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Change we see...

An excellent campaign from Labour HQ has been going on for quite a while now, see more about it here, where anyone can send in photos of the changes we see after 12 years of Labour government. Images of new schools, hospitals and children's centres have flooded in and continue to do so. I absolutely love this campaign, concrete evidence for all to see of the effects of Labour investment, benefiting the many and not the few. Our principles, that people like me bang on about so often, in action. To those on the right, in the Liberal Democrats (as mentioned below) and even on the far left, who say Labour has let down this country, I'd ask them to take a look. A picture says a thousand words.

It would be great to see people spread their experiences of the change Britain has seen in the past 12 years on forums like Twitter, Facebook and crucially amongst their friends and family. This campaign must remind people of our record and why we deserve their vote, a vote that takes 30 seconds, but that lasts 5 years (that one courtesy of David Tennant).

Last night I might have to admit, I lost it a little. As we get so close to a decision on the future of this country being made, I see a party who think they are about to cruise into Downing Street on the back of negativity, disillusionment and a reluctant acceptance of the fallacy that a change of government will "freshen things up", it's the "inevitable political cycle". To that I say, in an ever so profound way, b*ll*cks. The images from the #changewesee campaign are what government is about, concrete improvements to societies who rely on government intervention to keep them turning. I ask you what a #changewesee campaign for the Conservative administration from '79 to '97 would look like? Ugly. What do we get when we want to see "new faces" for the sake of it, when we overlook policy promises or political ideology? Boris.

So as this video from 2005 which I was watching last night suggests: if you value it, vote for it. I'll be tweeting Labour achievements that mean a lot to me under #changewesee .This is campaigning at it's best.

All you need is love

Harriet Harman will tell Compass tomorrow of Labour plans to tackle inequality. Unlike Cameron’s “all you need is love” agenda, Harman will face reality head on. Wait, before you think I’m about to write a press release, I’m not, stay with me. This is not an easy way out for Labour. In underlining what Government can do to alleviate inequality Harman is admitting, as Labour should be doing that, frankly, we haven’t done enough.

In the past few decades governments have, as Polly Toynbee puts it, let the camel train stretch too far. Those at the front are now so far ahead that those at the back are left with a cloud of dust in their faces, out of view of the galloping frontrunners. New Labour assumed that the gap between the two was pretty much irrelevant, as long as those at the back were advancing. To some extent, that could be argued to be the case.

Labour has ensured those at the bottom have been pulled up. Half a million children out of poverty, the minimum wage, Sure Start, not to mention the revolution in our public services, have made sure that those with very little are no longer on their knees, where the last Tory government left them in '97. I want to emphasise that point strongly. When Liberal Democrats like Evan Harris suggest Labour’s time in government has been an unending sequence of disappointments (in a Fabian conference session, where Will Straw fought Labour's corner beautifully), I want to scream. At him. How dare he. It hasn’t and those who rely on the great changes Labour have implemented in the past 12 years, know so. Patients in waiting rooms, cancer sufferers, kids in newly built or refurbished classrooms... I could go on.

But as Labour enter into this fight, we must seize an all more radical approach to inequality. Where lifting those up from the bottom is no longer enough, and where we recognise that the length of that camel train is pivotal to the cohesiveness of our society. Harman recognises that, and so does Gordon. In emphasising the impact of socio-economic factors on the lives of future generations, Labour is doing what good government should be doing, facing up to reality, head on. The fear of the “you’ve had 12 years” reposte should not stop Labour admitting where we could have gone further, harnessing the progressive agenda and running with it. It’ll be tough, accusations of class war will fly. Let them. A mother’s hug isn’t going to solve social inequality, and it is a lazy, easy and very Conservative way out to suggest it will.

Smile

A few things that made me smile today.

One post here from a young activist who has decided to join the Labour Party, partly because of the power of Twitter. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Peter Kellner!

@collectormaniac says

"The fact is, Labour activists are some of the nicest people I’ve met, with some of the best opinions and finest arguments. I am proud to be part of a party that fights for equality and has done so much good for this country"

I couldn't agree more. The sense of belonging is partly why I am in the party I am, and Twitter, with it's online community, builds upon that, allowing someone who remains cynical about certain aspects of the party, to realise that there are those who share common goals and common worries, but knowing that belonging to a political party is the greatest act an individual can do to bring about change in this country. So a huge welcome to CollectorManiac (!) as she says, the future's red! And we like it!

According to a tweet I've seen today, mydavidcameron.com is now the most visited UK political site. Which is pretty extraordinary, and credit where it's due to it's creator. I found this one particulalrly amusing, probably because it's scarily accurate.

Right on recession, right on recovery

Was struck by something today. Having heard the encouraging news that unemployment has fallen by 7,000, suggesting that the previous fall was not an anomaly but in fact a sign of a trend that we all hope continues, a tweet from @UKLabour flashed up on my screen. It linked to a Jobs Interactive Map, a fascinating comparative tool which allows us to see the difference in unemploylent figures between the most recent recession and the Tory recession of the 90s. The map is a glaringly obvious vindication of Gordon Brown and the Labour Party's tough action. Proving that investing in people, public services and job creation schemes is the best way to tackle a recession. That unemployment and risking the future of this generation, and future ones by proxy, is not and never can be a price worth paying.

I would like to make clear for any readers unsure about which party's policies on recession and recovery really work, that in EVERY SINGLE PART OF THE COUNTRY unemployment was worse under the last Tory recession than the most recent one.

Now this post may sound like a collection of soundbites, I really don't mean it to. Although I don't apologise for it. These facts should be on the tip of everyone's tongues, at the forefront of their minds, and should be guiding their hand when they get into the ballot box on polling day. It is not by chance that there are 450,000 more people in work than experts predicted at the time of the budget. It's not luck. It's the result of fast, decisive action in the face of financial collapse. ATM machines within 2 hours of being empty is no joke, as Gordon said on Saturday at the Fabians Conference, this past year has been the greatest possible rebuttal to those who say Government is always the problem. But then, I suppose it depends on which Government...

Thank God we'll never know what could have been...

Will hopefully be firmly back in the blogging seat when I get back to laptop on Wednesay.

In the meantime, and yes I have already shamelessly plugged this article on Twitter today for it is a thing of pure beauty, have a read of solid gold Hutton http://bit.ly/66vfYA .

And before you choose 'change', think what it could entail...

Dominic

I did say I didn't want to harp on about Polly Toynbee, but reading her Hard Work - Life in low pay Britain book in bed last night, I have a paragraph I'd like to remind her of.

Firstly, a little background, the book, rather brilliantly, details Polly's experiences of hard work on low pay (as the title suggests) in Britain, she is living on Clapham Park Estate, which at the time of writing, had been awarded £56 million as part of Blair's New Deal.

Dominic was a fellow resident who Toynbee got to know. Arriving in Britain from Nigeria as a student in 1970, he worked hard until his kidneys failed him, and was now too "weak to run for a bus" , living on incapacity benefit. I quote from her "Clapham Park Neighbours" chapter:

"He (Dominic) had been to a public meeting or two (re the New Deal grant for the estate) but was unsure what to believe. Essentially until he saw an entry-phone on our front door and central heating fitted in our cold flats he was disinclined to believe anything was changing for the better, even though the repainting of our block, inside and out, was already clearly under way...However I was surprised when he suddenly burst into a riff of optimism about this government: "I rate Tony Blair most highly", he said. "Almost as highly as I rated Harold Wilson. It was Margaret Thatcher that destroyed everything, and look, all around us here, this estate is part of her wreckage! Once we had caretakers on every block, but she took them away. She took everything away, cut everything." He was shaking with anger at the thought of her as he took his Labour Party membership card out of his wallet to wave at me with pride."

Maybe Polly could think of Dominic when writing her next column, and the millions like him, who rely on a united Labour Party fighting to govern. If he and the other residents of Clapham Park are forced to accept similar cuts and wreckage from a Cameron government, who have not learned the lessons from Thatcher, they would never forgive a Labour Party for turning inward now, instead of fighting tooth and nail until May. And they'd be right not to. So, this time, I think Polly's advice will, and must, fall on deaf ears.