by Tom Clements

As much as I had deep reservations about Corbyn’s ability to win an election, I hadn’t expected us to fall as low as we did on Thursday. After the initial anger started to fade, the stark realisation that we could yet drop further brought a resolute determination. We must do better next time.

But before we can start to think about winning the leadership of the Party, we need to accept some of the blame for allowing the Party to fall into disrepute. It was our failure in 2015 to challenge Corbyn on policy rather than management that allowed Corbynism to blossom in our Party and wilt in the country.

But now we’re here again, we have to grasp this opportunity. We need to work to ensure that a viable, progressive leader emerges victorious in 2020. To elect someone that resonates with the country rather than plays the right notes to the Party. We might not get another chance.

To do that, however, we have to be more than competent managers. And our vision can’t be a return to Blair or Wilson. We can’t just repeat history and expect it to work but we can look for the rhymes.

In 2006, Tony Blair declared that the USP of New Labour was “aspiration and compassion reconciled”. He was successful because he appreciated that to be able to help those at the bottom, you had to support people to do better for themselves and their families. It was this revolutionary combination that allowed Blair to build a coalition that was able to inspire the country.

But not only is that not enough today, it is not right for today.

If success in 1997 required compassion to be united with aspiration; today, we must marry compassion with responsibility to rebuild the red wall.

But this is not just a neat rhetorical device. Compassion and responsibility are a blueprint to reconnect with the forgotten heartlands. To win back the voters who lent their support to the Tories this time so that we can build a better future.

Talk to anyone in places like Morley or Don Valley for any length of time and it will become clear that they care deeply for their friends, their high street and their place in the world. But be sure that they don’t expect improvements to be handed to them on a plate. They understand more than most that nothing worth having comes easy.

Whatever the reaction of some on the left to Thursday’s result, people aren’t indifferent to the plight of the thousands of families that rely on food banks to get through the month. It is their charity that keeps them going. But if we are to get a Labour government that can deal with the increase of in work poverty then we need to get real about the need for welfare reform.

Because it isn’t greedy bankers or tax limiting companies that really annoy people on the doorstep. It’s the family on the playground that don’t work but go on three foreign holidays a year, it’s the bloke at the club who drives a brand-new car even though he’s never worked, it’s the people that dress head to toe in labels whilst they have to make do with supermarket brands and hand me downs.

So that means looking to reform welfare so that work and training is incentivised. To make it easier for people to increase their hours without affecting their living standards. To ultimately make sure that people don’t fall into a welfare trap so it truly is a hand up and not a hand out.

Social care that treats people with dignity, staffed by dedicated and highly qualified professionals is the least that people deserve. But to build a truly comprehensive social care system that makes good on Beveridge’s promise of top-class care from the cradle to the grave, we need to be honest on how we are going to fund it.

And that means putting a stop to the fantasy that it is the top 5% that can fund everything that is broken in our society. If we continue to try to pretend that is the case then people will, quite rightly, fear a ‘but’ around the corner and trust will continue to evaporate.

Or we could be honest. We can say that top class public services for the many can only be funded sustainably by the many. Whether it is an extra penny on national insurance or a flat fee, people need to know that we are with them for the long haul.

If we want people to share our compassion for the environment; to continue to reduce their carbon footprint and to believe in the green new deal then we need to be responsible about the challenge that we face. To convince people that the climate crisis is not just another metropolitan fad, we must make difficult choices about what we include in our next manifesto.

That means cutting expensive policies that appeal to our members but don’t resonate in former coal fields like abolishing tuition fees or providing free broadband. And then using those savings to reduce the impact on the consumer so that being environmentally friendly isn’t a luxury choice. And in doing so, we can make sure that we have a government that takes responsibility for the climate to reduce the burden on our children’s mental health.

By creating a vision that is built on compassion and responsibility, we can start to rebuild trust with those voters who deserted us this time whilst retaining the values that make us Labour. Not just by throwing retail policies at them in the short campaign but to make them feel integral to our vision of a better society. To actually meet people where they are rather than where we believe they should be, we can start to rebuild our broken coalition.

But ultimately, whatever the remedy, we need to make sure that we no longer take these forgotten communities for granted. People need to believe that the Labour Party know that their community, their aspirations and their lives matter.

Tom Clements is a history and politics teacher in Leeds

Tags: general election 2019, Labour leadership election 2020, New Labour, Tom Clements, Tony Blair

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