PM makes appeal to the left
The Prime Minister has given a speech in Liverpool today in which he set out to rebuild the coalition of the left that bought the Labour Party to office six years ago.
The leadership has come under pressure over a series of difficulties regarding the war in Iraq, the Cabinet reshuffle and the constitutional changes that it inspired. There has also been growing pressure from the opposition, which found itself ahead in some polls recently for the first time since John Major was Prime Minister.
Tony Blair used the speech to attempt to refocus on the principles of the Labour Party and attempt to put healthcare and education back on centre stage.
He spoke of rising levels of spending and increased numbers of staff in the NHS and schools, along with falling waiting times for operations and improving exam and literacy results in school. Reflecting on his visit to Liverpool, he claimed that while there are still problems, improvements are happening and local hospitals are getting better.
But the Prime Minister admitted that some of the Government’s messages of social justice, fairness and opportunity had been drowned out in the clamour of governing the country.
‘Sometimes in government we can become so focussed on getting the change done, that we explain what we’re doing, but we don’t always talk about why we’re doing it’.
‘It can come across as a bit technocratic and managerial. For the public, and sometimes I think for the party, the actual purpose of the reform is not clear’.
And alluding to the recent difficulties facing the party, particularly over Iraq, Mr Blair acknowledged that the Labour Government had reached ‘the harder part’ of its second term.
‘The decisions are harder, the knocks are harder, the people rightly more impatient. And we’ve taken some knocks, and we have to live with that’.
‘And sometimes we’ve paid a price for genuinely difficult, even unpopular decisions, but I believe passionately the fundamental direction in which we are taking the country, is right’.
In what is being interpreted a bid to reconnect with the party, Mr Blair emphasised that the ‘historic mission’ of Labour was not to ‘stand outside and complain about what those in power are doing’ as a party of protest, but rather to maintain a hold on power.
‘No progressive who is truly interested in transforming the life opportunities of all in our society can be content with the passivity and the sheer powerless of eternal opposition’, he remarked.
A recent speech by Gordon Brown on health policy gave a preview of some of the things that Tony Blair discussed, particularly the friendly face that the Conservatives are promoting with their ‘Fairness for all’ campaign.
The Prime Minister mentioned the sense of pride and solidarity that staff and patients in the NHS have, claiming to have witnessed this when visiting a hospital in Liverpool. Calling this unique, he also suggested that people across the world would love to have such an institution available to them.
Then, continuing an ongoing attack on the Conservative Party, he accused them of wanting to undermine public services and convince the public that they can not be made to work. He argued that this is part of a plan to promote private healthcare and promote the advantages of the middle classes over the principle of opportunity for all.
This was the launch pad for a defence of service reform, with new working hours and practices as well as the controversial plans to create foundation hospitals. Tony Blair confessed that in the drive to reform service the Government might have forgotten to explain why it was doing so, stating that foundation hospitals are to be NHS hospitals with NHS patients receiving care free at the point of use.
The plans are being promoted as a method of providing personalised service through a universal system, and Tony Blair repeated this, suggesting that the NHS can be more than a safety net. He also targeted the left with comments that such changes would ensure that services improve and undermine the argument for taking money out of universal health care and putting it into private provision.
Placing this argument at the centre of a wider appeal to the left, Mr Blair reflected on the last century in which he stated that Labour governments had been ‘intermissions’ in the natural Conservative domination, and claimed that through promoting progressive social services the Party could ensure this century would not be the same.
However, responding to the Prime Minister’s speech this morning, Conservative Party chair Theresa May accused the PM of falling short on delivery.
She added: “His lies about Conservatives policies on health, education and Europe will fool no-one and merely enforce why Tony Blair cannot be trusted.
“This is a Prime Minister increasingly out of touch with the British People and more interested in securing his own place in history.
“After promising us for so long that delivery was just around the corner he now seems to be saying not only that he can’t deliver but that it doesn’t actually matter anyway. I think the public will take a very different view”.
Speaking earlier today, Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt responded to criticisms that Tony Blair had failed to keep a promise that 1999 would be the ‘year of delivery’.
Appearing on BBC Radio, Ms Hewitt insisted that the Labour administration had faced ‘an enormous challenge’ when the party first took office.
But she conceded: ‘When we talked about delivery, that may have been something of a mistake because, as (Education Minister) David Miliband rather neatly put it the other day, you actually can’t deliver good health or safe streets in the way that commercial companies can deliver pizzas.’
‘This is as much about building strong local communities and engaging people themselves in creating opportunities and creating a fairer society, as it is about transforming the way we run the services.’
She added: ‘I think we have sometimes fallen into a danger of talking as if we were managers and technocrats and this business about delivery is actually a very technocratic kind of language.’
‘We’ve actually got to get back to what it is we’re trying to achieve here, so that it’s not Foundation Hospitals that are the big idea; the big idea is the National Health Service and really making sure that it is responding to people’s needs.’
