Schoolboy Rory Weal brought delegates to their feet when he declared: “It is up to us in the Labour Party to create a vision of what a better Britain looks like. Let’s get to work.” He spoke passionately about the merits of the welfare state “to which I owe my entire well being and that of my family”.
Ed Miliband, who enthusiastically joined the standing ovation, said in his keynote conference speech that followed a day later, that there is “something deep in our country, an economy and a society too often rewarding “the wrong people with the wrong values” and added: “We need a new bargain based on a different set of values.” Across a generation and from starkly different economic and social backgrounds, these people are talking the same language of aspiration. The question which trails after the leadership after Liverpool is an old one: does it have what it takes to deliver, to fulfil the promise?
The time for asking to be led by rambling internal consultations and policy reviews is over. Instead of asking to be led it is time to lead. Time to burst the bubble in which this generation of leading Labour politicians have been living. A bubble in which the world of Westminster, Whitehall and top-level politics has distanced them from the world of Rory Weal and the struggle of the working class to survive.
And by working class we mean anyone who has to look to their weekly salary to be able to cover the costs of living, maintaining a home and raising children. To do that requires a job. The threat to jobs and the services which make civilised life workable for millions in Britain is what drives the passion behind calls for co-ordinated industrial action. The change in tone in Mr Miliband’s earlier grandstanding hostility to union action is to be welcomed only if it is maintained.
Reality has to be grasped, economic policy requires a paradigm shift, not a finessing of Tory policies which are finessing Labour policies which finessed Thatcherite policies. Not since the 1940s has there been a more auspicious and necessary time for Labour to be Labour. Mr Miliband has shown he understands the need to repair the damage done at both ends of society – need at one and greed at the other – under this and previous governments. His conference speech pointed to areas which need to be addressed. His next bold move should be to surround himself with a Shadow Cabinet which shares the answers rather than the reservations which have led them to perform with the effectiveness which rates rather less than Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal squad.
