Civil Society and the NHS

 Who is calling for a rethink on NHS reform? Why is the government not listening?

On October 9th, around 2,000 UK Uncut activists and Health Workers staged a mass occupation of Westminster Bridge in protest against the proposed Health and Social Care Bill, which goes before the House of Lords this week. The ‘Block the Bridge, Block the Bill’ demonstration was held to draw attention to the swelling tide of public opposition against government plans to reorganise the NHS.

In drama and scale, this protest was the most impressive so far, although it was by no means the only demonstration held against the shake-up. Marches, occupations and other protests have been held up and down the country this autumn.

Yet the Coalition continues to stay the course.

Has it simply become an uncomfortable truth that our elected representatives are no longer responsive to the demands of civil society?

A central feature of liberal democracy is the presence of a vibrant civil society that articulates the desires and demands of the people and conveys them to government. Our civil society is made up of academia, activist groups, trade unions, community partnerships and consumer organisations, among others. These associations operate outside of state and government, but are supposed to play a vital role in shaping the agenda and tutoring government.

At the moment, however, it seems that no matter how loudly civil society calls for a halt to NHS reform, the government just will not listen.

On March 15th, Doctors attending the British Medical Association’s special representative meeting in London voted overwhelmingly for the withdrawal of the Health and Social Care Bill, stating that “the current plans for reform are too extreme and too rushed and will have a negative effect on the care of patients”.

On April 1st, a variety of organisations held an “All Together for the NHS” day that witnessed a number of unions and campaigners take part in actions in Stafford, Warwickshire, Wolverhampton and Stourbridge in Dudley.

This autumn saw a clamour of expert voices join the already deafening chorus of those opposed to the changes.

On September 6th, Christina McAnea of Unison said the bill at present signals the “end of the NHS”. Her concerns were echoed by representatives of think tank ‘The King’s Fund’, which said there was a “worrying lack of clarity” on the issue of greater competition.

Earlier this month, 400 public health experts signed an open letter to The Daily Telegraph calling on the Lords to reject the reforms, stating: “The government claims that the reforms have the backing of the health professions. They do not. Neither do they have the public’s support.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Others who have demanded a halt to the Bill include the NHS Confederation, BMA Chair Dr Hamish Meldrum, representatives of the Royal College of Nurses, Royal College of GPs, Royal College of Midwives and even The Archbishop of York.

When these protests are all listed together, it becomes clear that civil society is sending a loud and urgent message to reverse course.

Yet the government continues to frustrate attempts to kill the bill by exercising its right to manipulate the legislative schedule. In a scandal that has received far too few headlines, the Coalition tried to restrict the time the Lords had to debate the proposals to a single day. This for a piece of legislation that had 1,000 amendments added since its last journey through parliament.

However, the Coalition has listened to the public before and changed policy accordingly. In February, the PM shelved plans to privatise public woodland after 300,000 people signed a petition in protest of the sell-off. Michael Gove’s plan to withdraw funding from 450 school sport partnerships was delayed after Olympic athletes, head teachers and Labour MPs united in opposition against him. These reversals were both forced by the pressure placed on government by civil society.

On the issue of the NHS, however, the government remains stubborn. The reform bill has become a centrepiece of the government’s programme, and the Coalition feels safe in the knowledge that the revolt of civil society has yet to affect their electoral base.

Perhaps it is because this bill has come to symbolise the Coalition’s entire legislative programme that the government feels it cannot yield to public demand. To retreat from this would be to retreat from the whole project of state reform and thus fatally undermine the government’s purpose.

This is a radical, ideologically-driven government facing an angry, well-organised civil society. An unstoppable force is about to hit an immovable object. What will emerge when the dust settles?

Louie Woodall is a member of the Young Fabians and Assistant Editor of The Young Fabians Blog

Bankrupting the ‘Big Society’

This summer, the Department of Communities and Local Government published ‘Inspiring Communities, Changing Behaviour’.  With the backing of the slightly sinister sounding ‘Big Society Delivery and Vanguard Division’, this document serves two purposes: first, to explain the government-funded ‘Inspiring Communities’ project; second, to offer tips and guidance to those who want to launch similar outreach programmes.

However, what it represents in reality is the withdrawal of state support from community initiatives founded by the Labour government.

In 2009, the ‘Social Exclusion Task Force’ – an organ of Gordon Brown’s Cabinet Office – launched a pilot scheme to improve the aspirations and attainment of young people in some of the poorest areas in Britain. Extensive research into the long-term personal and social effects of having ‘low horizons’ and inadequate qualifications made a solution to this problem a national imperative. The report noted that “educational and career aspirations developed during adolescence can have lifelong significance, influencing future occupational outcomes.” Meanwhile, a ‘poverty of aspiration’ was linked to low attainment and below-average employment.

‘Inspiring Communities’ sought the help of community groups and neighbourhood partnerships in building activity programmes and learning projects that could make a real difference to young people’s perception of the world and themselves. 64 of the most deprived local authorities in Britain were targeted, and 15 were selected in the summer of 2009 to share a £10 million government fund. This money was put to use by local stakeholders to create innovative community programmes aimed at encouraging younger people to expand their horizons and developing their self-esteem.

In Barnsley, the local partnership used government sponsorship to expand ‘The Barnsley Academy’, an initiative that sought to inspire and motivate young people while encouraging parents to engage with their children’s future. Thetford’s partnership founded a ‘Meet-Up Cafe’ “for young people to meet and take part in a range of activities.”

Many of these schemes enjoyed great success. The ‘Meet-Up Cafe’ boasts a membership of 150 young people, who get involved in all manner of inter-generational volunteering. The Rawmarsh Neighbourhood Partnership established a panel of young ‘Community Ambassadors’ to devise a project that would both bring the community together and provide its younger members with the experience of organising and executing a medium-scale event. They settled on producing a music festival, which goes live later this year.

The effect of such programmes on young people cannot be underestimated. During the evaluation stage of the programme, 38% of questionnaire respondents “felt their campaign had made a big difference to young people’s attitudes and behaviour”, with 62% responding that it had made “some difference”. A number of case studies included in the report testify to the positive influence these campaigns have had on the aspirations and motivations of young people.

The success of the programme has been rebranded by the current government as the adventurous vanguard of the Big Society in action. ‘Inspiring Communities, Changing Behaviour’ contains plenty of practical tips and guidelines to help budding social entrepreneurs establish their own partnerships and launch their own schemes.

However, the language used near the end of the document betrays how the Coalition is seemingly offering opportunity on the one hand, while withdrawing it with the other. The report admits that “government funding ended in March 2011”, forcing the initiatives set up under the scheme to source income from “local partners” in the private sector.

Elsewhere, it is left unclear how certain activities are supposed to continue over the coming months. On one activity targeting NEETs in North East Lincolnshire, the report states “it is hoped the work will be sustained through a partnership with a local college.” The impression is that many of these projects have been thrown into limbo and forced to fight on their own for survival.

‘Inspiring Communities’ thus serves as an example of the paradoxes that lie at the heart of the Coalition’s ‘Big Society’ project. Individuals and partnerships who have established working programmes in their local area are held up as community champions. The government provides advice and ‘how to’ guides for those who seek to emulate them. However, it would appear that the government is wilfully ignorant of the fact that the programmes in Thetford, Barnsley and Rawmarsh were all financed by the state, and require more money to survive.

Yes, the government should do its bit to create a climate where individuals and partnerships are encouraged to do more in their local area for young people. But it still remains the case that the state can do the greatest good by providing funds to those who seek to improve their communities. All projects need an idea and money to become reality.

Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ is asking people to find both for themselves.

Louie Woodall is a Young Fabian member and Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog.

• Further reading: Inspiring Communities: Customer Insight Research Report, Inspiring Communities, Changing Behaviour: A Guide, Aspirations and Attainment in Deprived Communities

Labour Women’s Conference – what women want

The Labour Women’s Conference in Liverpool today is its own justification. Numerous people over the past few weeks, within the opposition and media, and disappointingly within the Labour Party itself, have queried the need for a separate women’s event. If women want to be mainstreamed, isn’t the best way to do that to make their views heard within the framework of the mainstream party conference?

But the discussions today have amply demonstrated the need for a dedicated space for women in the Labour movement to discuss the serious issues facing us in Britain today. This is more necessary than ever during the current cuts, with women suffering disproportionately as both public service users and as public sector workers.

Yvette Cooper in her rousing keynote speech, and Fiona Mctaggart and others in the subsequent panels, highlighted just how badly women are doing under the Coalition government, and how the gains made through the hard work of women in the Labour movement over the past 60 years are being threatened and undone across the board.

As Angela Eagle MP put it “this government has a problem with women.” Well, we have a problem with this government.

Hard-won rights and services are being undone by a government that has just four women in its Cabinet, and that – as a recent leaked memo revealed – canvassed women’s opinions not through serious consultation and representation but by rounding up the few women in Number 10 for a brainstorm of ‘what women want’.

If we’d been asked we could have easily told the Coalition.

What women want is the ability to work and raise a family, or to do just one of these, without being vilified or disadvantaged.  What women want is the right not to be raped, stalked or harassed at work and to be able to prosecute successfully if they are. What women want is fair representation in public life.

And what we need is the support and encouragement of the Party- and the right to self-organise in women forums and yes, at Labour Women Conferences – until such a time as what we want becomes a reality.

Claire Leigh is Treasurer of the Young Fabians

The policy challenges of coalition politics

In this member post, Young Fabian member Larry Smith looks at how the Government is adapting policy to meet the challenges of political action.

The nature of Coalition politics and the relationship between the ruling parties has had a major impact on policymaking over the course of the last year. Flagship pieces of legislation such as NHS reform have had their character fundamentally altered as Liberal Democrat members seeking tangible political ‘wins’ clash with Tory MPs fighting for authority within the government. Andrew Lansley’s initial plan to reduce costs by encouraging the NHS regulator, Monitor, to promote competition was diluted in the face of opposition among the Lib Dem grassroots, as was the scope for private providers to cherrypick patients. Conversely, Tory demands for their party to ‘hold the line’ have seen them awarded certain microconcessions: in spite of GP concerns, a large number of community and mental health services are set to go out to competitive tender by next September, albeit to qualified providers.

This battle for the upper hand can be expected to affect the direction of other pieces of legislation as both parties look to prevent their supporters from becoming disaffected with the Coalition’s overall trajectory.

Alongside this, more traditional political imperatives have distorted the development of policy, most obviously the desire of individual ministers to boost their reputations. This can be seen in other major parts of the Coalition’s agenda, most notably its reform of student funding. A controversial cap on tuition fees was advocated strongly by Lib Dem minister Vince Cable, who had been criticised for endorsing the Coalition and failing to persuade his colleagues to back a graduate tax. But the £9,000 limit was also driven through by Cable’s Tory subordinate David Willetts, a One Nation moderniser anxious not to lose his reputation as a champion of social mobility. The result of the policy – universities at the bottom end of the system charging students the maximum price for entry, with the Government in turn forced to cut higher education funding to provide undergraduates with loans was not what either man intended. But it was a consequence of them attempting to defer short-term political pain in order to maintain their positions within their respective parties and in Westminster at large.

At the same time, there is an extent to which institutions of government have helped the Coalition transcend political pressures and work out coherent responses to policy challenges.

The Cabinet in particular has served a useful purpose in encouraging ministers to consider issues on their own merits, allowing them to take a clear-headed approach to problems such as Libya. The debate over whether or not to intervene militarily was heated but noticeable for its lucidity, with leading figures discussing action without recourse to the impact it might have on them politically. And importantly, it resulted in the Coalition taking a clear and decisive stand against Cnl Gaddafi’s mistreatment of civilians.

Just days after ministers agreed on an approach, the UK was playing a key role in securing a UN resolution and in planning operations to ensure the city of Benghazi did not witness mass slaughter. The Cabinet has not always fulfilled such a positive role: it was largely irrelevant during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq and did not help the last Labour Government react consistently to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. But its status as a forum for dialogue between the two parties, coupled with the Prime Minister’s willingness to act as a ‘chairman of the board’ may have helped enhance its position as a policymaking body in the eyes of senior ministers.

If Coalition Government is teaching us anything it is that policies still depend on politics to get from paper to the outside world. Flexibility, a clear focus on core policy objectives, political buy-in (especially from your own colleagues) and room for negotiation have all become pre-requisites – key lessons for Labour moving forward.

Larry Smith is a member of the Young Fabians.

Is Britain constitutionally challenged?

In this guest post, Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan MP, sets the scene for a speech he will give tomorrow on the British constitution at a joint Young Fabians/Society of Labour Lawyers event in London.

Labour’s 13 years in power were a period of major constitutional change for Britain – devolution for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and London; introduction of the Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act, creation of a Supreme Court; separation of the senior judiciary from our second chamber; and the removal of all but 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords. The list goes on.

But while our record stands tall, I also recognise that we left some areas of constitutional change unfinished.

We’re now faced with a government who are playing with our constitution in a way which is not in the nation’s best interests, but is simply about preserving the harmony of the coalition.

Parliament length is being fixed at five years, boundaries are being re-drawn and the number of MPs reduced by 50 – all to favour one, or both, of the coalition partners, riding roughshod over our constitution. Other issues which are contentious between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have been kicked into the long-grass – again, to ensure harmony within the government rather than what is in the country’s best interests.

Our constitution deserves better than changes made simply to satisfy the short-term, partisan needs of this coalition.

A future Labour Government will be left with the challenge of putting the pieces back together and restoring public confidence in our constitution. But we must also continue the modernisation of our democratic structures that we started when in power – looking at improving and widening participation in democracy, devolving of power and whether the country might be better served by a written constitution.

Rt. Hon Sadiq Khan MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice (with special responsibility for constitutional reform)

Introducing our 2011 Policy Commissions

The Young Fabians will soon be launching four Policy Commissions. Our Policy Commissions form the backbone of our policy work and since their inception they have increasingly become strong access points for our members into the policy making process of the Labour Party.

This year we launch the Commissions at a crucial time for Labour. With a thorough examination of party policy under the stewardship of Liam Byrne MP, there is a timely opportunity for our members to take a firm grasp of the chance to offer Labour our ideas on the party’s policy renewal. The process we are undertaking will be a vehicle for our members to develop their ideas and test their suggestions which we will offer into Liam’s Fresh Ideas policy review.

Over the coming months, four Young Fabian members will lead informed debates and discussions, open to all Labour supporters which will result in our submission to Labour’s Policy Review and a Young Fabian Pamphlet setting out our ideas for Labour’s future policy offer.

Our four commissions will look at:

1. Renewing and Reforming Our Economy – Maneesh Sharma and Graeme Henderson

The task of this group will be to investigate the path Labour should take to build a more sustainably prosperous economic settlement for Britain. It will investigate the need for an active industrial strategy, the fairness divide in our economy, job creation and productivity. It also will look towards opportunities in the green economy and in new and emerging markets as well as looking to incentives for business to break out of the ‘low pay low skill’ cycle.

2. Building Stronger Communities - Richard Angell and Anas Sarwar MP

This group will look at the strength and resilience of British community life in the modern world. It will investigate how families across the country are working harder for longer for less. The consequence of this for family life and community activism will be explored. It will also look at the challenge of how communities are empowered into the political process so that citizens become stakeholders in their communities and in national life.

3. Securing the Future of the Next Generation – Joani Reid

Ed Miliband has stated that “the British Promise, that the next generation would always do better than the last, is now under threat like never before.” The key challenge of this Commission will be to investigate how young Britain is coping with the consequences of government fiscal retrenchment. Facing debt, a difficult labour market and a challenging housing market, the next generation of Britain is under huge pressure. This commission will look at how Labour should respond to the challenges facing the next generation.

4. Labour and the World – Debbie Moss

Foreign affairs is at transformative moment and this group will explore Labour’s role in the World. It will span aid policy in a time of austerity, to security in the context of defence cuts and the criteria for military intervention in fragile states and the balance between domestic security and external stability. Labour in the World will look at Britain’s relationships to other states and institutions and how we form an ethical foreign policy and learn lessons from past conflicts.

Young Fabian members have much to offer these four big policy areas.

Please sign up to join our Policy Commissions and join in the debate about Labour’s future policy offer.

Together we look forward to offering the Labour Party a series of new, fresh and robust ideas.

Brian Duggan is Young Fabian Policy Officer.

The Future of the Fabians: 3 suggestions

Fabianism is older than the Labour Party. Its tradition stems back before the Labour Representation Committee, before Keir Hardie and before version one of Clause 4. And yet Fabianism was crucial to every Labour government since it formed the party and must still be crucial to contributing to the formation of the next Labour government.

Sunder Katwala moves on from his service to the society and leaves it at time of renewal across the Labour Party. The Fabians and the Labour Party will both have new General Secretaries in 2011 and both individuals will have the challenges of making their organisations adapt to opposition.

Young Fabians and Young Labour members should rise to this moment and to Ed Miliband’s assertion that a new generation has taken over the party. In 2010 over 190 of the Society’s 320 new members were Young Fabians.

So here are three suggestions I would offer to the new Fabian General Secretary as an active member of the Young Fabians:

1. Membership is more than paying your subs

The Young Fabians pride ourselves on being an inclusive organisation, where being a member means more than receiving a magazine and pamphlet in the post each month and going to conferences. Young Fabian members are encouraged to attend social events, contribute to policy commissions, join in online debates, write for our blog and for our magazine. We strive to make our members feel part of an organisation of like minded young people that they have ownership of and a space where they can debate and offer ideas. There is more the senior society can do to foster a sense that Fabians are part of a tradition, a community, a movement, where their ideas are valued and contribute to the future of the Labour party.

2. Campaigning is an important part of politics

Whilst we’re unashamed of being part of “pamphlet labour” and talking policy is our usp, the Young Fabians have a great tradition of being young campaigners as well as young thinkers. For local, general, European elections and even the US and Swedish General Elections, the Young Fabians have hit the #labourdoorstep and given the shoe leather needed to win elections for Labour candidates. There is a time for pamphlets and a time for action and the Young Fabians are as proud of our canvassing as of our policy and research. Without campaigning, Labour candidates would never get elected and our policies would stay in pamphlet books rather than getting on to the statue book.

3. Politics happens outside London

After some deserved criticism and a lot of hard work, the Young Fabians have made huge strides at improving our reach outside of London. The key lesson we learned, wasn’t to mandate a largely London based Executive to travel up and down the country running meetings. It was to learn that empowering non-London based members to run events with advice and guidance was more productive and brought better results. We still have further to go on this but there is much to be gained from empowering Fabians to run their activities, with relevant support, wherever they are. The new General Secretary should build and develop the Fabian local societies, encouraging them to become active parts of the Labour party in the regions and areas they work.

I’m sure there are more ideas that other Young Fabians would like to add to the debate about the future of the Fabians. Please join the debate and submit your contribution here.

Brian Duggan is Policy Officer for the Young Fabians.

What is government for?

This isn’t a glib question. Or the start of some quest for anarchy. Rather, it strikes me that this is the one question which is absent from much of the noise about deficits and cuts and economic policies.

Politicos claim the state is either too big or not doing enough, too powerful or not powerful enough, and that is either a good thing or a bad thing (or you’re indifferent), depending on your tribe. Cuts are either good because they reduce the deficit or the amount of tax payable, or they are bad because some people use the services or it will affect employment.

Economists aren’t much better. Theorists either claim that the only way to stave off impoverishment the likes of which we’ve never seen before is to engage in a slash-and-burn fiscal policy, or they claim that only way to reduce debt is to spend more, presumably on roads and infrastructure which may or may not be used.

But surely discussions around what to cut and when should be second order to a view of what government is actually for? Where intervention is desirable and necessary? And how best to implement any intervention? Economic policy should flow from this, rather than the other way round.

In some senses the role of the government is implicit in much of the discourse, but it isn’t explicit. And in any event, the cart appears before the horse.

We’re in a state where the dominant political ideology is defined by the direction of public expenditure, not about why, where or how the state intervenes. And the opposition to that ideology is just that – pure opposition to an ideology, with no tangible sense of what the government ought to do either.

In my mind this leads to some pretty perverse outcomes. For example – surveys claiming public sector workers, if made redundant, would struggle to find new employment being used as a justification to keep them on the public payroll (it’s not clear to me this is an unambiguously good thing); or cuts to existing benefits whose wider consequences seem ill-considered relative to the benefit the taxpayer derives.

Seemingly, not being able to articulate a vision for government beyond the amount it contributes to public expenditure is a problem for the right. And not being able to articulate a vision for government which justifies its contribution to public expenditure is a problem for the left.

Of course, it might be naively optimistic to hope for anything different.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

What are the Lib Dems for?

This morning, Danny Alexander repeated a line on BBC Radio 5 Live used by Vince Cable a few weeks ago:

“We didn’t win the election. We came third. We’re part of a coalition government. We’ve worked to ensure that as part of the discussions we’ve had that we’ve got a system that is fairer, more progressive.”

I’m not sure this will be a fruitful line for Liberal Democrat Ministers to use in respect of tuition fees, or any other difficult policy discussions they’ll have in the coming years*.

Firstly, it implies that, in the extreme, it is acceptable for two (or more) political parties to campaign on one set of policy proposals but – in the event of a hung Parliament – to ignore all of them in order to form a Government with a working majority. Is that really democratic?

Now if that isn’t what Alexander or Cable meant, then surely their position has to be that Liberal Democrat MPs will support policies on those areas where there is common agreement between the two coalition parties, and on any other issues/policy proposals they’ll abstain from voting or argue they should be left off the agenda for this Parliament.

But that’s not what they’re proposing on tuition fees. At the very least they’re proposing that Lib Dem ministers – the government bit of the Parliamentary party – votes one way, and the rest can do what they want. This would technically be consistent with the statement in the Coalition Agreement on fees:

“If the response of the Government to Lord Browne’s report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote.”

However, it does invite the question: what are Liberal Democrat ministers for if they abandon their policy platform for Government office? Are they even technically Liberal Democrats?

It implies that the role of the Lib Dems in the Coalition is to (a) provide a working majority for the Conservatives and (b) make essentially Conservative proposals a bit fairer. That makes the Lib Dems look a bit pathetic really, and is contrary to the posturing of Nick Clegg and others about their role in the Coalition (see Clegg’s conference speech, for example).

Secondly, it weakens the positive argument FOR policies which were in their manifesto. In future, Lib Dems might well argue that policy X is right and was something that was in their manifesto at the last election for which they have a mandate. But it seems a fair response to say that it is irrelevant what policy proposals they had in their manifesto on the basis that they didn’t win the election – they came third.

They can’t have it both ways with respect to their manifesto.

The Lib Dems really need to work on the justification for this political car crash.

*More of this sort of stuff and the likelihood of the current Government lasting a full Parliament will probably reduce.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

Right stupidity

In this Guest Post, Young Fabian member Christine Quigley takes issue with calls for “a leader of the Labour right”.

For ten minutes, we were all playing nice. Labour had elected a new leader, and Party Conference saw a swell of support for (not-quite-Red) Ed from all sections of the party. Most of us were just relieved that the long wait was over, and that we could begin the serious work of winning back the country from the Conservatives, rather than sniping at rival supporters over Twitter. For me at least, the Manchester conference this year embodied a feeling that we were all on the same side.

A feeling that lasted right up until I read Sion Simon’s blogpost yesterday about the need for a leader of the Labour Right.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Labour Right has a leader. His name’s Ed Miliband. He’s the same leader as everyone else in the party has.

Calls like Sion Simon’s do nothing but further foster factions within the party. Debate is good; division is not. We need only to look at Labour’s implosion into internal wrangling after the 1951 and 1979 election defeats to know how disastrous this sort of infighting can be. Just last week, some Conservatives were attempting to capitalise on disaffected David Miliband supporters by extending the warm hand of friendship (and an invitation to join the party). I have great faith in all those who supported the defeated leadership candidates to back our new leader; putting party over petty factionalism.

We have always been a party that accommodates different voices, and we are stronger for it. It’s crucial that important decisions and policy positions that we take up over the next few years are discussed and debated, to ensure that we’re getting them right. But the scattergun support picked up by the leadership candidates itself demonstrated how individuals can cross factional boundaries. Setting up a candidate to channel right-wing dissent isn’t helping anyone. (And really – Ed Balls?) We have to stop talking about right and left and start talking about what we all believe in; fairness, equality and justice.

So, whether you’re a unilateral-nuclear-disarmament, nationalise-it-all, dyed-in-the-wool red, or the palest pink ultra-Blairite, now is the time to redouble your support for Ed Miliband and the new Shadow Cabinet team. We won’t all agree on everything the party leadership does over the next four-and-a-half years, but we can agree on one thing; Britain is better under a Labour Government. That’s something we all need to fight for.