Policy is important. A political party can have a raison d’etre, but if it has no detail or any proof of how it can live up to what they say, it will always be difficult for them to get elected. In election times, appropriate marketing can cover up the holes for a certain amount of time, but people are going to want something eventually. The official opposition will continue to probe and enquire. If the policy ends up being bad, the governing party will get replaced (eventually).
The Labour Party has something called the National Policy Forum (NPF), which is a way for them to generate ideas that could eventually become actual (and possibly credible) policy. In a recent speech to the NPF, Ed Miliband covered the existing state of affairs and touched on ways to move forward. Unfortunately, the speech wasn’t that good.
Photo taken from DECC Archive (Flickr, CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeWorks)
On the Government
The following is an extract from the speech:
“Why is it that David Cameron and this Government get themselves into these problems in the first place?
The answer is that they are reckless. Reckless with the future of our young people. The next generation on whom Britain depends. From cuts to Surestart, to £9,000 tuition fees, to almost a million young people out of work.
Reckless too with the lives of families already struggling to get by; now seeing their household budgets squeezed ever tighter.
And reckless with what we value in our communities as well. With our National Health Service. With the local services on which people rely. The home help, the meals on wheels, the drop in centre for the elderly. And they are undermining the responsibility that is so vital.”
Essentially, this is what Ed has been saying ever since he was elected as Leader on September 25th, 2010. That’s the problem though. There’s nothing new here and there should be something original now that it’s June 2011. In another part of the speech, he continues to use the term ‘Conservative-led Government’ as he seems to think that it will make a difference. The Liberal Democrats haven’t disappeared (for example, Danny Alexander has proven himself capable of generating headlines).
On Labour
This is part of what Miliband had to say about his own party:
“It’s not their fault; it’s ours that we lost the last election. We owe it to them not to shy away from any of the difficult changes we need to make.
And I want to say how we will build a party fit for the future. Above all, my message is that Labour cannot hope that power will come automatically.”
Again, this is nothing new. He briefly mentions Re-Founding Labour earlier in the speech, which has been a success. They have connected with the ‘grass roots’ and many ideas have been generated. There’s no guarantee that concrete policy will come out of any of them though. An example of one of the ideas can be found here.
On the NPF
“This policy forum and party conference do not have sufficient legitimacy in the eyes of members. Too often, they submit ideas with great enthusiasm, and never hear anything again. That has to change.
But equally, we don’t simply need ideas from party members. We need ideas that are based on real conversations with the public.”
It’s good that he’s noticed where the problems are and that something needs to change. However, he provides no practical solutions. This is very poor.
A rare sighting of policy
There is some policy though, but it amounts to two things:
- A living wage, which was apparently thought up after a visit to to the USA
- ‘Safe havens’ – places in the community where people can go if they are worried about violent crime
These are two good ideas that are relevant, because the cover crime and the economy. However, in a speech that isn’t short, to have brief mentions of only two ideas is poor.
Summary & Conclusion
This is the National Policy Forum. It should be considered very important – especially when you consider that Labour is having a wide-ranging policy review at the moment.
As is often the case, speeches can be light on detail – that is not the main criticism here. My main problems with Ed Miliband’s speech is that he is repeating what we have heard before and there’s not many ideas to build upon.
So, what do you think?