Greener and greener in Brighton

At the beginning of the month Nancy Platts, Labour’s candidate in Brighton Pavilion in last year’s election, wrote on this site about how the Greens, or more specifically Caroline Lucas, had won the seat. Much of what she wrote rang true of what happened in Brighton last month when the Greens took control of Brighton and Hove City Council and formed the first Green administration anywhere in the country.

That the Greens first taste of power should come on the south coast should surprise no-one, they have been building their support base and vote here for the last 15 years, since they won their first seat back in 1996 – although they had been polling well in certain areas of Brighton since the late 80s and the Green bounce at the 1989 Euro elections. Their winning of their first and only Parliamentary seat last year clearly gave them a spring board for further gains in this year’s Council elections (Brighton and Hove is a unitary authority holding elections every four years, so it was an all or nothing moment).

All the political parties are still picking over what happened in Brighton and (more interestingly) Hove to create yet another political first. But a few things are already clear and there are lessons for all the parties, especially Labour. The key four factors were as follows.

Firstly the Greens had ‘the big mo’ – momentum. They’ve been on a roll since their breakthrough election in 2007 when they doubled their council seats, and on a high since they won the Parliamentary seat; they’ve also been doing well in by-elections since 2007. They’ve been helped by increased focus on the city by the party and support from Green activists outside the city who saw the opportunity and were hungry for a win. All this helped them achieve the one thing that holds back smaller parties from breaking through – credibility; people believed the Greens could win and subsequently were more willing to vote for them. To their credit they’ve used their victories well, Dr Lucas is everywhere and you’d be hard pushed to know that she wasn’t the MP for the entire city.

Second, the collapse of the Liberal Democrats has been a significant factor in the growth of the Greens in Brighton. One of the first things to happen in wards which have gone Green has been the collapse of the Lib Dem vote. This time round they were pretty much obliterated as an electoral force in Brighton. Their vote was down to around 5% across the city (and only in 2 wards did they poll in double figures) losing their last 2 remaining councillors as a result. In their key target ward the Greens jumped from third to snatch a seat from the Tories.

Lib Dem voters angry with the coalition and feeling they’d wasted their votes in 2010 (and canvassing those recorded as Lib Dems in 2010 showed this was a big group) were not switching to Labour. Lib Dem voters would appear to have gone to the Greens, as in Scotland where left-leaning Lib Dems had a viable alternative in the SNP; they chose to go the alternative rather than us. This should be of big concern for Labour and should send a wake-up call to all local parties facing the Lib Dems where the Greens are already active. A green win of a Tory council seat in rural Essex on an 18% swing several weeks ago should also highlight it doesn’t need large scale activity for this to become a reality.

Third was the willingness of previously Tory voters to vote Green. In my ward the Tory vote fell by 6%, neither I nor my Green opponent picked this up on the doorstep or on polling day, but as the votes were verified it became clear that there were a sizeable number of split votes – 1 Green 1 Tory. As the count went on the Greens started making serious inroads into Tory territory for the first time, clearly winning an MP had given them a credibility that allowed softer Conservative voters to swap to them. Combined with a changing population this has allowed the Greens to establish themselves in Hove (6 seats this time compared to none in 2007).

Fourth Labour failed to do what it needed to do. We have to admit we ran a disappointing campaign which led to a disappointing result; we failed to win any seats from the Greens, slipping further behind in target wards and were all but wiped out in Brighton Pavilion constituency, where we managed to hold just one seat. We failed to get to grips with the challenge that the Green Party presented to us; telling voters Greens can’t win here, when it was clear that they could and were, was a futile exercise. All our materials were targeted towards attacking the Tory-led Government and the Tory council; this helped us win back 4 seats from the Tories we had lost in 2007 but achieved little for us in vast swathes of the city where the fight was entirely different.

We also failed to understand the needs of the electorate and the changing demography of the city. It is obvious and we failed to spot it (although the other parties are guilty of this too) that the city has changed and the population has changed, new residents don’t view Hove as the genteel neighbour for Tory pensioners next door or as a separate place from Brighton. ‘Hove Actually’ may still be a well-known and well-used joke description for those of us living on that side of the city but Brighton and Hove is now one city and you are as likely to be young, gay or left-leaning in Hove as you are in Brighton.

We needed to understand the city better, with a population half of which is under 40; we should have ensured some younger candidates in winnable seats. With a city internationally famous for its gay population, standing a large number of LGBT candidates was great and vital; that none of them was in a safer seat was lamentable. With two universities in the city but no students as candidates and a poor record in engaging with the students, we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t get their vote. Also a key issue on the doorstep for years has been schools places, but we have only one councillor with school age children, that’s a problem and that should have been identified.

Ultimately thought the key failure came down to the inability to be able to answer the two following questions (and blame lies both nationally and locally for this): Why should I vote Labour in Brighton? Or perhaps more specifically: Why should I vote Labour rather than Green?

The next four years’ gives us opportunities. The Brighton council elections and general election are expected to fall on the same day. Labour will be in the unique position of fighting 3 parties and being the only one in opposition, oppose properly, effectively and with a clear programme of ideas and policies and we are the alternative to all 3. Also for the first time the Greens will have a record to defend not just a programme to promote, and even with the best run administration will have its problems, this will level the playing field against them in way it hasn’t been before.

If we are to win again in Brighton and Hove, we must have an answer to those two questions; we must have candidates that reflect the diversity of the local population; we need a clear message that is easy to sell to people and answers their questions and concerns and we have to win back those voters we lost to the Greens and Lib Dems since 2001 (in Hove the Lib Dem vote rose over that period from 4,000 to 11,000) if we don’t, we won’t win.


James Asser is co-chair of LGBT Labour and was a Labour candidate in Brighton at this year’s council elections.

Popular Front – No Thanks

Now, thank God, we’re the other side of the AV Referendum we can consider the real issues dividing the Labour Party. They certainly got scant attention in the debate, apart possibly from an article by Peter Mandelson in the Observer. Even there he only touched on the issue by rehashing the Roy Jenkins heresy that there was a progressive majority in the country frustrated by the division of the progressive parties. The root flaw of this argument is that it implies that the creation of the Labour Party was a mistake (which Roy probably believed). Their agenda is a pact between Labour and the Lib Dems possibly leading to a merger, depending on whether or not the Lib Dems had bargained and gerrymandered their way to an electoral system that amplified their importance. The ‘progressive majority’ delusionists would appear to prefer this to a majority Labour government. Irrespective, it’s been comprehensively undermined by the behaviour of the Lib Dems since the General Election. Of course this was quite predictable from their behaviour in local government, but don’t let’s dwell on that.

The real issue to be addressed is do we think that Labour is just one of a number of groupings in the ‘progressive’ rainbow, or do we believe that there is a unique role for a social democratic party that combines a wide range of elements, including and especially trade unions, in order to create a party able to get elected and function as a government. Of course that is a more relevant question under a first-past-the-post voting system, but in reality it is a dilemma being faced by our social democratic colleagues across the world. In many areas they are seeing support being cannibalised by parties coming at them from different angles, Greens, leftist parties, ex-Communists in Eastern Europe, populist anti-immigrant anti EU parties, anti globalisation and regional separatist parties. The most recent manifestation is the True Finns, (led by a Millwall supporter).

Even so we should not assume that this dilemma is a new problem although the current manifestation may have novel features. In our history The Labour Party had faced many attempts to integrate the Communist Party or infiltrate its members and fellow travellers. The Labour Party gave a trenchant reply in 1936:-

“Moreover, the National Executive Committee cannot fail to take note of the proclaimed fact that the present application for affiliation is but an evidence of the deviation in the tactics which have been pursued by the Communist International in recent years and that affiliation is sought, not for the purpose of promoting the Labour Party’s declared Policy and Programme, but, on the contrary, to utilise Party facilities on the platform, in public conference, and in the Party press, to displace their essential democratic and Socialist character and substitute a Policy and Programme based upon Communist Party principles. The National Executive Committee is as firmly convinced as were their predecessors that any weakening in the Labour Party’s defence of political democracy, such as the affiliation of the Communist Party would imply, would inevitably assist the forces of reaction, would endanger our existing liberties, and would retard the achievement of Socialism in this country.”

The contemporary popular front view is articulated by the increasingly erratic leader of Compass, Neal Lawson. Welcoming the opening of Compass’s membership beyond Labour Party members he pontificated:-

“The vote signals a big step toward a new politics. What matters is what people believe and what they will do about their beliefs – not what party card they hold or if they have one at all. Tens of thousands of people want a world that is more equal, sustainable and democratic. Now Compass can play an even bigger role in the creation of that world. Of course Labour remains the biggest and most important party in this progressive movement for change. Compass will maintain a special relationship with Labour and Ed Miliband who we gave overwhelming backing to. But Compass will exert more influence on Labour and be more capable of building and sustaining a wider alliance if we get everyone involved in the process of making the economy the servant of society.”

Historically the Labour Party rightly rejected the enticements of a Popular Front which would be of benefit to other parties or groups. For the Labour Party it would mean these other parties would be able to eat into our support and undermine us, while in the eyes of the public we would be guilty by association. The media would have a field day linking us with their idiocies. This is exactly the dilemma the Australian Labour Party is facing now with the Greens. The problem was summed up by previous Swedish Social Democrat PM, Goran Pearson, when asked about the election result in Sweden. He replied “ I think my Party lost because they destroyed more or less the brand of social democracy by going into a coalition with the left wing Communist Party and the Green Party. So they destroyed the possibility of going with a clear social democratic message and that was a tremendous mistake. The irony is we had a good economic position that we delivered for the income government 2006. So the relativity good times in Sweden combined with the damage to the social democratic brand in the campaign was I think the explanation for the centre right party’s success.”

There is a further danger with such alliances and involvement which is that there are those in the Labour Party who are unable to win the battle inside the party or with the voters and use the prospect of alliance with outside groups in order to incorporate polices that they secretly favour. Unfortunately they see any alliance not as a price to be paid but as an opportunity to undermine and circumvent mainstream Labour.

There would appear to be a sneering stigma attached to wanting the Labour Party to continue existing independently, seen frequently in the organs of ‘The Progressive Majority’. Labour loyalists are dismissed as ‘tribal’, although the Lib Dems never attract this condemnation. Down the decades, Labour ‘tribalists’ have asserted the importance of Labour’s independent role. This can be traced back to the heated debates that split the Fabians and the unions from the Liberal Party in the first place at the start of the 20th Century.

This Labour ‘tribalism’ was carried through the Labour Party’s relations with different manifestations of the Communist Party from the 1920s to the 1960s and into the battles against Militant and other Trotskyist entrysim from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Now Labour’s integrity faces a challenge from those wanting a ‘progressive majority’ with the Lib Dems, Greens and others. This is curiously a cause that in the case of Co mpass has stronger roots with certain Bennite veterans of the early 1980s Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC) than it does among Labour moderates.

Labour First was founded to organise and articulate the tradition in our Movement that believed in the unique role of the Labour Party (the clue is in the title). It is now time to robustly reaffirm that view.

John Spellar is Labour MP for Warley

Southern Front's submission to Refounding Labour

Southern Front welcomes the decision to undertake a fundamental review of the party’s structures and set our contribution in this response.

Outward looking party

The profile of membership of Constituency Labour Parties varies from region to region; from district to district; and from community to community. We believe it is important that each CLP should be allowed to determine its own local organisational structure and the frequency and nature of the meetings it holds. What is right for an inner city CLP with a large membership is not necessarily the best model for a small rural or market town CLP.

There are few organisations or businesses that operate in competitive environments that do not have a presence on the web. Research carried out by Southern Front earlier this year unearthed worrying findings about the state of Labour’s web presence in the south of England.

• Nearly half of CLPs in the south did not have a website (93 out of 197)

• 13 of the 59 seats we won in 1997 but have since lost did not have a constituency website;

• 9 seats Labour lost in 2010 had no CLP website - Basildon South & Thurrock East, Bristol North West, Dorset South, Dover, Gloucester*, Great Yarmouth, Kingswood, Portsmouth North*, Somerset North East & Waveney*;

*(since this research was undertaken Gloucester and Portsmouth North have re-established local websites, and Bob Blizzard, the former MP in Waveney, is maintaining a personal site)

• Over 10,000 members of the Labour Party are members in a CLP that didn’t have a website

These findings should alarm us. They give an impression of local Labour parties struggling to recover from defeat last May, and of almost moribund parties unable to demonstrate that they are a part of their local communities, relevant to the challenges of local community life. In this modern technological age, what message does it send if the Labour party chooses not to or cannot maintain a basic local website? It is the internet equivalent of a “closed for business” sign on the shop door.

Southern Front has five recommendations for the party, that we believe will help improve the party’s online presence in the South and enhance the party’s ability to win votes back to Labour;

1. The most urgent issue is to establish Labour websites in those six constituencies that we lost in 2010 that still do not have websites at present.

2. In areas where the party has limited membership and no elected representatives, cross constituency party website should be established. A number of CLPs have already joined together to set up a joint website, often operating across local authority boundaries (Bournemouth, Swindon, Brighton & Hove).

3. The party should support efforts to establish a brokerage system whereby party members with web and internet skills can be put in touch with CLPs who don’t have the expertise within their own constituency. Party members across the country have set up some exceptionally good local websites and would undoubtedly be willing to help other CLPs establish their own sites.

4. The NEC should introduce a new position of New Media Officer within constituency labour parties, elected with other functional officers and responsible for ensuring that the CLP has an up to date and functioning web presence. Training should be made available through regional parties.

5. Finally, Labour should agree an objective of having a local website for every CLP by 2015, when the next general election is scheduled.

Integrating technology and social media into campaigning can no longer be seen as a gimmick or something to be left to tech savvy candidates. Technology is integral to modern campaigning, and every CLP and parliamentary candidate should, as an absolute minimum, have a functioning and regularly updated website.

In many parts of the South Labour has neither an MP nor local councillors. Consequently, Labour’s local leadership positions are all elected as the result of internal elections. The Chair of the CLP, and other borough or county officers, are elected to positions that are inward facing. So in a constituency without a local MP or parliamentary candidate, there aren’t any party officers elected (or indeed unelected) with a remit to proactively promote the party to those outside membership of it. In these constituencies the role of CLP Chair should be recast to include a responsibility to promote and represent the party to the local community. In the absence of that role Labour parties in many parts of the South are insular without any meaningful interaction with the community they seek to serve.

Voice for members

One third of the UK electorate lives in Political South. Labour cannot regain the keys to 10 Downing Street without an improvement in its position in the South. Yet party members in the South are not adequately represented throughout the party’s structures.

John Denham is the only member of the current Shadow cabinet who represents a constituency in the south, and only two members of the National Executive Committee (Labour’s ruling body which has a membership of 31), are from the south. Indeed, there isn’t anyone from the East of England or South West regions on either of these bodies. The absence of southern voices at Labour’s top table makes it less likely that the party will develop and deliver policies that will chime with the aspirations of southern swing voters.

It should no longer be acceptable for three English regions that constitute a third of the UK’s electorate to be so woefully represented in the shadow Cabinet and the NEC. The proposed move to dispense with elections to the shadow cabinet is welcome as it will give the leader greater opportunity to establish a better regional balance to his or her top team.

With only 10 MPs in the South, and most council or group leaders focussed on their own locality, Southern Front believes that the chairs of Labour Party Regional Boards should be encouraged to play a greater public role for the party in the regions. In order to provide a mandate for this role, we advocate the direct election by OMOV ballots of regional party chairs, who could serve two year terms of office. Directly elected regional chairs could play a powerful role as advocates for the South. The regional chairs should attend the NEC as ex officio members, thereby ensuring that each region of the UK is guaranteed a seat around the NEC table.

In addition, the NEC should be encouraged to explore other ways in which a better regional balance can be delivered in its membership.

Southern Front notes the regional nature of elections to the National Policy Forum, and welcomes this as a good basis on which to ensure all parts of the Labour family can be represented on an important party body.

Renewing party

Smaller CLPs and those which are not target seats in parliamentary elections get a raw deal in comparison to their larger and more electorally successful neighbours. The flat rate levy employed to fund European elections is unfair and depletes too readily smaller CLPs’ fundraising efforts – often for very little tangible return. A per member levy should be introduced as an alternative more equitable means of funding cross constituency elections such as these.

Labour needs to maintain the efforts that began earlier this year to ensure a greater proportion of council seats are contested by Labour candidates. With the Conservatives and Liberal democrats in coalition, it is even more essential that there is a Labour alternative on voter’s ballot papers. In constituencies where local council candidates are difficult to find consideration should be given to standing the same candidates in more than one seat – thereby ensuring more Labour candidates appearing on the ballot.

There are still too many CLPs that under perform in this area. Why is it that in Spelthorne we only contested 3 of 39 seats, yet in Sevenoaks – a party with a smaller CLP membership - we fought 20 of 46? The party can no longer tolerate a lack of ambition or electioneering at constituency level. The Labour party exists to fight and win elections, not debate and theorise on politics in dusty village halls.

We need to improve the links between the PLP and those constituencies that do not elect Labour MPs. In a technological age there is no reason why the parliamentary reports that Labour MPs produce for their monthly GMCs, cannot be shared with a twinned constituency that does not have a Labour MP. A formal twinning process should be adopted with the basic expectation that a Labour MP will as a minimum:

• Provide a written parliamentary report for the twinned CLP on a monthly basis in time for their GMC;
• Attend at least one GMC meeting in person in order to ensure Labour party members wherever they live get to meet Labour MPs;

Southern Front remain open minded about the use of primaries to select parliamentary candidates. While we recognise the potential that primaries might act as a disincentive to recruitment of new members, we are concerned that too few people are involved in the process that selects the candidates who contest parliamentary elections on behalf of the party. The Government’s proposals, set out in the Coalition Agreement, to fund a number of primaries as part of a trial should be accepted in order that we can explore if and how primaries can be deployed.

Winning back power

Labour’s path back to power must run through the South. A quarter of the 70 seats Labour need to win to return to power lie in the South. A national party, seeking to govern on behalf of all of the nation, cannot accept such a poor level of representation in large parts of it.

Winning again in the South will not happen as a result of even harder work by the party in the South. Labour nationally needs to understand why we need to perform well in the South, an area many outside of it see only in terms of privilege and affluence. We need to dispel the myth that exists in some metropolitan Labour quarters that assumes that to win in the Conservative-leaning South Labour must ditch policies dear to our core values. That places a responsibility on Labour MPs outside the South to not only understand why the South matters, but to also ensure that the South’s concerns are not marginalised or sidelined.

The decision to continue to have “champions” in the shadow cabinet for each of the three southern regions is welcome. So too are the efforts of PLP to Win, which if successful will help ensure that the PLP has closer and better ties with the party in the South.

Labour should convene a Listening to the South commission and roadshow, to ensure that the distinctive requirements of the south are heard and reflected in the party’s forthcoming policy reviews and deliberations. The process should be outward facing, with civil bodies and experts outside the Labour family invited to participate.

During 13 years of Government only four of the 55 MPs who held Cabinet office, represented seats in the South or East (Charles Clarke, Andrew Smith, John Denham & Ben Bradshaw). Labour Government’s of the future need to look a little more southern in outlook.

Finally, Labour needs to take the South seriously as a political issue because its long term future relies on it. Over the course of the next 25 years the rest of the UK will look like the South. Indeed, our policies in Government actively sought that: increased home ownership, a high skills economy. If we don’t take seriously the need to win again in the South, then it is only a matter of time before Labour becomes a small, regional party with limited prospects of forming a national government again.


Stuart King
Labour Southern Front

No more discomfort - Labour’s Southern Future

The following is the text of a speech delivered by John Denham MP to a Southern Comfort conference held in Kent at the weekend.


It’s good to be here in Gillingham, with Paul Clark and Andrew Smith, at the launch of a Southern Comfort network in Kent.

Southern Comfort, and its predecessor, Third Place First, played a crucial role in the 1990s. Taking us from just 10 seats across eastern, south western and south eastern England in 1992 to 40 in Labour’s landslide victory just 5 years later. It couldn’t have been done without the work of Labour members on the ground. Labour members who knew the hopes, the fears and aspirations of southern voters. Who spoke about our lives and those of our friends and neighbours as we live them in this part of the country. Labour supporters who made sure that Labour wasn’t something you watched on television but a force for good, a force for change in our communities.

The hard news of course, is that we’ve got to do it all over again. I have no doubt that every single constituency in the three regions of southern England did better under Labour, than they would have done under any other party. We should never forget how we turned round the NHS, expanded university places, fixed the leaking roofs and outside toilets of village schools, or the businesses started and succesful,.

The wonderful campaign run by Hampshire mums to defend their Sure Start centres shows that Labour’s policies were popular well beyond the places that elected Labour MPs. Last week’s investment by BMW in Oxford builds on Labour’s success in attracting investment into modern manufacturing.

But we didn’t turn that into votes for Labour itself. When the global banking crisis hit; when life looked and was tougher; things got much harder for us.

Just 10 seats again across the same three regions.

As Labour showed a couple of months ago in Gravesham, we are on the way back. We gained more votes across southern England. Not yet enough, but a good enough start to give us confidence for the future.

And let’s be clear about our ambition.

Under Ed Miliband’s leadership Labour is setting out on the long journey to become a major party of southern England once again. Not just in the constituencies and councils which are most immediately in reach, but way beyond that.

Our aim is much more than winning a few marginal seats; settling for ever and a day to be a modestly performing third party in the South. But to be a major force for change.

Obviously Labour will not win everywhere straight away. But Ed Miliband knows that we won’t win even our immediate target seats unless voters across the south believe that Labour wants their support across southern England; to choose Labour to look after them in tough times; to lead local communities; to elect their MPs.

In recent month’s Ed has set out big challenges facing Britain.

The ‘squeezed middle’ - that large group of voters who feel that working hard, playing, by the rules, bringing up their children as best they can, no longer earns the fair deal it once did.

The fears that the British promise – that our children will do better than we did, just as our parents did better than their parents, and we have done better than our parents.

That sense of unfairness, those fears for the future, are being talked about across southern England. In almost every home; outside school gates. At work. The sudden loss of Pfizer was a chilling reminder that even in life sciences, one of the industries in which we thought we were world beaters, our hold on the future is not as tight as we would like.

The resentment of the squeezed middle, and the fears for the future are felt every bit as strongly here in southern England as anywhere else. In what have traditionally been the more prosperous and successful parts of the country, the tension between what people have come cto take for granted and what the future holds has never been greater. As Patrick Diamond and Giles Radice have shown, the aspirations are as high as ever, but anxiety and insecurity are high, too.

Our children, and our friends and neighbours children, find it the hardest to know how they will find a home of their own; more southern children go to university but face spiraling fees and a lifetime of debt.. George Osborne’s pursuit of cuts too far and too fast, dissected so clearly by Ed Balls on Thursday, not only threatens growth and jobs, but means we will have fewer police officers in the villages, towns, suburbs, and cities of southern England.

Families in the commuter towns have a cost of living 20% higher than the national average. And its every bit as important for us to say that as it is to know that there are communities in Britain – including some in southern England – with incomes 20% below the national average.

Faced with these challenges, Labour’s values and traditions put us in the best position to respond to southern voters’ fears and aspirations.

We know that markets create great wealth and opportunity but also insecurity and unfair rewards. That understanding gives Labour an advantage in setting out how government can shape strong private companies which pay our way in the world and offer more security at home. Neither the Tories nor the LibDems understand that – which is why the department I shadow – Vince Cable’s BIS – is so weak and hopeless in developing a serious plan for growth.

Our belief that we all do better in a society where we look out for each other, are in tune with voters who see public services being cut too far, too fast and who are being told to provide for themselves.

Earlier this week, Ed Miliband set out his belief that personal responsibility must be shown in every part of our society. Whether challenging boardroom pay which is not justified by results; or challenging those who could work but don’t.

These are Labour values. They will be recognised in every Labour area.
But they are not just Labour values. I believe they are values shared by the people in southern England too.

Because Labour has historically got less support in the south, even in the good years, a bit of a myth has developed.

That southerners are more selfish, less bothered about their neighbours, more relaxed about excessive bankers bonuses, less concerned about decent public services.

It’s not true. We know it’s no true because it’s our friends and neighbours we are talking about.

And the extensive polling done after the last election by organisations like YouGov shows that Southern voters’ attitudes on issues like taxation, the role of government, responsibility and fairness are not markedly different to voters in parts of the country where Labour gets much more support.


People who buy the myth sometimes assume that Labour in the south needs to be fundamentally different to Labour elsewhere. Not only will that not work – voters aren’t stupid and if they think we are saying one thing in one place and something different somewhere else they will be on to us in a flash. But we would be chasing a myth.

We have no difficulty in finding people who share our values. Was there any more support for selling off the forests in the south than elsewhere? Is there any more enthusiasm for breaking up the NHS? Or any more support for letting rapists off lightly?

Our challenge and our promise is to win the confidence of southern voters that Labour is the party they can trust to reflect the values they hold.

Our ambition is to establish a new Labour tradition in communities that have voted Labour for a long time or perhaps never. A Labour tradition where people not only sometimes vote Labour, but feel that Labour is as much their party as it is the party of the industrial heartlands.

We’ve always drawn strength from places with a Labour history. In Kent it may be a generation or more since anyone went down a mine or worked in a naval dockyard; it may be two generations since the ambitious families of London industrial workers moved to start a new life in the new towns around the capital. But those families, their traditions, their sense that people like us at least sometimes vote Labour has given as bedrock on which to build.

But we are no longer going to let ourselves be limited by the idea that its only those communities where Labour has the values to win. That we can only win where many people say they are working class, not the middle class that most southern voters fell they are.

There will be no ‘no go areas’ for Labour.

The Tory led Government with its Lib Dem supporters is creating a large group of Lib Dem voters, former Labour voters, and disillusioned Conservatives who want a voice. To be honest, many of them are pretty alienated from all politicians at the moment; but in the coming years they will listen to a Labour Party of people like them, a Labour Party which speaks like them.

We’ll defend our record where it should be defended. As Ed Balls made very clear this week, we’re not going to say that Labour was the architect of all Britain’s economic difficulties, just because the Tory led Government and some commentators say we should. It is not true. We will acknowledge that mistakes were made in banking regulation. We did come late to developing an active policy to develop the key industries which we enable us to compete in the global economy. But we will give no quarter in saying that this government is making the economy worse than it needs to be and is dismantling the mechanisms that were shaping a modern and competitive economy.

We did stem the huge number of unjustified asylum seekers who were coming into Kent when we came to power, but we did underestimate the scale and impact of Polish migration and were too late to introduce a points based migration system

We’ll be honest about how people came to see us as Ed Miliband did this week ‘a party founded by hard working people was seen however unfairly as the party relaxed about those ripping off our society – bankers at one end shirking financial duties and causing the financial crisis, and at the other end those on benefits abusing the system’ we cannot be relaxed about this; we must and will be a party that rewards contribution, not worklessness. A party of the grafters.

We’ll ensure that both our welfare and business policies reflect the fairness and responsibility southern voters want.

We’ll speak for the south. The south east and eastern regions make some of the largest tax contributions to the country as a whole, but have some of the lowest spending per head. We will never forget the importance of making sure that southern taxpayers get a fair deal for their taxes; to be sure that they get the security and services they pay for; that it’s not all money going to someone else.

We’ll challenge the idea that everything is so great here that there’s nothing for government to do. We stood with the Federation of Small Business when they complained that George Osborne wouldn’t give the same support to small businesses in the South East that other regions were getting. We’ve expressed the widespread anger that the land and assets of Regional Development Agencies, built up with taxpayers money, are to be flogged off in a firesale, rather than transferred to of southern councils and businesses in the Local Economic Partnerships to create jobs for local people. The closure of Pfizers matters as much to us as the loss of jobs in the steel works in Scunthorpe.

As this Parliament goes on, with its wrecking of higher education, its shambolic and wasteful disorganisation of the NHS, it’s u-turns on sentencing and its sluggish growth, we will of course set out how our values will shape the policies which will make the British promise to the rising generation real again.

And this is something we must do together here in the South. We can only do it if the Labour Party in the south is out there, listening as a well as talking, making sure that Labour Part as a whole speaks the language of the south; that what we promise rings true and speak to things southern voters care about. No one can do this for us.

We’re the ones who live here.

We've done it before. We will do it again.

Rt Hon John Denham MP is the Labour MP for Southampton Itchen and a member of the shadow cabinet.

SOUTHERN COMFORT CONFERENCE

2-5pm, Saturday 18 June
Gillingham, Kent


JOHN DENHAM MP, Southampton Itchen

ANDREW SMITH MP, Oxford East

What are the policies that will rebuild Labour support in the South East?

What are the issues we must take on?

How are we going to get the message across?

What do we all need to do to win back the South?

The event is being organised by Gillingham & Rainham Labour Party, 122 Twydall Lane, Gillingham, Kent ME8 6JU

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Look East

Former MP Bob Blizzard and political analyst Lewis Baston have published another very helpful contribution to the debate about how Labour in the East of England bounces back from last year’s terrible results. Their article, “How the east was lost…and how to win again” is published on Progressonline and is well worth a read.

Blizzard & Baston’s sobering analysis is very much on the mark although comparative analysis with results in the south east and south west suggest that Labour in the East of England outperformed their regional colleagues quite considerably.

Of the 35 constituencies Labour lost in these three regions in 2010, only ten would have returned to Labour if last month’s local election results had been replicated in a national poll. Of these ten seats all but two were in the eastern region (the others being Plymouth Sutton & Devonport and Stroud, both in the south west).

Swing to Labour

Stevena ge (11.8%)
Norwich South (10.0%)
Ipswich (8.2%)
Basildon South & Thurrock E (8.1%)
Harlow (7.5%)
Thurrock (7.1%)
Bedford (4.8%)
Waveney (3.0%)

Swing to Conservative

Great Yarmouth (2.7%)

Swing to Liberal Democrat

Watford (1.5%)

Although the council results in Harlow, Basildon and Norwich were poor, the swings achieved would have been sufficient to have retaken 3 parliamentary seats within those local authority boundaries.

As Blizzard and Baston acknowledge, the results in the east weren’t universally good, with the local election results in Great Yarmouth and Waveney recording swings to the Conservatives of 2.7% and 0.2% respectively. The swing away from Labour in Waveney came despite the fact that Labour gained eight council seats and denied the Conservatives control of the council.

Blizzard and Baston suggest “We still have to win the economic argument that our approach to deficit reduction was right and that ConDem policies are making things worse not better”. The problem, as they themselves acknowledge, is that the public’s views are now very polarised, with Tory voters very firmly blaming Labour for ‘ruining the economy'. This is the justification for their continued support for the Conservatives and explains why we failed to make the breakthrough we needed in the south last month.

Stuart King is Editor of Southern Front

Correction: An earlier version of this article listed the Waveney result as a 0.2% swing to the Conservatives. This was incorrect due to the use of inaccurate ward data. The actual result was a 3.0% swing to Labour, enough to win the seat back. Thanks to Bob Blizzard for the correct data.

Local elections review: It’s not (just) the result that counts

In the run up to this year’s local elections, I spent a little time campaigning in two Southern towns – Reading and Crawley. An analysis which just looked at seats gained or lost would suggest that the results in these two areas were “average” or “downright poor”, as the editor put it in his round up. However, I think that both campaigns were extremely encouraging, and that there is a strong case for looking beyond the results when assessing how we did.

The key things to look for in local election campaigns are not (just) the outcomes, but how the campaign was run. There are plenty of cases from the last few years where local parties made big gains in one set of elections, and then saw those swept away when the political tide turned, or when a couple of key people stepped down or reduced their level of involvement. Sustained success requires building up the number of volunteers, making the party a welcoming place for new activists, increasing levels of activity, working out campaign messages which resonate with voters and ironing out problems and barriers which limit campaigning effectiveness.

Judged by these standards, I was extremely impressed with our campaigns in both Crawley and Reading. The canvassing sessions which I went on in the run up were well organised and planned, activists were friendly and welcoming, and both parties had been successful in getting new people involved – as activists, candidates and in organising local ward campaigns. Some of the particular strengths included Crawley’s use of membersnet to plan and advertise campaigning sessions (which was how I found out about them), and Reading’s ability to produce high quality literature (which successfully criticised the Tory candidate as a “banker from Beenham”).

Even judged on results, there were successes. We won Church ward in Reading from the Tories by more than 200 votes, and Ifield ward in Crawley by 38 votes. Beyond the numbers, there were successes like the couple in Crawley who saw that we were out campaigning, asked directions to get to the polling station so that they could vote Labour, and who then joined the party and spent the afternoon volunteering to help. There were also examples of pure bad luck – we lost the neighbouring ward in Crawley by 5 votes, and two others by fewer than 100 votes each. Fewer than 200 more votes in the right places would have meant four gains rather than one. The campaigns also helped develop the skills of key activists, including excellent candidates who are now councillors like Paul Woodward in Reading and Chris Oxlade in Crawley, as well as campaign co-ordinators like Rachel Eden, Peter Lamb and many more.

In both areas, there is also a lot of scope to develop further. It was noticeable when campaigning that there were some areas where Labour has not campaigned for several years and as a result needs to sustain its work in order to build support. The newly elected councillors will need to work hard, and identify people who can stand for Labour next year and repeat their successes. And in wards where results weren’t as good as hoped for, the local parties will have to build on its campaign organising successes and not let a temporary setback deter them.

The more people that we talk to in the South, the more people will vote for us. I know many people think that the 2011 local election results were disappointing, but my experience was very, very positive. The local parties in Crawley and Reading have got the fundamentals for success – right message, right candidate, hard work - in place, and have proven that they can involve new people, campaign together and build their capacity. If they can keep doing this, then at the next General Election we will win those seats.

Don Paskini is a Labour activist in Oxford and blogs at www.don-paskini.blogspot.com

The Perfect Storm - How the Greens gained Brighton Pavilion

Thirteen years of a Labour government, ‘we (still) don’t trust the Tories’ and massive media hype launched the Greens to their narrow victory in Brighton Pavilion just over a year ago and has arguably, since led to them gaining a minority administration on Brighton and Hove Council.

The Iraq war was the tipping point with the Green vote rising from 3,806 in 2001 to 9530 in 2005. Some Labour voters, members and activists were lost for good. Some people said that those voters would have gone anyway and the Iraq war was ‘just an excuse’ but that kind of thinking is naive and exactly why we continued to lose votes – listen, acknowledge and then do something about it should have been Labour’s response but the message that went out was parental in tone, more ‘we know better’ than admitting we had got something wrong.

So with foreign policy turning off traditional Labour voters and a weak Liberal Democrat presence in Brighton, the Green strategy was simple – target the traditional Labour vote with traditional Labour policies. Roll up, roll up to keep post offices public, step this way, if you would rather spend taxpayers money on education and social care instead of Trident and identity cards.

Simple, hearts and minds arguments and it was clear there were enough like-minded voters to secure victory, but there was one, significant hurdle – voters in Brighton Pavilion, weren’t convinced the Greens could win a general election.

Enter stage left, Caroline Lucas - high profile, articulate and by the end a celebrity candidate. She played a trump card in fighting for the Greens to have a leader and combined with her elected status as an MEP, she became the natural choice for all media interviews securing herself a place on programmes like Question Time. Her profile just went up and up.

The timing was good for the Greens, the nation was clearly fed up with two party politics and the expenses scandal was sickening, especially for people on low incomes. With only one real target in the general election, the Greens didn’t miss a trick.

My public meeting on climate change with Ed Miliband was disrupted by Sussex students, resulting in the police being called. The student union paper, The Badger, reported, “Earlier that day the Green candidate for the same seat, Caroline Lucas, spoke to Sussex students and condemned the government’s education policies. She encouraged students to protest at the expansion of Heathrow airport and argued that direct action was justified if the government policies continued to ignore the environmental consequences.”

Brighton is a university town with a history of political activism, especially at Sussex University. Student numbers can swing an election in Brighton and tuition fees were a gift to the Greens. How hard can it be to decide where to place your cross on election day when there are three political positions presented; higher tuition fees from the Tories, a free university education from the Greens or, well, er…a ‘review’ from Labour. Did we forget how to do politics – why would any student vote for a review? The Greens consistently targeted the student vote and increased turnout from the universities.

As someone who didn’t get the chance to go to university, my heart lies firmly in the value of an education in itself, not as a commodity for those who can afford it, Once again, I was in a different place from Labour policy, but the local party was behind me and the traditional Labour supporters were sticking with me and that was what mattered.

It clearly bothered the Greens, they could trash New Labour, but they were having trouble undermining me. Their final tactic, a few days before the election, was for Caroline Lucas to publish an article , saying how much she respected me, but a vote for me wouldn’t get a traditional Labour voice in Parliament.

People liked the idea of an independent Green MP that wouldn’t say one thing to get your vote and then be pulled into line once they got into Parliament and this is something Labour needs to think about albeit with the realities of taking difficult decisions when in Government.

The media and the public loved the idea that the Green Party could break through and unlike the BNP, here was a political party with a clean image, proudly idealistic and saying a lot of what people wanted to hear. ‘The First Green MP’ made for a great headline and the media bought the story, massively talking up the Greens chances – this was their final hurdle and the media helped them to leap it.

So, can we regain Pavilion? For Green activists, this was a first time goal; it was not just another election. They galvanised a national campaign and aimed it principally at Brighton Pavilion and getting their first MP. Six figure donations enabled them to recruit full-time communications and campaign managers and I estimated the cost of their poster campaign alone during Labour Party Conference in Brighton cost around £30k.

To break through to Westminster generated excitement and interest – from Green party members, the media and voters. There will never be another first time and this will be a weakness in their next general election campaign.

I am proud of the campaign we ran, proud of our achievement in defying the bookies to finish second, with just 500 less votes than in 2005 and proud to have had the backing of the trade union movement.

I sought to genuinely engage with the community throughout, running local campaigns about housing, saving the local fire station, post offices and getting better facilities for young people. Campaigns were about things that mattered to local people, not just asking for their vote. We always reminded people of Labour’s achievements, but although people acknowledged these, they wanted a stronger vision of where we were going.

We worked hard to generate more Labour activism and people’s generosity was truly humbling but we had the resources of one constituency party in a marginal seat and the national party did not take the Green threat seriously.

Looking to the future, there are a lot of lessons to be learned, but I think the most important one is that the leadership recognises local Labour party members understand what works and what doesn’t, on the ground. The local Labour voice needs to be reflected in our policies and we need a mechanism that allows feedback to be used constructively not condemned as disloyalty. Elections cannot be about the stats and grimly hanging onto clearly unpopular political positions and simply arguing that a vote for anyone else will let the Tories in – that’s not good enough and in Brighton anyway, it simply won’t work.

Nancy Platts was Labour's parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion.