Young Fabians PPC Week: Join the Debate

Gareth Gould is Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) for South Holland and the Deepings.

Why Labour can win and why the country needs a centre-left government

For us progressives, there was never any doubt that the path to true freedom and social justice involves an interventionist role for the enabling state.

In Victorian times, municipal government expanded because people realised that individuals by themselves could not build sewage systems or other major public works for the industrialised cities. It was the common experiences of the Great Depression and World War Two which led to the creation of the welfare state. In 1997, New Labour was given an overwhelming mandate to introduce a national minimum wage and New Deal. And now amidst the current downturn, Labour is not walking by on the other side – in marked contrast with the last Tory Government.

The Conservatives, however, have chosen to draw the wrong lessons from the recession – as Gordon Brown said, they have called wrong on the key issue of the day. Butler and Macmillan may have embraced a more active welfare state, but no-one could claim they were socialists; by contrast David Cameron, despite cloaking himself in the soft wool of compassionate Conservatism as some kind of ‘heir to Blair’, has reverted to wolf-like Thatcherite type. For the Conservatives revel in what they regard as a pretext posed by the recession for slash & burn – ‘shock & awe’ – cuts in public services that would make any 1950s One Nation Tory turn in their grave!

Labour should be heartened that the battle lines for the General Election have been drawn by Cameron’s ruthless assault on the role of the state in his Manchester speech, with the Liberal Democrats merely crowing that Osborne’s austerity package is “Lib Dem-lite”.

We should have the confidence of our convictions – “that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone” – on the basis of our record since 1997, and our future offer to the electorate in tackling the big long-term challenges of job creation, climate change, energy security, and care for the elderly.

It is when we demonstrate to voters that pressing need for a centre-left government that Labour can then win that truly historic fourth term.