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As the Prime Minister responds to growing calls from Labour MPs to stand down, Alexandra Hall Hall imagines the speech he should have made after his party’s local election defeats
Ladies and Gentleman
I suspect most of you are here today to hear me give a speech fighting for my own political future. But, I am not going to do that.
I want to talk about how I intend to fight for Britain’s political future.
Because – while being a politician means fighting for your party’s advancement, being Prime Minister is different. It is about leading a whole country. Of trying to transcend political differences. Of trying to represent all voters, including those who didn’t vote for you, or are sceptical about what you have to offer.
I know last week’s elections were a crushing blow for my party. I am devastated that Labour has lost so many good, decent officials, who have spent years working for the betterment of their communities. As leader of the party, I take the lions’ share of the blame for these losses – and I deeply apologise to all of you who have lost your seats, or seen close friends and colleagues lose their seats.
But what the fractured results tell me is not just that people are feeling insecure about their futures, and disappointed with their current political leadership, but that they are deeply frustrated by the entire state of British politics. Many are disillusioned not just with Labour, but with all of the traditional political classes. Many are turning to more extreme parties to the right or the left, not necessarily because they reject everything we stand for, or embrace every policy of those other parties, but because in their current frustration, they are willing to try anything, which sounds new and different.
This is not unique to the UK. Across the democratic world, we are seeing a great churn of politics, with traditional incumbents on both the left and the right regularly being booted out of office by disenchanted electorates. Countries across the world are being buffeted by global headwinds beyond the ability of any one individual nation to control.
The UK is not living in a world where we can pull up our drawbridge, retreat behind our island walls, and prosper by ourselves. The ripple effect of events like the covid pandemic, the wars in Ukraine, and the Middle East, or other conflicts even further beyond our shores, which have had ripple effects on global trade, refugee movements and energy prices, should all have taught us this hard lesson by now. We cannot insulate ourselves from the effects of climate change either.
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In fact, Britain’s original greatness arose from our willingness to travel across the oceans to new continents, and to develop great partnerships and enterprises in far flung parts of the world.
This makes it all the more anomalous that even as the world becomes ever more interconnected, British politics has started to look increasingly parochial and inward-looking – fantasizing about how we can “take back control”, and keep out foreigners, as if we too are not buffeted by these international currents, or have nothing more to learn or gain through collaboration with others.
For too long, this has also meant Britain’s strategic choices have been dictated too much by small-minded, short term domestic political concerns, rather than by long term, strategic policy choices, and by fear of the outside world, rather than confidence about Britain’s ability to make a success in it.
For too long, successive British political leaders have chosen to duck the hard choices, and promised voters more than they can deliver, all in the service of winning elections. Their governing strategies have been guided by facile political slogans, cheap shots at opponents, and disingenuous arguments about being able to – shall we say – “have our cake and eat it.”
Some have promised lower taxes; some have promised better services. Some have promised more money on welfare and the NHS; others more money on our military and defence. Some have promised we can end all immigration, or cut ourselves off from the EU, as if we no longer need any foreign labour to support critical sectors of our economy, such as hospitality, health and social care, or will suffer no economic losses from raising trade barriers with the world’s largest economic bloc.
Some promise everything, as if there are never any tough trade-offs to be made.
Most of our political classes have not been completely honest with voters about the difficult decisions which need to be made. Voters aren’t stupid. They can tell when we are being disingenuous. They can tell when we are being manipulative. Governments guided more by short term political considerations than long term strategy are almost certain to fail, and in the process, only fuel voter cynicism and disillusion.
So, I am here, not to fight for my own political future, but to suggest that it is time for us to change the way we govern. Some people like to talk about “levelling up” our society – and if there is one thing which Labour has always stood for, it is for opportunity, fairness and justice for all. But, what I want to do now, is promise to be level WITH you.
That starts by kicking off a proper, honest, open national debate, ideally transcending partisan political divisions, about the nature of today’s challenges, and the trade-offs which need to be made in tackling them.
I would argue there are five major areas where we need to be more honest with the public:
First: the economy: we cannot achieve our national growth goals if we continue to cut ourselves off from free and frictionless trade with the EU. It is objective fact that British GDP has sunk since we left the EU. It is objective fact that many small and medium sized businesses have struggled to cope with the myriad new barriers to trade caused by Brexit. It is objective fact that it has become far harder to travel, work, study or live in the EU; and it is objective fact that many international businesses no longer see us as such an attractive place to invest, because we are no longer a gateway into the wider EU market. After ten years, the evidence is clear. It was an economically harmful decision to leave. No amount of new trade deals with others around the world will be sufficient to offset the lost trade with the EU. We will not have enough money for the things we want if we let this situation fester.
Labour campaigned on a pledge to honour the Brexit referendum. I believe it is now time to admit there is no magical way to “make Brexit work” and to launch a proper national debate on the pros and cons of rejoining again – knowing that there are no easy choices, and that we will not be able to go back in on the same terms as before. We need to be honest about that. But, we should have the debate.
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Second: National security and defence. For 80 years since the end of the World War 2 we have been lucky to live in a relatively peaceful and stable part of the world, as part of the greatest defence alliance in history – NATO. We have been fortunate that