The Labour leadership candidate David Miliband today accused Gordon Brown of failing to realise his promise to renew Labour, saying he sent the party backwards and left it lacking a central creed. In his strongest criticism of the former prime minister, Miliband claimed Brown failed to turn his technical skill in handling the banking crisis into a moral crusade, with the result that voters did not know which side the party was on. He called for the party to rediscover morality, mutuality and an openness in the way it conducted politics. He also called for a political economy in which growth is dependent on industry rather than financial services.
Giving the Keir Hardie lecture in Mountain Ash, south Wales, today, he warned the party about the depths of its plight. "Ideological uncertainty, administrative methods and a recession that threatened real depression did for us. But it was deeper. We lost the trust of the people and in a democracy that's a very big problem."
Often accused of being a Blairite, Miliband argued that he agreed with Brown that the government badly needed to change after 10 years of Blairism. He said of Brown: "I supported and voted for him. I agreed that we needed greater moral seriousness and less indifference to the excesses of a celebrity-drenched culture. I agreed with him when he said that we needed greater coherence as a government, particularly in relation to child poverty and equality. I agreed with him on the importance of party reform and a meaningful internationalism … I agreed that we needed a civic morality to champion civility when confronting a widespread indifference to others. But it didn't happen. It was not just more of the same."
"Far from correcting them, failings – tactics, spin, high-handedness – intensified; and we lost many of our strengths – optimism born of clear strategy, bold plans for change and reform, a compelling articulation of aspiration and hope. "We did not succeed in renewing ourselves in office; and the roots of that failure were deep, not recent, about procedure and openness, or lack of it, as much as policy." Miliband pinpointed a "lack of democratic discussion, the hollowing out of the party," and said that "our administrative and managerial methods meant we were seen as a fearsome but not attractive political machine, and the ugliness of that kind of politics. We did not come to represent a new dawn, but another government whose time had passed." He argued that the party needed to rebalance its approach to welfare, saying: "In our concern with meeting people's needs we seemed to sever welfare from desert and this led people to think that their taxes were being wasted, that they were being used."
"When we said fairness, people thought it was anything but. What emerged as a tribute to solidarity, the welfare state, turned into a bitter division. Many of the 'hardworking families' we wished to appeal to did not view us as their party. We renewed schools and hospitals, we improved public services, but people felt like consumers and not partners. We talked about 'we' but it meant us, not them, so the workforce often felt neglected and citizens the same; the drive for managerial efficiency became seen as managerial arrogance". He complained that the Treasury under Labour did not exact enough in return for saving the banks. "They have not reinvested it in our country."
Miliband also said the Tory vision of the big society should be taken seriously, arguing it was territory Labour should never have allowed the Tories to colonise. But it is a piece of doublethink – a small society maintained by voluntarism and charity alone. I want a bigger society, based on reciprocity, not just kindness or charity."
"Far from correcting them, failings – tactics, spin, high-handedness – intensified; and we lost many of our strengths – optimism born of clear strategy, bold plans for change and reform, a compelling articulation of aspiration and hope. "We did not succeed in renewing ourselves in office; and the roots of that failure were deep, not recent, about procedure and openness, or lack of it, as much as policy." Miliband pinpointed a "lack of democratic discussion, the hollowing out of the party," and said that "our administrative and managerial methods meant we were seen as a fearsome but not attractive political machine, and the ugliness of that kind of politics. We did not come to represent a new dawn, but another government whose time had passed." He argued that the party needed to rebalance its approach to welfare, saying: "In our concern with meeting people's needs we seemed to sever welfare from desert and this led people to think that their taxes were being wasted, that they were being used."
"When we said fairness, people thought it was anything but. What emerged as a tribute to solidarity, the welfare state, turned into a bitter division. Many of the 'hardworking families' we wished to appeal to did not view us as their party. We renewed schools and hospitals, we improved public services, but people felt like consumers and not partners. We talked about 'we' but it meant us, not them, so the workforce often felt neglected and citizens the same; the drive for managerial efficiency became seen as managerial arrogance". He complained that the Treasury under Labour did not exact enough in return for saving the banks. "They have not reinvested it in our country."
Miliband also said the Tory vision of the big society should be taken seriously, arguing it was territory Labour should never have allowed the Tories to colonise. But it is a piece of doublethink – a small society maintained by voluntarism and charity alone. I want a bigger society, based on reciprocity, not just kindness or charity."
the Guardian
