There should be a new leader in place by conference

This week saw the first Parliamentary Labour Party meeting of the new Parliament. It is a bitter sweet time – as we welcome new colleagues and also share sadness and disappointment at those friends and colleagues who will not be returning. Much media focus has been on the loss of Douglas Alexander and Ed Balls, but other outstanding MPs like Anas Sarwar, Jim Sheridan, Margaret Curran and Dame Anne Begg also lost their seats and will be sorely missed.

Labour lost the election. It is true we are down, but we are not out. Our party has a resilience that has withstood tough times before. We will be back. However the choices we make now will be critical to the speed of our comeback and rebuilding our confidence.
The leadership campaign is going to be an opportunity to debate the Labour Party’s purpose, how we differentiate ourselves and how we fight back. There is going to be much soul searching of the things we could have done differently to win. The election results brought tough news in Scotland but also in England and Wales. On a visit to Southampton I saw personally how the scaremongering about the potential of the SNP forming a coalition with Labour did have an impact in the south of England, and our answer to this challenge was not strong enough. We also know that the Labour support that went to SNP this time will need a strong reason to come back.

The constitutional questions that this election has raised need renewed focus and cannot be ducked. For Labour this will have to include the Scottish question, the English question, and clarity on the EU Referendum. We have a big differentiator here at least. That we are pro-European but also pro-reform. That we recognise that for our economic progress we are vastly better off being in Europe. We have the opportunity to show the political leadership on this issue that Britain and British business needs, and we need to start preparing for this now.

And on other big challenges, we need to continue the fight that we led so well in the General Election campaign. On the NHS, on living standards, on opportunities for young people. These messages were necessary but not sufficient for us to win. Middle England did want to hear more. About investment and growth, about supporting hard work, ambition and aspiration. We had many of the policies, but an incomplete narrative and a gap in our campaign.

It is true we have lessons we need to learn, but it is also true that we need a proper and outward facing assessment of modern trends and challenges and the deeper causes behind how people voted and why. There isn’t just one answer, and whilst we know we need to see a stronger move to the centre-ground, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

We also need to avoid becoming over inwardly focussed. After the 2010 election, we stepped back and looked inwards. The party leadership campaigns absorbed the strongest talent and we lost a focus on our work in Westminster. In five months the Tories had written their narrative on Labour’s economic record. Their message cut through, and we have never fully recovered. We still have work to do to argue back on this alongside leading the story on the growth agenda of the future.

Despite this huge set back, we also need to stand tall in parliament. We are the second party and the official opposition. A huge responsibility rests on our shoulders to watch closely and scrutinise every move of the new Tory administration. And also ensure that we remain not just the official opposition but the effective opposition. Nicola Sturgeon will play for the SNP to be the effective opposition. We cannot afford for the SNP to dominate on the opposition benches.

That’s why over the next few months we need a dual plan. The first being our work in Parliament – the second being a time bound leadership and deputy leadership debate that relatively quickly puts in place the top team we need to lead our next journey. Whilst some are arguing for a long leadership campaign which may even go beyond conference I believe that would be a misjudgement for two reasons. Firstly we will repeat the vacuum that was created in 2010 which allowed the Tories to take the advantage on narrative. Secondly we need the new leader to be themselves to be taking the lead as we build a shared consensus of the problem and how we move forward. That’s why I hope we will make a decision as a party to have our new Leader and Deputy Leader announced and in place in September before Conference, so that our Annual Conference is focussed on Labour’s purpose and our plan, generating the outward facing conversation we are going to need to succeed in 2020.