Jarvis Why Vote Labour 2015

The Essential Guide
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-84954-808-3
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 192 Seiten

Reihe: Why Vote

Will the 2015 general election herald the return of a Labour-dominated government? Could another coalition be on the cards with a rival party, or will the Labour Party be doomed to remain in opposition for another term? In this concise and authoritative guide, Dan Jarvis MP brings together a cast of Labour's brightest and best to explain how the Labour Party proposes to address the problems facing the nation today if they win power in 2015. Exploring the party's key policies, agendas and traditional commitments, with case studies and contributions from experts and members of the public, Why Vote Labour 2015 will prove invaluable in helping you decide where to place your vote on 7 May.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jarvis, Dan

Leseproben

Introduction

DAN JARVIS MP

is a book about the future. It is about the future we choose for our country, about how Britain makes its way in the modern world, and the society we aspire to be in years to come.

At its heart is a simple premise: our country is on the wrong path and in desperate need of change.

There is so much that is right with Britain today. We have been through tough times over the past few years, but we are still a nation with a proud history and what should be a bright future. I find more reasons to believe that every week in my work as a shadow minister and a Member of Parliament. I meet remarkable young people with big dreams, talented entrepreneurs with fresh ideas, dedicated public servants working in world-class institutions like our National Health Service, and tolerant communities full of good neighbours looking out for one another.

My concern, however, is that they are all being let down by a government that is drifting at best and taking our country backwards at worst. You only have to look at what we have had to endure since David Cameron took office in 2010. Millions of families worse off and struggling to make ends meet, child poverty rising, record numbers of young people out of work, and a National Health Service pushed to breaking point.

As the general election draws near, I fear what Britain might look like after another five years of a Tory government looking to the past and complacently insisting we can carry on as we are when we should be working for success and building for the future.

This book argues that Britain can do better. Our country deserves better and, with the right leadership, we will do better. Britain needs a Labour government.

* * *

I am under no illusions in editing this book about the reality of our political landscape. I’ve knocked on enough doors in recent years to know that the key decision many people make on polling day won’t be whether they vote Labour, Conservative or for any other political party. It will be whether they vote at all.

We face big, difficult national challenges, but the greatest obstacle we face is the increasingly widespread belief that our problems have outgrown our politics. Many people have completely lost faith in the idea that politics of any colour can make a positive difference to their lives.

The natural and fashionable temptation is to blame this loss of trust on sorry episodes like the parliamentary expenses scandal. This certainly caused a lot of damage. I should know – I was elected to replace an MP who was sent to prison for expenses fraud. I’ve seen the impact the scandal had on my community and felt how long it takes before trust begins to come back.

My personal feeling though is that this disenchantment goes much deeper. Many of the most disillusioned people I speak to have been shaken by global forces beyond their control. Too many feel cut-off by an economy that simply doesn’t work for them, left behind from the rest of society and powerless to change their own lives.

Repairing these broken bonds of trust and restoring people’s confidence in the power of the ballot box to change their lives will be the biggest challenge for my political generation. It is a task that asks big questions of our politics. It requires honesty and humility too.

This should start with the basic admission that politicians can’t solve all our problems alone. We need to work to solve them together.

My firm belief in this is rooted in the life I had before I came into politics.

I served for fifteen years in the British Army before I was elected as the Labour MP for Barnsley Central in 2011. Some people still ask me how a major in the Parachute Regiment could possibly be a Labour supporter. The answer is that my service didn’t conflict with my Labour values – it reinforced them.

I grew up in a home where both my parents went out to work every day to serve the public. My dad was a college lecturer, while my mum worked with offenders as a probation officer. The importance of community and the pride that comes from service were lessons that they and my wider family instilled in me from an early age. It was that belief in the value of service that took me into the armed forces and kept me there during some tough times.

I was commissioned from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1997, three months after Labour returned to government following a generation out of office. It was during another general election in 2005, as I listened to the results coming in over the radio from a bunk bed in the UK’s military headquarters in Kabul, that I first began to think that life after the army could maybe include serving the public in a different way.

A by-election and several years later, my politics is driven by two things I learned during my time in the army.

The first is the potential of the individual – how people can overcome incredible odds and scale incredible heights. My service in the armed forces took me to Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. It put me in difficult situations and tested me to my limit. Coming out the other side showed me that we can all achieve exceptional things when we have the right training, mentoring and support around us to help fulfil our potential.

The second is the value of the team. The most important thing to understand about the army is how close-knit a community it is. Your regiment or battalion brings together people from all backgrounds and with all manner of different beliefs. You live together, train together and, ultimately, you have to be ready to fight together. That relationship develops deep bonds of trust. You become accustomed to relying on others. You stick together. You do your bit, knowing that others will do theirs.

That is why I have always believed in the basic principle that we achieve more through shared endeavour than we can alone, and that we should work together to get difficult things done.

That essential spirit is why the Labour Party is my party. Much like the army in many ways, our party has a strong history and traditions, and has always been ready to respond to meet the challenge of changing times.

Labour has always been at its best when we have put our party at the service of the nation, reaching out to every class and community, bringing the country together, and creating a politics where everyone has a stake, plays a part and feels empowered.

Those are the values of Ed Miliband’s Labour Party and the themes running through this book. It sets out a Labour vision for how Britain can succeed in a complex, competitive and changing world, and ideas for how we can build a society that makes the most of our talents and delivers equal opportunity for all, regardless of who you are or where you come from.

It is not a story I could possibly hope to tell on my own. That is why this book is also a shared effort, bringing together insights from shadow ministers, MPs, councillors, parliamentary candidates, trade unionists and other Labour supporters. It showcases the great team that Labour has ready for government in 2015 and our case is all the stronger for it.

What we have to say is not, and does not pretend to be, a manifesto or an official Labour Party mission statement. Neither does it seek to cover every commitment or policy area that will be up for debate at the general election. For one, much of the discussion on public services is focused on England, as the time of writing has coincided with the referendum on the fate of the United Kingdom and an ongoing debate about the future of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

What this book does aim to do is present a Labour view on the challenges facing our country, what our priorities will be and, ultimately, why you should place your faith and trust in us and vote Labour.

A small island in a changing world

The test for all parties going into the next election will be how to plot a new course for Britain in a stormy and rapidly changing world.

Global wealth and influence are moving from from north to south and west to east at an ever-quickening pace, information is everywhere, and we have never been more interconnected.

The middle class is expected to more than double to five billion people over the next two decades.1 This global village has been brought ever closer together by an explosion in trade and financial connections. The number of goods bought and sold in the international marketplace has quadrupled in the last thirty years. A typical manufacturing company now uses parts and products from more than thirty-five contractors around the world – from Sweden to Taiwan and the USA.2

We’ve all become used to talking about how we compete with India and China, but now the debate is shifting to how Britain keeps up with fast emerging economies like Turkey, Mexico and Indonesia.

These forces of change are being further accelerated by technology. Many people now live their lives never out of reach of a smartphone with sixteen times the memory and 1,000 times the processing power of the computers that first took man to the moon. Innovation has packaged all of this into a device that is twenty-five times smaller and cheap enough for people around the world to carry around in their pocket.

Next year the world population is forecast to be outnumbered by mobile phones for the first time, with three quarters of the subscriptions in developing...