Originally published @ 10:36 am, Fri 3rd Sep 2010
The endorsement from Tony Robinson for Ed Miliband - "Of all of the candidates, from the beginning of the hustings, Ed has clearly defined himself away from same old same old. He is the one who, from the beginning, was prepared to distance himself from Iraq, from ID cards, student loans. These are big things that matter to people."
Is this London talking? Because Iraq was not an issue on the doorstep at the General Election where I was campiagning. I spoke to thousands of people and can only remember it being raised as a significant issue once. Students loans came up more often (and I look forward to a different idea being developed because it was a hard sell). ID cards was actually a useful point to make when addressing concerns about illegal immigrants.
But the big things that mattered to people on the doorstep this time around were jobs and economic security, agency workers taking local jobs, and people feeling that the benefits system was helping people it shouldn't. Now I don't say shape your programme to assuage a right-wing political attack, but let's be real about what we were being told by voters this year.
What's being said now by the Ed Miliband campaign is exemplified by Tony Robinson's pitch - here's a list of what you didn't like so vote for me. It may well be effective in winning leadership campaigns, but it is not about the future.
As for other points Tony makes - having a say in policy - I think the one who's had most to say on this is Andy Burnham (at the meetings I've attended anyway). As someone who once chaired a compositing motion on minimum wage and saw it fall apart, I hope we don't return to the chaos of party conferences past. I think the Policy Forums could do useful work in developing motions for debate at conference which give party members a real choice and something of substance to discuss at branches over the months ahead of conference to culminate in quality debates and real votes at conference.
A YouGov poll says David Miliband is by far the most popular candidate with the public, and if this is true I expect this will show through in the votes cast by the trade union members. I do think he's shown the most authority on TV, particularly with the challenging TV journanlists, but a poll like this is no excuse for not thinking hard about the future.
Which is not what's coming across from Tony Blair. A big surprise. Having heard more from Tony Blair on TV and radio (still only half way though the first chapter) since the book's publication, it seems the moderniser has come over as stuck in 2006. Public services reform was not a particular issue this time around except in one certain regard - too many managers in the NHS. This was a shame for us because we were trying to maximise the use of doctors, nurses and support workers on delivering service and mitigating inequalities by requiring the same minimum and higher standard of service for everyone from every neighbourhood, irrespective of socio-economic circumstance.
I thought one of the fundamental points about New Labour was being in touch with public opinion and people's aspirations.
If people complained about Labour not being on their side, it was more often about having saved the banks with their money (again, a shame for us cos saving the banks saved people a lot of grief), allowing bankers to carry on making big bonuses (which we got to in the end), benefits not being available to people who paid their insurance all their working life and businesses they worked for taking too much advantage with regard to pay and conditions during the credit crunch.
It just doesn't feel like Tony Blair has been in the same battle as us since 2007. His thinking is outside of what John Presoctt would call the modern setting.