When Gordon Brown announced he was standing down I was genuinely open-minded about who to support in the Labour leadership contest. I’d not given the matter of his successor much thought; I wanted Gordon to win the election for Labour, and stay as our leader and our prime minister, and all my energies were focused on helping him achieve that end. Neither did I have strong feelings of antipathy towards any of the likely candidates. Indeed, I liked and respected them all. (Still do, for the avoidance of doubt!)
So I was starting from a clean slate. But then I read an article by Ed Balls in the Guardian which set out why we had lost the election and how he felt we’d lost touch with our voters over the years. “They thought we weren’t on their side any more,” he wrote. And I thought, to use a phrase that is already becoming well worn: “He gets it.”
I then met with Ed, for a long chat, and that same phrase kept coming into my mind. He gets it. He “gets” what people were saying to me on the doorstep in the election campaign. He understands why the aspirational working class, who we fought hard to win back from the clutches of Thatcher in the early days of New Labour, had started deserting us in droves, and, more importantly, he understands why and how we need to win them back.
I also liked his focus on bread-and-butter issues, and his ability to communicate like a “normal” person. He didn’t talk in vague buzzwords, or as if he was addressing a Fabian seminar (or Progress or Compass, to keep things even-handed!). He talked about real issues, and real people, and real communities, not an abstracted version of those things. And his instincts on many of those issues were right.
And, of course, he’s intelligent and experienced and decisive and strong. All the qualities we need in a leader. Some say he’s too combative, and it’s clear that of all the shadow ministers he is going to thrive in opposition. He’s been the first to take the fight to the Tories.
Yes, he gets far more flak from them than other leading Labour politicians, but I think he should wear that as a badge of honour. We need a leader who is robust in defence of Labour’s legacy, and strong in his challenge to those who seek to destroy it with their cuts.
But we also need someone who will lead Labour back into government. Someone who has learned the right lessons from the past 13 years and from really listening, properly listening, to what voters are saying. Ed has already started on that journey.
He fought a tough campaign in his new constituency, and has had hundreds if not thousands of those “on the doorstep” conversations. It’s why he gets it — because he gets them: his people, his voters. He’s tough enough not to pander to people if he thinks they’re wrong. He’s principled enough not to take up false positions in the hope of personal advantage. But at the same time he realises that the ordinary voter matters.
It would be very easy in opposition to embark on a period of navel-gazing, to turn inwards, to publish pamplets and hold seminars, to talk about the voters instead of talking to them. But it would be wrong to do that. We need to start the fightback now: to expose the new government with vigour and determination; to present a coherent alternative; and to reconnect with our lost voters. And I think Ed’s the person to do that.
Kerry McCarthy is MP for Bristol East. She blogs here,and can be found on twitter as @KerryMP
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