On any basis Labour has been a successful and a progressive Government. 

• 2 million more jobs and long-term youth unemployment virtually eliminated
• the only Government of any major developed nation investing more public money in health and education every year as a proportion of national income
• an end to the worst pensioner poverty
• leading the world on fighting poverty in Africa
• and a host of seminal changes from nearly trebling numbers of women MPs, the first black Cabinet Ministers and Muslim MPs and gay rights
• the minimum wage
• House of Lords reform and,
• devolution

Most of these advances would alone justify a Labour Government. Together they add up to a massive advance for progressive politics.  

Let me turn to Scotland.  

We are intent on creating a Scotland of opportunity and ambition. Scotland has already started to reverse the brain drain. 

We are attracting fresh talent.

We are tackling the booze and blade culture. 

We have had enough, too, of sectarian prejudice.

We are not afraid to say that a racially and culturally more diverse Scotland will be a better Scotland. 

We are banning smoking in every public place in Scotland from March next year 

And in the UK as a whole, where do we stand after eight years in Government?  

To govern over long periods of time requires an understanding of the downside and upside of being in Government.

Government means tough decisions that may offend people.

It means being unable to engage in the fudge, the ambiguity, the lazy thinking and the indulgences, that, in Opposition is all too easy.

It means aiming for respect rather than affection. 

It means asking people to change not simply in theory, but in reality.  

Politics today is conducted in an often frenzied atmosphere where many more column inches can be devoted to a politician’s private life than to whether the country has the right services or the world has the right policy on climate change.  

Therefore, there arises a dangerous gap between the issues people want to hear politicians talk about, and what they actually hear about the world of politics.

People can become disenchanted with politics and politicians worn down by trying to get a hearing for the issues that really matter to them.  

But despite all that, recall the big picture. 

The values battle has largely been won by progressives. 

Those values endure.

But how social justice, equality, opportunity for all will be achieved, must change with a changing world.  

The fundamental dividing line between Labour and the Tories is that we believe that economic dynamism and social justice can, and must, go together.

A very long tale of human suffering in the form of unemployment or poverty is never a price worth paying.

These dividing lines do not change – they endure. 

Meeting the Challenge from the Tories 

Labour for a long while has controlled the language of political debate.

Labour was seen a modern, moderate and dynamic.

The Tories were seen as antiquated, extreme, obsolete, socially illiberal, uncaring, and selfish.

Annabel Goldie may sometimes appear moderate but she can never be dynamic or modern.

The dinosaur, old fashioned wing of Conservatives, still rules in Scotland.  

Next time across Britain will be tougher, but after two decades, in the 70s and 80s where we ceded too much of the intellectual ground to the Tories, they have in turn spent two decades since the 1990s surrendering it to Labour.

Look at what of our agenda they have been forced to accept.

Tackling the SNP 

Labour won the 2005 General Election in Scotland.

The nationalists had their worst vote for twenty years. 

The SNP are a party without the gift to see themselves as others see them.

They have put themselves in a position where their party only wins if the nation fails.

That is not an appealing platform.

But nor have they any place to go because very few of them believe that their end goal of Independence is still in sight.  

They are serious opportunists rather than a serious opposition.

For many years their strategy for Scotland, particularly under the Tories, was hiding in the perpetual opposition of the ideologically pure.

Alex Salmond has a particular penchant for this approach to politics.

But those who have come to Holyrood have had to learn that “Independence cannot be the lazy answer to every awkward question.”

Luxuriating in cheap opposition is not working for the SNP.

And Scotland suffers from poor opposition. 

So we shouldn’t be surprised at the Nationalists being parochial and stuck in the past.

And we’ve seen this in their opposition to the London Olympic bid.

The SNP were against, out of touch. 

Preaching politics of envy again.

The mindset of nationalism: selfish, petty, and increasingly irrelevant, to Scotland.  

Labour’s Challenge

Labour are a progressive Government with a progressive record. As a result of staying in power pursuing progressive policies, the Opposition is having to dance to our tune, not us to theirs. 

I am sure we will renew as progressives should. By facing up to the challenge of change and meeting it with confidence and without fear. 

Finally, we need to work on our own psychology and morale, particularly in Scotland.  

Why do we fear that we will make further losses next time?

Why are we on the defensive?

Why do we hesitate about the prospects of winning back the seats we lost in Scotland? 

Perhaps we are fearful that the electorate in Scotland will think that “it is time for a change” – and that the pendulum is an immutable part of British politics.

And yet the pendulum is not an immutable part of Scandinavian politics.

There Social Democrats win time after time after time – but the Scandinavian Social Democrats win because, and when, they are seen as agents of change.  

The key to Labour in Scotland having similar hegemony is the extent to we are also seen as an agent of change – rather than custodians of the status quo. 

That is why policy and policy leadership is so important.

There was a real sense of Scotland at the end of the 20^th Century that it was time for a fresh start, for fresh thinking.

We have got rid of the Scottish cringe – we no longer blame the English.

But we still have the Scottish whinge – we moan, it’s rather ingrained although we have typically repatriated it.

We tend to moan about each other now, more than about our southern neighbours.  

But in truth we should be excited by the challenge of the times in which we live.

Times which give us more chance to shape the nation’s future that perhaps a century or more. 

Devolution has provided the necessary basis for updating Scots law, so key bill passed include 

• The abolition of feudalism
• The abolition of warrant sales
• The tackling of inefficiencies in the justice system
• The most rapid updating of Scots law for 3 centuries

In lots of way the system was just hugely “dated”. 

That is the big picture. 

So, what does term three in Scotland look like? How do we reach beyond our current support to win new seats? What are the simple promises to hard working families that can turn around the ever downward spiral of plummeting turnout? 

We need policies that can become the basis of a new consensus.  

For example, the challenge of the pre 5 years.

So if in the 19^th century it was about bringing in primary education to all and in the 20^th century, the Health Service to all, so in the 21^st century, part of the answer, is about bringing universal childcare to all families.  

This is a policy flagship where the Liberal Democrats cannot follow.

For example; they will not accept key parts of our childcare agenda improvements delivered at the UK level, or plans for one year’s maternity leave, the right to paternity leave, etc, etc.

Do we need a bold stroke in the business sphere that makes business people take notice internationally?  

And Scotland is a country not just of lowlands but also of highlands.

We are the party who in the past brought justice and reform to rural Scotland through land reform, the creation of the Hydro Board bringing cheap electricity and tackling population decline, through the creation of the Highlands and Islands Development Board with it’s social and economic remit.

We can now help the Highlands and Islands become the energy capital of Britain with their potential wind and offshore wave power. 

It is from debates like these that future policy proposals will come.  

We must signal in advance flagship policies which will define our administration. (Much as the Liberals defined, Tuition Fees and Free Personal Care in advance of the first Scottish Parliament election, and at the second elections, electoral reform for local government as their defining policies for future negotiation.) 

Labour needs to lead the debate about Scotland’s future as Social Democrats have done in Scandinavia.  

Scotland needs to think longer and harder about her future. 

The small country advantage is that we all have a role to play and something to tell our grandchildren – about how, when the power came north, we grasped the thistle in our own corner – whatever that might be.

Because lighting candles of hope is a much more compelling legacy than fuelling fatalism.

 

Web link : Edinburgh University Labour Club On any basis Labour has been a successful and a progressive Government. 

• 2 million more jobs and long-term youth unemployment virtually eliminated
• the only Government of any major developed nation investing more public money in health and education every year as a proportion of national income
• an end to the worst pensioner poverty
• leading the world on fighting poverty in Africa
• and a host of seminal changes from nearly trebling numbers of women MPs, the first black Cabinet Ministers and Muslim MPs and gay rights
• the minimum wage
• House of Lords reform and,
• devolution

Most of these advances would alone justify a Labour Government. Together they add up to a massive advance for progressive politics.  

Let me turn to Scotland.  

We are intent on creating a Scotland of opportunity and ambition. Scotland has already started to reverse the brain drain. 

We are attracting fresh talent.

We are tackling the booze and blade culture. 

We have had enough, too, of sectarian prejudice.

We are not afraid to say that a racially and culturally more diverse Scotland will be a better Scotland. 

We are banning smoking in every public place in Scotland from March next year 

And in the UK as a whole, where do we stand after eight years in Government?  

To govern over long periods of time requires an understanding of the downside and upside of being in Government.

Government means tough decisions that may offend people.

It means being unable to engage in the fudge, the ambiguity, the lazy thinking and the indulgences, that, in Opposition is all too easy.

It means aiming for respect rather than affection. 

It means asking people to change not simply in theory, but in reality.  

Politics today is conducted in an often frenzied atmosphere where many more column inches can be devoted to a politician’s private life than to whether the country has the right services or the world has the right policy on climate change.  

Therefore, there arises a dangerous gap between the issues people want to hear politicians talk about, and what they actually hear about the world of politics.

People can become disenchanted with politics and politicians worn down by trying to get a hearing for the issues that really matter to them.  

But despite all that, recall the big picture. 

The values battle has largely been won by progressives. 

Those values endure.

But how social justice, equality, opportunity for all will be achieved, must change with a changing world.  

The fundamental dividing line between Labour and the Tories is that we believe that economic dynamism and social justice can, and must, go together.

A very long tale of human suffering in the form of unemployment or poverty is never a price worth paying.

These dividing lines do not change - they endure. 

Meeting the Challenge from the Tories 

Labour for a long while has controlled the language of political debate.

Labour was seen a modern, moderate and dynamic.

The Tories were seen as antiquated, extreme, obsolete, socially illiberal, uncaring, and selfish.

Annabel Goldie may sometimes appear moderate but she can never be dynamic or modern.

The dinosaur, old fashioned wing of Conservatives, still rules in Scotland.  

Next time across Britain will be tougher, but after two decades, in the 70s and 80s where we ceded too much of the intellectual ground to the Tories, they have in turn spent two decades since the 1990s surrendering it to Labour.

Look at what of our agenda they have been forced to accept.

Tackling the SNP 

Labour won the 2005 General Election in Scotland.

The nationalists had their worst vote for twenty years. 

The SNP are a party without the gift to see themselves as others see them.

They have put themselves in a position where their party only wins if the nation fails.

That is not an appealing platform.

But nor have they any place to go because very few of them believe that their end goal of Independence is still in sight.  

They are serious opportunists rather than a serious opposition.

For many years their strategy for Scotland, particularly under the Tories, was hiding in the perpetual opposition of the ideologically pure.

Alex Salmond has a particular penchant for this approach to politics.

But those who have come to Holyrood have had to learn that “Independence cannot be the lazy answer to every awkward question.”

Luxuriating in cheap opposition is not working for the SNP.

And Scotland suffers from poor opposition. 

So we shouldn’t be surprised at the Nationalists being parochial and stuck in the past.

And we’ve seen this in their opposition to the London Olympic bid.

The SNP were against, out of touch. 

Preaching politics of envy again.

The mindset of nationalism: selfish, petty, and increasingly irrelevant, to Scotland.  

Labour’s Challenge

Labour are a progressive Government with a progressive record. As a result of staying in power pursuing progressive policies, the Opposition is having to dance to our tune, not us to theirs. 

I am sure we will renew as progressives should. By facing up to the challenge of change and meeting it with confidence and without fear. 

Finally, we need to work on our own psychology and morale, particularly in Scotland.  

Why do we fear that we will make further losses next time?

Why are we on the defensive?

Why do we hesitate about the prospects of winning back the seats we lost in Scotland? 

Perhaps we are fearful that the electorate in Scotland will think that “it is time for a change” - and that the pendulum is an immutable part of British politics.

And yet the pendulum is not an immutable part of Scandinavian politics.

There Social Democrats win time after time after time - but the Scandinavian Social Democrats win because, and when, they are seen as agents of change.  

The key to Labour in Scotland having similar hegemony is the extent to we are also seen as an agent of change - rather than custodians of the status quo. 

That is why policy and policy leadership is so important.

There was a real sense of Scotland at the end of the 20^th Century that it was time for a fresh start, for fresh thinking.

We have got rid of the Scottish cringe - we no longer blame the English.

But we still have the Scottish whinge - we moan, it’s rather ingrained although we have typically repatriated it.

We tend to moan about each other now, more than about our southern neighbours.  

But in truth we should be excited by the challenge of the times in which we live.

Times which give us more chance to shape the nation’s future that perhaps a century or more. 

Devolution has provided the necessary basis for updating Scots law, so key bill passed include 

• The abolition of feudalism
• The abolition of warrant sales
• The tackling of inefficiencies in the justice system
• The most rapid updating of Scots law for 3 centuries

In lots of way the system was just hugely “dated”. 

That is the big picture. 

So, what does term three in Scotland look like? How do we reach beyond our current support to win new seats? What are the simple promises to hard working families that can turn around the ever downward spiral of plummeting turnout? 

We need policies that can become the basis of a new consensus.  

For example, the challenge of the pre 5 years.

So if in the 19^th century it was about bringing in primary education to all and in the 20^th century, the Health Service to all, so in the 21^st century, part of the answer, is about bringing universal childcare to all families.  

This is a policy flagship where the Liberal Democrats cannot follow.

For example; they will not accept key parts of our childcare agenda improvements delivered at the UK level, or plans for one year’s maternity leave, the right to paternity leave, etc, etc.

Do we need a bold stroke in the business sphere that makes business people take notice internationally?  

And Scotland is a country not just of lowlands but also of highlands.

We are the party who in the past brought justice and reform to rural Scotland through land reform, the creation of the Hydro Board bringing cheap electricity and tackling population decline, through the creation of the Highlands and Islands Development Board with it’s social and economic remit.

We can now help the Highlands and Islands become the energy capital of Britain with their potential wind and offshore wave power. 

It is from debates like these that future policy proposals will come.  

We must signal in advance flagship policies which will define our administration. (Much as the Liberals defined, Tuition Fees and Free Personal Care in advance of the first Scottish Parliament election, and at the second elections, electoral reform for local government as their defining policies for future negotiation.) 

Labour needs to lead the debate about Scotland’s future as Social Democrats have done in Scandinavia.  

Scotland needs to think longer and harder about her future. 

The small country advantage is that we all have a role to play and something to tell our grandchildren - about how, when the power came north, we grasped the thistle in our own corner - whatever that might be.

Because lighting candles of hope is a much more compelling legacy than fuelling fatalism.

Web link : Edinburgh University Labour Club