‘Delivering change means sticking together, not sniping at each other’

I enjoyed party conference. Not just because it was in one of my favourite cities, Liverpool; or that I got to take part in some exciting panels, meet some great organisations and the Prime Minister’s speech hit the perfect tone.

It was a great fillip after months where the Labour Party has not been at its best. A lot has been written of government difficulties over recent months. Mistakes have very definitely been made. I get why colleagues feel that they aren’t engaged with enough or early enough. 

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Recently I learned about some work being done in my constituency by the Home Office. I learned about it in my local newspaper. It is frustrating, especially when you see comments under Facebook posts speculating and are unable to do anything about it, because you’ve been kept out of the loop.

So I get it.

Equally, being frank, it’s hard to be too critical of the government not sharing with backbench MPs.

There is a WhatsApp group for 2024 Labour MPs. I’ve joked to colleagues, once or twice, that if they want to guarantee that something makes the national newspapers – put it in the chat as if it’s confidential. Only this week, details of a post-conference briefing were tweeted out by a correspondent from the Huffington Post within minutes. 

Respect and trust go both ways.

All this may seem irrelevant; and that’s because it is. Well, at least it is to the lives of our constituents.

Their priorities are what they were last year when they voted for us. 

• A  lack of decent, affordable housing. 
• The impact of a system for providing education to those with special needs that fails children and breaks the spirits of parents. 
• Town centres that seem run-down. 
• Communities blighted by crime and anti-social behaviour. 
• Pollution, whether sewage, or fly-tipping and the despoiling of our natural environment. 
• Images of boats of unidentified people making the trip across the Channel to skip the immigration queue where they will end up, likely, involved in the black market, crime or as victims of exploitation.

What they see from MPs too often, isn’t a focus on these things. They see moaning, backbiting, sniping, leaking which all fuels the image of chaos and disunity on top of a sense that our priorities are all wrong. All of the things those of us involved in politics say we wish the media wouldn’t focus on covered because some colleagues decide to feed the beast.

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One of the major reasons that voters tired of the Conservatives last year was the constant internal fighting at a time when we all felt worse off, less safe and like public services didn’t work properly. 

The government is working on all of these things but after 15 months there is still a lot of work to go to turn these things around.  

That the government has made mistakes goes without saying. Oppositions make mistakes despite it being quite a lot easier. Governing is hard and things do go wrong.

Labour’s priorities, and those of MPs and the government, must be on delivering the change that we promised. That change needs to be much quicker and much more decisive than some of what is currently envisaged.

Everything else, is a distraction that serves our opponents and not the people who voted us into office.

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