PoliticsUK

Amelia Lockhart, Secretary of State for Health and candidate for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, spoke to Labour members at a Fabian Society event in Chatham.* Amelia was introduced by Michael Jacobs, the General Secretary of the Fabian Society:



Thank you Michael for your welcome and your kind words – and thank you everybody for attending this speech today in Chatham.

This is not a speech I expected to give or a campaign I expected to run. John Prescott was a great friend of mine, a loyal ally of the Labour Party and the labour movement, and a vital part of New Labour putting “traditional values in a modern setting”. We all owe a great debt to him. Our thoughts go out to Pauline and the rest of the Prescott family.

During the Fabian debates as part of the 1992 deputy leadership campaign, John was clear: the purpose of the Deputy Leader was to focus on organisation and winning elections, not on policy or manifestos. He was, of course, right. That is why I want to address my comments today not on the Fabian Society’s favourite topic – policy – but on the Society’s second favourite topic: how Labour continues to win elections.

Because remember, just weeks ago, Tony Blair and John Prescott delivered the Labour Party an unprecedented re-election victory with a workable majority. We have a mandate to govern and continue our transformation of Britain, and we should let no one deny it. Let no one – certainly not in our party – claim winning an election with a majority of 43 is a sign our party has lost its way. Whoever is elected leader of the Labour Party – and the next Prime Minister – must unequivocally and without reservation get on with the job of implementing our manifesto. And they will have my wholehearted support as Deputy Leader.
I am the candidate in this deputy leadership election that stands for defending our record in Government. If the Deputy Leader is unwilling to go out and defend what we do in Government, no one else will – and no one will want to vote Labour again. When you look at the alternatives, you know our country can’t afford people to not vote Labour. I’ll be the Deputy Leader that stands up for Labour values in a Labour Government because the sidelines aren’t for me. I’m not afraid of the fight.

And since the last election, I have been taking the fight to the Conservative Party: highlighting their hypocrisy, their outdated and out of touch approach, and their blatant mistruths. And that is all just from the candidates to be Leader of the Opposition. Nor have the Liberal Democrats been let of the hook: their divisions on hunting cannot be forgotten. We have the Leader of the Liberal Democrats claiming those who vote against the ban on fox hunting as “out of touch and elitist”, and 32 Liberal Democrat MPs voting exactly that way. They may be much smaller than the Conservative Party, but they aren’t any better.

But it is clear that, in the last election, failed to make the case that only Labour should be trusted to govern, trusted to deliver more change to transform communities for the better, and trusted to ensure our country is stronger and fairer.

In 1997, seats that had never voted Labour turned to us, desperate for change and ready to trust us to deliver. And it happened because we listened to insights from the Fabian Society, like the Southern Discomfort report, that told us unless Labour appealed to suburban voters, places with high home ownership, and those who have white-collar and skilled manual occupations, we would never win. We appealed to them and they voted Labour in record numbers, allowing us to gain seats we never expected.

But in 2001, places like Bexleyheath and Crayford, Castle Point, and Dartford turned away from us – and while it isn’t Southern Discomfort at the moment for Labour, there is quite a significant itch for us and we need to deal with it. We lost a lot of good Labour MPs like Jonathan Shaw, here in Chatham and Aylesford. They have been replaced by MPs that support William Croft and Cosette Beauvais-Becker, one that wants to return to the failures of Thatcherite economics and the other that wants to return to the horrors of Thatcherite so-called ‘morality’.

We can’t let them anywhere near Downing Street. Winning back the trust many voters gave us and then took away from us, winning back communities that voted Labour for the first time and then did not, and winning back the seats we lost: that has to be the aim of our party until the next election. It will be my aim as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party

Because I don’t know about you, ladies and gentleman, but I am not done in Government. I’ve enjoyed breaking Labour history by winning a second consecutive election with a workable majority, and I’m ready to do it in again by winning a third and then a fourth consecutive victory. This requires the people’s trust and the people’s support. After all we’ve got a lot to do, as rebuilding from 18 years of Conservative Government and preparing our country for the globalizing 21st Century takes time.

So this is why I am running in this deputy leadership contest: to ensure Labour wins a another mandate for change as big as 1997, and to ensure we can contine to do what Labour does best: changing lives, strengthening public services, and keeping our country safe.

Thank you.

*Permission provided by Barclay.

Readers take note: this is a good speech. Amelia considers her audience and gives them not just what they need, but what she wants them to have. She starts the speech with a simple outline: "here is what I think a Deputy Leader should do, and I'm going to tell you why I should do it." A speech is a sales pitch, and Amelia is gunning for a big commission cheque.

The speech is light on policy, I will grant that. And the reader may be curious as to why a speech which is light on policy has garnered praise and affection for, of all people, the Fabian Group. Well, here is the rub: when you're going to go light on policy and you're going to speak to a group that is generally fairly policy-driven, state what you're doing right out of the gate. Lockhart does that by saying "I'm not going to talk about policy, I'm going to talk about winning and you're going to like it." If you can make it stick, it will work.

Lockhart, in her previous public statements, made a name for herself as being a New Labour partisan who is not afraid to act as an attack dog and lay down cover fire for her more policy-focused colleagues and she reinforces that here, and then defends it. That's smart. "Yeah, I'm an attack dog and isn't that what you want from a Deputy Leader?"

To conclude, this is what I want to see in speeches which are not necessarily policy talks: consideration for the audience, good structure, a little bit of zest.

Lockhart earns 2 XP and gets a solid boost in the Deputy Leadership Election.