Learning from Bassetlaw

It was a privilege to spend time in Bassetlaw on Monday meeting voters ahead of their primary on the leadership election. This primary is an interesting example of how we can make that happen.

A similar contest is taking place in Edinburgh East. Our membership should be central to the way we connect with, listen to and respond to the public.

But as well as doing more to reach out beyond our party we need to do more to open up debate within it. Just as the party in Bassetlaw has shown confidence in voters to shape decisions on the leadership, so the central organisation of our party should show confidence in the opinions and values of party members.

We need to give party members a proper voice. That is why I want to see our party chair be elected by members. I also want to reform the way in which we take account of the views of the national Labour parties in Wales and Scotland, by mandating that their leaders sit on the NEC and are part of shadow cabinet. I want to make our party fairer and show that we reflect Britain, by ensuring that half of the shadow cabinet will be made up of women.

These are some of the steps along the path to a more democratic and energised party. One of the lessons of the New Labour years is that we cannot do without that sort of vibrant party. We need to reject the New Labour orthodoxy that saw Labour party members as fit for delivering leaflets and not much else. The effect of that approach was that the party lost touch to some extent with the values of its supporters. We lost our sense of idealism and became more like managers. We lost our willingness to change.

And we should make no mistake - we do need to change. To win again we need to be ready to rethink our approach to a range of issues, whether on the sort of flexibility we want in our labour markets or the role our values should play in shaping our international alliances. We believe in a more equal society not divided by differences of class, income, wealth and power. We believe in a country where people can get good jobs at good wages, regardless of background. We believe in a society which we judge by the quality of its citizens' lives, not GDP alone. To achieve that vision of the good society we need to decisively turn the page on old orthodoxies. We need to put our values at the heart of what we do. We need to change.

Fellow Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham MP also responded to the Bassetlaw primary while Bassetlaw's MP John Mann also wrote about the contest

Progress has campaigned for the introduction of primaries in the Labour party in our Prime Time campaign

Ed Miliband MP

15 Jul 2010 09:22

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