David Miliband, Shadow Foreign Secretary and the bookies’ narrow favourite to become the next Labour leader, says the party should not try to woo the Liberal Democrats away from the Conservatives. “I think the Lib Dems have made their choice. They ran in the election on the basis you could vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out and then, before you could say Jack Robinson, they put the Tories in. And that is a defining moment in British politics. Because now everyone understands if they want an alternative to the Tories they need to vote Labour.”
Mr Miliband was speaking in Cardiff, where he said policies pioneered in Wales should find their way into the next party manifesto. “The lessons are pretty clear. Unless Labour is a party of fairness and the party of the future, it loses.”
Earlier, during a leaders’ debate at the Compass conference in London, Mr Miliband said: “We need a leader who can fire the imagination of the public as well as the party”, while his brother Ed said: “We need a leader who will listen”. Ed Balls said: “We need to speak a language our voters understand and can relate to”. Asked by singer-songwriter Billy Bragg where they stand on proportional representation, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham all said they are in favour of the alternative vote; David Miliband said he wants AV for the House of Commons and PR for the Lords; while Diane Abbott said: “The problem with PR is the power you give the centre”.
Douglas Alexander, speaking at a seminar on “Transforming Labour: How Can We Rebuild and Renew the Party”, said Labour has lost half its members since 1997 and, at the general election, the party’s share of the vote fell to within 1 per cent of what it got in 1983. He said: “We don’t want to form a circular firing squad”, but “we need to be humble in the face of that evidence”.
Mr Alexander, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, said people join the Labour Party as a political act: “We have to clearly articulate our vision of a different world as well as changing our methods of organisation at constituency level – because machine politics has reached the end of the road.”
Tony Robinson, a former member of the National Executive Committee, said the trouble was that under New Labour “government was about six people, five of whom weren’t elected, a compliant Cabinet and a compliant PLP. We need a democratic vision and a meaningful conference. This is our party, not the party of the latest leadership fad.”
And Sam Tarry, chair of Young Labour, said: “If the Tories and Lib Dems succeed in breaking the link with the trade unions, they will change the nature of the Labour Party and its historic mission.” He wants Young Labour to be reconstituted as a socialist society “to give young people free rein” and because “we need more space”
