‘Hold on to this feeling: Change is a journey’

There’s an old adage in politics that voters don’t say thank you, they ask ‘what’s next?’ 

And after fourteen years of stagnation, collapsing public services, falling living standards and yawning inequality, that impatience is more than understandable. “Change” was promised. People quite reasonably want to see it – and fast.

Those of us who campaign for that change are no different. We are, by nature, impatient. We want the whole programme and we want it yesterday. Incrementalism can feel like compromise; progress can feel slower than the scale of the crisis.

READ MORE: ‘Key provisions in Employment Rights Act and scrapping of two-child benefit cap come into force’

But that’s not the way that Labour should view the extraordinary change that it has made to the lives of workers and families in poverty this week. The scrapping of the two-child limit. Day-one sick pay. Day-one paternity leave. And the creation of a Fair Work Agency to enforce the rights too many workers have had only on paper. This is not tinkering. This is not triangulation. This is the difference a Labour government makes.

Nearly half a million children will, with one policy change, be lifted out of poverty. And hundreds of thousands more will see their lives improved.  That is not abstract policy that exists only in SW1. Real lives have been genuinely improved. There will be birthday parties that were previously unthinkable. Winter coats bought without dread. Cupboards that aren’t scraped bare before payday. Full tummies that fuel children as they study for their futures.

Workers will be better protected, better paid and better able to be productive and engaged in a fairer relationship in the workplace.Fewer people dragging themselves in sick because they cannot afford not to meaning healthier workplaces. Stronger productivity rooted in dignity rather than fear. Fathers able to spend proper time with their newborn or newly adopted children, building bonds that shape lives.

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Labour is right to celebrate this and I was pleased to read the PM doing just that. We should too. Unapologetically and constantly. As should those who campaigned so hard to get here.

The temptation to move on to the next campaign can be overwhelming. People who spend their lives talking about laws, making laws, campaigning to change laws, abolishing laws and implementing laws sometimes forget that the process of making, breaking and changing the law is only the start of a journey of change not the end of one.

As we saw under the coalition and Tory years, changes Labour make can be fragile if they are not fully embedded in the understanding of who we are as a country. We need to make bringing back the two-child cap as unthinkable as scrapping the NHS. We need to entrench day-one rights as the baseline from which all parties must argue upwards, not backwards. That means not just passing laws, but winning the argument for them – over and over again. And that has to mean those who called for Labour to do it as well as Labour themselves. Because this is the beginning of change and cannot be the end of the conversation or celebration. Cultural and political entrenchment is what will make sure it endures.

Every time these changes are talked about by political commentators, discussion almost immediately devolves into discussion of what it means for the power games of SW1 not what it means for the millions whose lives will be improved. 

Labour must not fall into that trap.

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Yes, internal politics matters. Yes, scrutiny matters. And yes, LabourList will always cover both. But politics is not a game. It is a vehicle for changing lives. If we do not relentlessly centre the people who benefit from these changes, we allow the story to drift back to Westminster psychodrama.

Labour activists should be very proud of what they have worked to achieve this week. And all of us should be saying so – loudly and relentlessly. 

Don’t stop believing. But don’t stop persuading either.

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