Most people don’t belong to a political tribe. They vote pragmatically. When an election comes round, they ask themselves how well the party in power has performed in government and try to decide whether it looks likely to improve their living standards in the future. In next month’s general election, millions of pragmatic middle-of-the-road voters, who have supported the Conservatives in every election since 2010, will be wondering whether the party deserves their support yet again in 2024.
The current team at the top of the Labour party are serious people of integrity and ability.
For nearly 20 years I was a member of the Conservative tribe. A councillor for four years, MP for nine and minister for four, I spent most of my adult life trying to get Conservative candidates elected and Conservative policies implemented. But gradually I came to the painful conclusion that in office the Conservatives were doing more harm than good. Under their stewardship Britain’s economic performance has been dismal, leaving most people no better off. They have failed to address the country’s most deep seated challenges. And they have inflicted new burdens on Britain which will make it harder for us to prosper in the future.
When the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats came into office in 2010, they inherited a difficult situation from Labour. The global financial crisis had devastated the public finances. Government borrowing was unsustainably high and even the Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling knew that there would need to be painful cuts in public spending. So the coalition government’s belt tightening was not, at first, a mistake. But they went too far in cutting spending on infrastructure, further education, prisons and local government.
The coalition can nevertheless claim some big achievements. Foremost in education where the encouragement of free schools and academies and a focus on proven methods of teaching in English and Maths pushed England’s school system up to the top of international league tables. Also in energy, where bold reforms produced a boom in renewables and the halving of our carbon emissions. The introduction of same sex marriage gave me particular pride as did the commitment to support development in some of the poorest parts of the world (sadly diluted since). But in the nine years since the Conservatives started governing on their own there is little apart from the vaccines taskforce that historians will judge to have been a success.
Instead we are confronted by a long list of challenges that they ducked. The funding of social care. The low level of investment which has led to sluggish productivity growth and stagnating real incomes. The failure to see through planning reform and build enough houses as one after the other Conservative prime ministers retreated in the face of opposition from comfortably housed Nimbies.
These omissions are bad enough. They are compounded by the wholly unnecessary decision to leave the single market and customs union after the British people voted to leave the EU. This reckless act of economic vandalism will make us poorer for decades to come. I spent my last year in Parliament trying to persuade Conservative MPs not to throw the baby out with the bath water. But like a bunch of hooligans high on wanton destruction they insisted on the hardest possible Brexit. We are all now paying a heavy price.
What’s done is done. The clock cannot be turned back. But the Conservative party should be held to account for a truly terrible record in government.
I am a very different person than I was when I first stood for election to Parliament in 2005. Then I was 39, fired up by ambition and grand illusions. Now I am 58, more sceptical, more realistic. Then I thought there was no limit to what we could achieve. Now I accept that no political tribe is infallible, that none of them deserves to be in power all the time.
Today it is the Labour party that has got the right priorities: building more houses and better infrastructure; investing in cheap, clean energy; restoring the quality and productivity of the NHS. They’ve got the best leaders too. I’ve seen a lot of politicians at close quarters and it’s clear to me that the current team at the top of the Labour party are serious people of integrity and ability. I will happily vote to entrust the next five years of our nation’s government to their hands. I only hope that when eventually they leave office, they can look back with a greater sense of achievement than I could.
Although there is much to regret in a squandered decade, one thing remains undiminished: the astonishing resourcefulness of the British people. This year’s election promises to be one of those moments in our history when we are given the opportunity to put recent disappointments behind us and open a new chapter with renewed determination and hope. Pragmatic middle-of-the-road voters should grab the chance for change, as they did in 1945 and 1997, and embrace the future under a Labour government.
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