A small delegation from ELS were lucky enough to attend the Progress Conference in London on Saturday.
It was the first time any of us had been to one of the Progress events before and I think I speak for everyone when I say we came away very impressed indeed. Obviously, Tony was the star attraction and his speech – inevitably under-reported in the media given the infighting and splits that have bubbled to the surface over the past 10 days or so – was first-rate.
He identified what he saw as the key political issues that will confront the Labour Party in the years to come. The first was migration, which with the EU expansion and the modern terrorism threat – ‘an extreme perversion of Islam’ – has turned into one of the top concerns of voters across the country. Labour needs to develop a language plan to deal with the perception that people can beg, trick or steal their way across our borders and into white van man’s houses. In all honesty, we’re far from convincing the public at the moment.
He admitted that he had changed his mind on pensions and that there needed to a sober assessment of Labour’s welfare policy, because the present system – with three million citizens economically inactive – might prove to be unworkable. Public sector reform, which is vital in Blair’s view to ensure that people get the services they deserve, is about building a welfare state fit for the 21st century rather than outsourcing and privatisation.
As always at these conferences, the most illuminating discussions took place within the seminars. The most interesting one that I went to was the workshop on beating the BNP, which had Margaret Hodge, Oona King, Roger Eatwell from the University of Bath and the energetic chair of London Young Labour, Peter White. As a Londoner, I love the cultural diversity of the capital and am concerned, particularly post 7/7, about the threat from both the far-right and Islamist/Stopper/Respect left. It was interesting to hear Hodge talk about completely changing her way of dealing with constituents since the 2001 General Election, King stress the importance of true equality in education and White compare the BNP’s advance to the floods in New Orleans.
The best part of the seminar, held in a small room with plenty of young faces – from a whole host of different backgrounds – was the frank admission that the politicians didn’t hasve the answers to this problem. I left early to get down the stairs to hear the final session of the afternoon and two gentlemen in front of me were remarking on what they had just heard.
One said to the other: ‘I’ve seen anything quite like that before’. For this young activist with a term ahead of him at one of the most right-wing universities in the country, one summed up the whole experience: inspiring.
