Though Cowards Flinch

As readers will know, I’ve reluctantly offered my services as Ed Balls’ Labour leadership campaign manager.

As part of this role, I’ve been drafting his Labour conference victory speech.   It is not, however, certain that he will win, as he has not yet committed to fulfilling all of my 10 step plan.

Given this, and given the largesse that is in my soul, I have drafted the speech so that it can be given by whichever candidate wins.  The basic messages will need to be the same.

Part 1 is here, and will be followed by parts 2 – 4 or maybe 5 over then next day or two or few. 

Remember. You read it here first.

Labour Leadership acceptance speech (part 1)

Good Afternoon, conference.

My name is Diandyedid Miliburnabboballs, and I am the new leader of the British Labour party.

I would like to spend a few minutes thanking Harriet for her sterling work as Acting Leader, my campaign team for its efforts, and of course the labour movement for doing me this honour.

But there’s no time for that.  Take my thanks to all those people as given, and let’s get on with what we need to do to remove the Coalition from power. 

That’s what the people of Britain need to hear, not our internal thanksgiving.  That can happen later. In the bar. The drinks are on me.

But right now there is no time for triumphalism, because there is no cause for triumphalism.

We lost the general election. 

And because we lost the general election those whom the Labour party was established to serve are suffering at the hands of the malevolent forces of the right, and will suffer ever more until we win back control of the government.

That’s why the appropriate response right now is not celebration, but contrition at having failed the British people by losing its trust and therefore the election, plus a commitment to effective opposition to the Coalition’s economic and social thuggery.

The party must seek redemption.  For now, our bedtime reading should not be the theories of Amartya Sen, interesting though they are, for that is the stuff of government.  We are not in government.  Our bedtime reading should be the timeless messages of Dostoevsky about redemption through hard labour.

What will this redemptive action look like? Well, these will be my immediate actions as leader.

First, with a new Shadow Chancellor in place by TOMORROW LUNCHTIME, the PLP will, within a week, set out an unequivocal statement on the extent to which the Coalition government has lied to the British public about the economic situation in the UK, why the Labour party’s active opposition to the cuts war now being waged is justified, and what that active opposition will be.

I will set out more clearly than ever before that the Coalition’s scaremongering about the deficit is based on a fundamental deceit about the nature of the economy, and on a desire by the right to socialize all financial costs, while privatizing all financial benefits. 

I will also set out, honestly and contritely the extent to which New Labour bought into this fundamental deceit.

And then I will set out a clear alternative – an alternative model of political economy – in which finance and the money supply is harnessed for the social good of the many, not exploited by the banks for profit by the few.

Then I will set out clearly how the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the wider Labour party, will work with the trade union movement and the emerging civil society coalitions to oppose the Coalition’s cuts programme. 

This will go beyond our plans for the PLP to attend, en masse, the first national march against the cuts on 27^th November.  This will involve putting the resources of the Labour party at the disposal of the emerging campaign, and getting stuck in to real opposition to the Tories and their LibDem lapdogs. 

Opposition in the Chamber of the House is one thing, and an important part of the whole.  But it is only a part, and real opposition, the real fightback, will not take place in parliament; it will take place in cities, towns and villages across Britain.

And I will be there.  Under my leadership, this opposition will not repeat the mistakes of Labour in the 1980s, which was more focused on its PR than it was on the interests of the people of Britain. 

Because we did not then stand with the people of Britain against the Thatcher experiment, the people of Britain did not trust us, and we were out of government for 19 years. 

We cannot let that happen again.

The fightback begins here. And so does the redemption of Labour.

(To be continued)