Labour members – keep your heads up, and your eyes on the real foe

While Labour is totally taken up with the leadership contest, the Tories are pressing on with what they do best. Support for the disabled cut. Help for low-earning families slashed back. Public assets and investments paid for by generations of British taxpayers sold off. Young people who are out of work disparaged and sneered at. Pre-election promises from rail electrification to affordable homes broken.

They are celebrating an opposition turned inwards, and gleefully lining up political traps for the new Labour leader in the autumn.

But Labour MPs shouldn’t be cowed or fooled by this Tory triumphalism. This is a government with a weak mandate, divided amongst itself and making many wrong decisions. They will face tough problems over the next five years. So whoever becomes leader on September 12^th there’ll be big opportunities – if they’re willing to take them. What’s needed is hard-headed optimism.

The Tories’ small majority is no basis for permanent rule and while there’s a mountain to climb for us to get back in with a majority – one we absolutely must scale – it won’t take much for a good Labour opposition to unseat them.

Just a 1% swing from the Tories to us – winning or winning back seats in places like Derby, Plymouth and Telford in 2020 – would deprive them of 10 seats and their Parliamentary majority.

Labour will do this with clear, credible opposition which must expose not just what Tory ministers are doing but why, and who benefits, and must fill out arguments for our alternative.

On the economy, the scale of the spending cuts to come means the impact on services and support will become increasingly stark while there are big give-ways to the well-off in tax cuts. We win people over by convincing them these spending decisions are a political choice not an economic necessity. And by earning the credibility to set out our plan for the real work that needs to be done on investment, exports, good jobs and regionally balanced growth.

On Europe, the Tories’ biggest problem is not internal division – the country itself is split on the EU – but that Cameron has promised big reforms he just can’t secure. So there will be Tory MPs lining up alongside us to say that Cameron’s renegotiation has failed and he’s left Britain without the influence we should have in the world.

On benefits and tax credits, the Tories have over-reached with these punishing cuts. It’s working households, as well as disabled people, that are going to be some of the hardest hit and Conservative MPs are already adding to the concerns others are voicing.

On education, school failures and serious funding pressures, particularly 16-18 education, will become more pronounced, while the government is cutting back support for low-income university students and ready to let fees rise. These are the hallmarks of a government stifling opportunity and hampering aspiration, and we must make sure the public know it.

So when we as Labour MPs emerge from this Leadership election in three weeks’ time, we must put present foreboding to one side and knuckle down to the tough task of opposition. There’s everything to fight for.

John Healey is the MP for Wentworth and Dearne