For political anoraks, it will be a quiz question for years to come: who were Josephine, Xiomara and Gareth? And for a bonus point, perhaps: who were Stephen, Paul, Claire and Angela?
Got it yet? Josephine (a cleaner), Xiomara (a dishwasher) and Gareth (“high up in a software company”) were the people Ed Miliband had bumped into and whom he talked about in his much-derided Labour party conference speech, his last as party leader, a year ago. Stephen, Paul, Claire and Angela submitted the four issues that Jeremy Corbyn, Miliband’s successor, put to David Cameron at their first head-to-head at prime minister’s questions.
Corbyn’s evocation of popular concerns seems to have gone down rather better than Miliband’s. Whether he continues the experiment remains to be seen. But here’s a list of three other people he should talk to and whose problems he should take up as a priority if Labour is to prove an effective opposition: step forward Alan, Jim and Kath.
The pundits tell us that if Labour is to prove not just an effective opposition, but a government in 2020, it must win back the bellwether Midlands seat of Nuneaton. It was when the Nuneaton result came through on the night of the May general election, showing not a Labour gain but a 3% swing to the Conservatives, that Miliband’s team knew the game was up.
Alan Franks is managing director of Nuneaton and Bedworth council. It’s a typical borough facing typical challenges: the big local issues in recent days have been unauthorised Traveller camps, an announcement of the closure of two Co-op stores, and complaints of a “mystery stench” hanging over Nuneaton town centre. Above all, though, the council is wrestling with the consequences of a 44% cut in government grant since 2010 and, with more of that to come, a forecast deficit of £1m (on its £15m general fund) in 2016-17 and £1.7m in 2017-18.
This year, the council hopes to scrape through by retendering its leisure services contract to save £850,000 a year and transferring the running of a sports centre to an academy school, saving a further £70,000. But options like that are running out.
Jim Graham is chief executive of Warwickshire council, which runs Nuneaton’s countywide services such as social care, education, roads and libraries. His council is planning cuts rising to £92m a year over the next three years, involving the probable loss of 600 jobs, including firefighters. Adult social care services – residential care, homecare, day centres, direct payments for older and disabled people – will lose £18m annually by 2018.
And Kath Kelly is acting chief executive of Nuneaton’s George Eliot hospital NHS trust, described last year by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, as “a glowing success story” after coming out of special measures and winning a “good” rating from the Care Quality Commission inspectorate.
However, the trust is now “overperforming against planned activity”, as the bean-counters put it, and in the month of July spent almost £1.3m buying in agency workers to cover vacancies. It had been planning to run a £16m deficit in 2015-16, making savings of £6.8m, but has been instructed by NHS England to find a further £2.1m to get the deficit below £14m. With the mounting deficit already outstripping the original plan, the trust’s finance director delicately describes this as “challenging”.
Corbyn’s Labour party has got to have meaningful things to say to Alan, Jim and Kath, as well as to public services leaders across the UK, if it is to be a credible opposition. It won’t be enough to focus on the post-2020 big picture, to come up with sweeping, stirring policy declarations – against privatisation, for council housing, for a full living wage – if the party fails to engage in the detail of the day-by-day dismantling of the 1948 welfare state under the flag of continuing austerity.
Organisers of many fringe events at this week’s Labour conference were completely in the dark about what newly appointed shadow ministers were going to argue on issues of the day. For that matter, many shadow ministers themselves were, too. This year, a party in radical transition will have the benefit of the doubt. Next year, it won’t.
