Now is the time for the Left to reassert itself

Michael Meacher MP

SO WHEN, IN ALL THIS RUCKUS, IS SOMEONE GOING TO THINK ABOUT THE PARTY AND THE PUBLIC AND WHAT THEY WANT?

They want, I believe, an immediate end to the infighting, if it is not to scupper Labour’s chances at the Scottish, Welsh and local elections next May. They want a leadership contest, not a semi-dynastic handover, with candidates representing all the main wings of Party opinion, particularly mainstream Labour philosophies and policies, not just the Brownite Right and the Blairite far Right. And they want a full discussion of policies, not shutting down all debate as Gordon Brown seems to want.

Renewal is not about keeping the policies, but changing the face at the top. It’s the current policies that have brought us where we are – a haemorrhage of 4 million votes since 1997, a halving of our membership, a loss of 320 councillors at the local elections four months ago, and 9% points behind in the polls, and still sliding. Top-up fees, foundation hospitals and payments by results bringing the private sector ever deeper into the NHS, a neo-liberal market agenda dominating every policy area, ID cards and constantly undermining civil liberties, Iraq and Lebanon and playing poodle to President Bush over every foreign policy issue, has turned off huge swathes of Labour support.

For a decade or more the voice of the Left has been muzzled and sidelined. Now is the time for the Left to press its demands for a radical change of direction because otherwise we will certainly lose the next election if we carry on as we are.

The immediate demand is that we pull our troops out of Iraq, at least by the middle of next year, since the presence of occupation troops is fuelling the violence, not reducing it. We should also make clear that Britain will have no truck with a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Above all we should be urging pressure on Israel after the Lebanese debacle to accept that the only way to peace in the Middle East (and ending the risk of terrorism at home) is through negotiation of the two-state solution in Palestine and through a much more evenhanded Western policy between Israel and the Muslim states. We should also reject the replacement of Trident at a cost of £25 billion when world security is threatened, not by nuclear states, but by regional conflicts and international terrorism.

Domestically we should stop and reverse the obsession with privatisation and PFI, not only in health and education, but in housing, pensions, probation, rail, and local government. Labour values are not represented by a private market in the NHS, or a two-tier education system, or refusal of the 4th option for council tenants, or a switch to private pensions which leave two-thirds of pensioners requiring means-tested assistance, or outsourcing a key part of the criminal justice system, or leaving a fragmented private rail system operating inefficiently despite £2 billion public subsidies a year, or by handing over key local government functions to the private sector, let alone by the scandal of chancing £50 billion of public expenditure on PFI schemes many of which are already falling apart.

If ever the case for a strong public sector needed to be made, the history of the last decade proves it overwhelmingly. We need a new Government that genuinely listens to its own Party members and the public. Conference should have a real decision-making role, not merely provide a grandstanding for the Leader’s speech. We need a mechanism to hold the Leader to account, and should consult the membership about how that should best be done. And we need a new constitutional settlement whereby Parliament takes back the powers and rights to hold the Government to account which have been appropriated by No. 10.

We need too a real Labour economic policy. That means reversing the current market-driven grotesque inequalities in wealth and incomes, an increase in the national minimum wage to at least £7 an hour, a switch away from the present low pay low skill low productivity economy, much stronger employment rights in the workplace, and a regional policy to spread job opportunities evenly away from the South-East across the whole country. We need too a much more radical approach to combating climate change. We should reject a return to nuclear power and lead the world in switching out of fossil fuels in favour of renewables and energy conservation.

This is the Left platform that I strongly believe we should be pushing in this leadership election. If enough members vote for it, we can make it a reality.