Ben Bradshaw: I make no apologies for having the hunger to win elections
For years, politics has suffered from declining party memberships. Now, as a result of Labour’s leadership election, we are in a position that other parties will eye enviously – more than 550,000 people will be able to help to choose our new leadership team, of which 120,000 are new supporters. Responding to this surge presents a challenge and an opportunity for the party. We must harness the enthusiasm for change that this rise in political engagement represents.
We must also rise to the challenge of binding this new movement to the one thing that distinguishes Labour from the left ecosystem of protest and pressure groups – our electoral purpose. The Labour party was set up, and continues to exist, in order to change the country by being elected at every level of government in the UK. Too often in this campaign, the conversation has veered away from what the people of our country want to see from us.
The accusation has been thrown at me, especially in the echo chamber of Twitter, that I am “obsessed with winning”. My first thought is always the same: damn right I want to win. I don’t believe for a second that winning is an abdication of our principles – it is the key to delivering our principles. The biggest betrayal of our values and of those who need a Labour government would be letting the Tories stay in power. We cannot change our country for the better, cannot implement policies that make the lives of people in our country better, without winning.
But winning is something that we haven’t been very good at over the last two general elections. While we made some impressive gains in May’s election – in Ilford North, Hove, Lancaster and a few others – in most seats where we needed to beat the Tories, Labour went backwards. Nowhere exemplifies this more than the south, outside of London, where, out of a total of 197 MPs, I am just one of 12 who are Labour. Here and across England and Wales, four of the five voters we need to win back form a majority in 2020 voted Conservative on 7 May.
The challenge then for our party, new leader and deputy, will be to rediscover a winning combination of values, trust, competence, and the hunger to win elections so that we can actually change our country and the world around us for the better.
Stella Creasy: We have to become a movement again, not a machine
We all heard the same challenge at the election – “why vote – you are all the same”. Outside our party, too few think Labour is a broad movement of people committed to social justice. They either don’t know about the hard work of Labour councillors and campaigners, or think their local team does a good job but that the rest of the party isn’t like that.
To change Britain for the better, we need to change ourselves. We need to build a different relationship with the public – one that’s about serving our cause and our communities every day, demonstrating how we can build the country Britain could be. And to do that we have to become a movement again, instead of a machine. That means drawing on the talents of all those who are in our party – new and old – and not just to deliver leaflets. Instead we should harness their energy and enthusiasm for social justice in our campaigning and policy-making.
To lead this requires a deputy leader who isn’t in the backrooms of Westminster, but out on the frontline helping win back the public to our cause. We can’t wait until the next election to show that we are not just an opposition to this government, but an alternative. My track record speaks for itself. I’ve helped Labour run successful campaigns, cracking down on Wonga and online harassment, and I’m already training the next generation of activists. Changes like these happen when we organise and show that we have answers to the challenges our communities face, even if we aren’t in office. Just imagine what we can achieve in government.
We also need to make sure we get our own house in order when it comes to equality. The challenge for our party is to find new ways to get more women from a wider range of backgrounds into public life because we will all benefit from the contribution they will make. I’m standing for a leadership role myself, not because we need just one more woman, but many.
I’m proud to have backing from constituency Labour parties, councillors, MSPs, assembly members, MEPs and MPs from every nation and region. If we work together I know that we can get people excited about our movement. We can again become an election-winning party of which people are proud to say they are a part. Let’s put the fire and faith back into Labour.
Winning campaigns and rebuilding our movement – that is my offer to Labour.
Angela Eagle: We need to make Labour a vehicle of hope for the people failed by this government
The Labour party has changed over the summer and whatever the result on Saturday we need to recognise it. Members and supporters, for the first time since 1994, have been unshackled from the centrally imposed straightjacket to debate policy, share bold ideas and speak up on issues that have been taboo in Labour for too long. As a result we’ve seen thousands of new members and registered supporters who have been disenfranchised by politics feeling hopeful once more.
I said at the start of my campaign to be deputy leader that this debate was long overdue and if I am elected I will further welcome the involvement of members and supporters and give them more influence over how we operate. Why? Because we need to capture this new enthusiasm and make use of our party members much more.
I will give more say to Labour councillors at a national level and I’ll work more closely with our brilliant grassroots activists. I also want to make sure that the parliamentary Labour party is more reflective of the society we live in. This means recruiting more female candidates, along with Bame and LGBT people, and candidates with disabilities. And, let’s face it, we need to increase working-class representation in parliament too. All of this can make Labour stronger, and by working together we can be the best campaigning force in Britain and defeat this ideologically extreme rightwing Tory government in 2020.
We must also be bold in policy terms. We must put forward new ideas and robustly challenge the Tories’ ideologically driven economic agenda. It is down to us to highlight how the economy under Cameron and Osborne is failing millions of people in Britain for whom life is getting even tougher. Of course, we’ve got a job to do of winning back support from those who didn’t support us in 2015 but we don’t have to swallow the Tories’ economic myths to do that.
As deputy leader, I will make sure that Labour remains a vehicle of hope for the millions of people being failed by this government. I will also get to work on building on this new-found enthusiasm for Labour politics by bringing together a huge new movement on the left – including workers, trades unionists and affiliates – to reach out to the millions of non-voters who have been marginalised by politics for far too long.
Caroline Flint: I will connect with a wide group of people to whom politics seem irrelevant
My mum was a lone parent at 17; I never knew my real dad. We never owned a home. Twice in my teens I had to live away from home; the second time because of my mum’s alcoholism – an illness that would kill her. Going to university was not my destiny, it was an escape. By my mid-20s I was a single mum with two children under two and on benefits. I know what it’s like to need a Labour government.
My mum inspired me to join the Labour party. I wanted to do something to help women like her and others who, for whatever reason, are made to feel they aren’t good enough. Or for children whose hopes and dreams are limited by who their parents are or their postcode.
But if we are going to help the people that most need a Labour government, if we are going to abolish the bedroom tax or establish a real living wage, we need the support and wealth that’s created by others – the consent of those whose taxes pay for policies we seek to implement.
The challenge is not just about the centre ground, it’s about the ground to the south, to the north. We have to better understand what life is like for people living in our small towns, seaside resorts and suburbs, outside of our big cities. We have to show that wanting to get on in life, to work hard, to make something of yourself, and to hope for a better future for your family, have always been an essential part of Labour’s reason for being and always will be.
It will take both heart and head to get Labour back, winning the big arguments. I want a party organisation that puts us in better shape to win. We must rediscover Labour’s voice, especially in communities where we do not have, and may never have, a Labour MP. We must be a grassroots movement, not a Westminster elite, using the skills, experiences and contacts our members and supporters can share.
Who I am, driven by a passion for equality and social mobility, makes me determined that Labour looks and sounds like the country we aspire to govern. We need a deputy leader to lead our campaigns, deputise for the leader and fight our corner in the media, especially on difficult days. But it is also an opportunity to elect someone who connects with a wider group of people for whom politics can seem irrelevant. I can be that deputy leader.
Tom Watson: I won’t apologise for Labour’s achievements
I want the Labour party leadership to be closer to our members. We can only win if we harness the enthusiasm, energy and passion for change that Labour members around the country have demonstrated over the last four months. They have made this leadership contest exhilarating. We wanted a real debate and that’s what we’ve had: real, old-fashioned politics, with packed halls and passionate argument. It’s been a privilege to be a part of it.
Labour’s expanded membership can be a platform for changing the country. But we need a party machine that serves members; not members subjugated to the party machine. We need a digital revolution in our party that makes it easier for members to initiate policy discussions and share ideas. And we need to organise in the communities we seek to represent so voters know that the Labour party exists to help them change the things that matter to them.
I have some ideas about how we can do that. I want members to tell us what we should debate in parliament on opposition days. I want to spend a lot more time outside Westminster, listening to members. I want our national executive committee to ensure the diversity of our country is reflected in the parliamentary Labour party. We need more female and Bame MPs, more working-class MPs and we need to empower more people with disabilities to become Labour MPs.
We also need to celebrate our history. The biggest political myth of the last decade is the one peddled by the Tories when they falsely claim Labour caused the global financial crash. If I’m deputy, lies like that won’t go unchallenged. We made some mistakes in government but we also utterly transformed our country after 18 years of Tory cynicism. And then spent five years apologising for it.
Let’s not do that again. Let’s be proud of what we achieved in government, be optimistic about what we can offer and cherish the diversity in our party. The end of a four-month leadership election might not be the obvious time to say it, but we’re bigger than individuals and personalities. We’re a century-old movement of millions. With the right direction and the right organisation we can win again in 2020.
