Capitalism, he said, caused this crisis – and it will cause the next crisis, if we allow it, but Labour can and should change the game. “New Labour,” he said, “died when its assumptions about the capitalist system were shown to be false. We need a 21st century socialism that learns from the past and doesn’t just patch up the capitalist system.”
Lisa Nandy, Labour MP for Wigan, said: “The Tories are destroying the lives of millions of people in this country” and criticised those in the party who only want to work out how to win back the south-east or win the next election. “We urgently need a new vision of the sort of society in which we want to live.”
Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, launched another coruscating attack on George Osborne for failing to learn the lessons of history.
He recalled how Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden didn’t heed the warnings of John Maynard Keynes, forged a coalition with the Conservatives, forced through their cuts, and drove Britain into the Great Depression.
And in a rousing speech which closed the rally Jon Trickett, MP for Hemsworth, pointedly referred to the damage caused by “people who say tack to the right to get back into power” – describing them as “pale pink imitation Tories.”
That was quite a contrast to the Progress rally on Sunday night, to which David Miliband, like Banquo’s ghost, paid a fleeting visit, and at which the usual suspects – Caroline Flint, Liam Byrne, Tessa Jowell, Jacqui Smith, John Woodcock – tried to justify the New Labour project rejected by the voters and urged Ed Miliband to reject socialist ideas and “cleave to the centre ground”. Len McCluskey, at the Tribune rally, described Progress as “Labour’s burden tendency”.
Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East, said “at least Tony Blair left the Metropolitan Police as the best force that Rupert Murdoch’s money could buy.” And, to peals of laughter, admitted he was deeply troubled by the image of TB playing on the banks of the Jordan with the child of Rupert Murdoch.
Speaking ahead of elections in the capital next year, London Assembly Member Murad Qureshi poured scorn on Boris Johnson’s record and said “Londoners have a choice – between a celebrity mayor and a competent mayor.”
Barry Camfield, national organiser of the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, argued passionately for the repeal of the Tories’ anti-union laws, and Kate Hudson, chair of CND, urged Labour to understand that nuclear weapons were Cold War weapons, “spending on Trident is a dead end in every sense” and we need a defence policy “that meets our needs in the 21st century”.
Emily Thornberry, MP for Islington South and Finsbury, used the meeting to reveal the enormity of the electoral “gerrymandering” of the Conservative-led coalition. The new way of registering voters is she said, a “profoundly undemocratic process” designed to deprive Labour of millions of votes at the next general election.
