-election and several years later, my politics is driven by two things I learned during my time in the army.

The first is the potential of the individual – how people can overcome incredible odds and scale incredible heights. My service in the armed forces took me to Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. It put me in difficult situations and tested me to my limit. Coming out the other side showed me that we can all achieve exceptional things when we have the right training, mentoring and support around us to help fulfil our potential.

The second is the value of the team. The most important thing to understand about the army is how close-knit a community it is. Your regiment or battalion brings together people from all backgrounds and with all manner of different beliefs. You live together, train together and, ultimately, you have to be ready to fight together. That relationship develops deep bonds of trust. You become accustomed to relying on others. You stick together. You do your bit, knowing that others will do theirs.

That is why I have always believed in the basic principle that we achieve more through shared endeavour than we can alone, and that we should work together to get difficult things done.

That essential spirit is why the Labour Party is my party. Much like the army in many ways, our party has a strong history and traditions, and has always been ready to respond to meet the challenge of changing times.

Labour has always been at its best when we have put our party at the service of the nation, reaching out to every class and community, bringing the country together, and creating a politics where everyone has a stake, plays a part and feels empowered.

Those are the values of Ed Miliband’s Labour Party and the themes running through this book. It sets out a Labour vision for how Britain can succeed in a complex, competitive and changing world, and ideas for how we can build a society that makes the most of our talents and delivers equal opportunity for all, regardless of who you are or where you come from.

It is not a story I could possibly hope to tell on my own. That is why this book is also a shared effort, bringing together insights from shadow ministers, MPs, councillors, parliamentary candidates, trade unionists and other Labour supporters. It showcases the great team that Labour has ready for government in 2015 and our case is all the stronger for it.

What we have to say is not, and does not pretend to be, a manifesto or an official Labour Party mission statement. Neither does it seek to cover every commitment or policy area that will be up for debate at the general election. For one, much of the discussion on public services is focused on England, as the time of writing has coincided with the referendum on the fate of the United Kingdom and an ongoing debate about the future of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

What this book does aim to do is present a Labour view on the challenges facing our country, what our priorities will be in plotting a new course for Britain in a stormy and rapidly changing world, and, ultimately, why you should place your faith and trust in us and vote Labour.

Dan Jarvis is a Shadow Justice Minister and the Member of Parliament for Barnsley Central. This is an excerpt from ‘Why Vote Labour’, which is published this week by Biteback Publishing. LabourList readers can purchase a copy at a reduced price by quoting LABOURLIST at: https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/promotions