Change was the central theme of Peter Mandelson’s speech to the Labour party conference yesterday. He used the word, or a variant of it, no fewer than 19 times, including in its most important passage:
This will be a “change” election. Either we offer it, or the British public will turn to others who say that they do.
Of course, we must celebrate our record and be proud of defending it. We did fix the roof while the sun was shining…
But let us remember that you win elections on the future, not the past.
Do not make the mistake of sitting back and expecting people to be grateful.
Mandelson’s speech was well received by the conference delegates, probably because of its bravura delivery, which was in marked contrast to the downbeat mood that has otherwise, by all accounts, pervaded the party’s last pre-election assembly.
Gordon Brown will make his keynote speech to the conference today. In it, he is expected to make his pitch for the continued support of middle Britain, which counter-intuitively lent Blair-led Labour its support in three elections, but which is now manifestly deserting it under Blair’s successor.
Brown knows that he must regain the support of middle Britain if he is to have any chance on 6 May, which is now the anticipated polling day; so his speech is expected to press the buttons that Blair pressed so successfully. Thus, in a well-trailed passage, he will say:
“The decent, hard-working majority are getting ever more angry – rightly so – with the minority who will talk about their rights, but never about the responsibilities.”
He will talk of the need to curb binge drinking, to get parents to take responsibility for the actions of feral children, to reform Parliament, and more. The sort of things that middle Britain is concerned about.
But it’s too late.
Voters do want change; Mandelson is right. And when people want change, they start by changing the government. I know, because I’ve been there before.
In 1997, when I was fighting the Conwy seat, I knocked on the door of a man in Penrhynside who told me that he was a self-employed builder. He had, he said, voted Conservative all his life, but he was voting Labour now, because it was time for a change. He said it with regret, not anger.
“But have you considered,” I asked him, “that it might be a change for the worse?”
“Yes, it might be,” he conceded, “but we won’t know until they’ve been in for a bit.”
It was pointless arguing with him, and I would not have tried to do so; he had made up his mind and that was that.
So Peter Mandelson is right to identify change as the theme of the next general election. And he is to be congratulated on injecting, however briefly, a modicum of fighting spirit into what appears to be a terminally pessimistic conference.
But, as the consummate political operator, he will know that Labour’s biggest problem is that what most people really want to change is the man who will take to the stage in Brighton later today.
