FORUM: With Ed Miliband as leader, Labour’s new generation is ready for the fight

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Published: 1 October, 2010
by EMILY THORNBERRY

Humble about its past and idealistic about its  future, Labour has moved on. Its aim must now be to help create the good society

LISTENING to Ed Miliband’s speech to Labour conference in Manchester this week, I felt we had got our party back.

I got to know Ed well working for him when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. It was clear to me that he was a star. So after May’s elections I urged him to run for leadership and helped run his campaign – a campaign that had a fair few Islington Labour members in key roles. For it all to culminate in the leader’s speech he gave is thrilling.

When Ed spoke in Manchester, he said the new generation that now leads our party is humble about our past and idealistic about our future. Ed praised our record on the minimum wage, tax credits, investment in schools and the NHS. But he had the confidence to say the last government was wrong on Iraq, City regulation and 90 days detention. 

I am someone who has long shared these criticisms and campaigned within the party to persuade others of them. So it was a proud moment for me to hear our leader saying what he did. We have certainly moved on.

Ed made it clear he is serious about cutting the deficit. But he was also clear we should only do this in a context of investment, growth and jobs – not an ideological drive to slash the state with deep and irresponsibly savage cuts. 

He understands the need to reform welfare, but also the need to oppose arbitrary cuts that will hurt those in greatest need. Above all, we must be fair to those who share none of the blame for the collapse of the banks.

Above all, Ed showed that he profoundly believes government must play its part in creating the good society. And it is in this that Ed offers an optimistic and credible alternative to the coalition government.

The government’s coalition agreement has Cameron and Clegg declaring the days of big government are over – to be replaced by the ill-defined idea of a big society. Clegg seems to have been on a long journey, saying earlier this month that his party was not “a sort of left-wing conscience of the Labour Party”. They seem to share a depressing pessimism about the power of politics to change society for the better, and are using the deficit to justify decimating the state.

People now have Ed’s optimistic alternative. As he said in his speech, a new generation has taken charge of the Labour party. And we are up for the fight.

• EMILY THORNBERRY is Islington South and Finsbury Labour MP.