These are my personal reflections as the former Labour and co-operative MP for the marginal constituency of Loughborough which I held between 1997 and 2010.
The Blogs are largely about understanding the Labour Party since 2010 and plenty of unsought advice for how to win a marginal ‘Middle England’ seat!
I have shared my frustration with the Miliband years and the horror of the Corbyn period leading to the disastrous 2019 General Election defeat.
At times I have been too timid for the fear of upsetting friends and being accused of undermining the Party and candidates – whilst at the same time being accused of doing that! So maybe I got the balance about right. I have certainly not held back on what I thought of Corbyn since day one.
As we move through the 2020’s I will reflect on what a Johnson Government means, how Brexit will unfold and what will happen to the Labour Party. Is it the end or just another long period in the wilderness. Will Labour members ever learn about the importance of winning elections?
I am sure the next decade will be as eventful at the last. Except this time we don’t have a home Olympics to cheer us up a little as we did in 2012!
- Back from a Summer Break.Boris Johnson faces Tory wrath as party slumps in shock poll screams the Observer headline on my return to the news. Party in despair, senior MP says, as Labour draws … Continue reading Back from a Summer Break.
- They are no longer governing but smashing up the system – Cummings Johson and GoveThere has been so much material to write about over the last two weeks that I have had the opposite of writers block – writers overload. Instead of finding time to keep up and dig a little deeper into what has been happening under the cover of the Covid crisis I have resorted to quick comments and retweets of the material on twitter over @andyjreed_obe
- Mind the Values Gap ResearchThis latest research helps to highlight the difficulty of building the coal rims of voters for Labour. The big question has always how far you reflect the electorate or how … Continue reading Mind the Values Gap Research
- The State We’re in – A constitution in need of updatingFrom the New Statesman “All kinds of lessons can be drawn from the debacle of Dominic Cummings’ road trip to the north-east, and different political meanings squeezed out of this … Continue reading The State We’re in – A constitution in need of updating
- Cummings Plan to Smash up the State ?I don’t often write about ‘process’ stories as the point of this blog is to understand and connect politics into building a coalition of voters for a Labour government. I … Continue reading Cummings Plan to Smash up the State ?
- The Stories that Back Up Labour Together – from Nathan OswinThe Labour Together report is an incredibly comprehensive look at the 2019 election from Labours perspective, but also looks further back on trends with the ominous warning being that there is no guarantee these trends will turn around of any natural accord. It’s the stark reality that complacency could take us from a grievous strike to a death blow for our party.
- Easing Lockdown and Preparing for the Second Wave – A Political Gamble
The Prime Minister announced a raft of measures yesterday which to all intents and purposes sounded like the signal to the end of Lockdown from the 4th July. (BBC Summary of the Measures)
It has felt from the start that political decision making has dominated this crisis whilst Ministers have tried to hide by the awful phrase – led by the Science. You will have seen over the last week or so that even this has changed subtly to informed by the science.
- How to win – Stuart Brady Loughborough 2019 candidate writesI was astounded by the quality of the Labour together 2019 Election Review. An honest, detailed, evidence-based and robust document which is a very valuable step towards understanding where we should go as a party. But there a couple of conclusions in the report I didn’t necessarily agree with.
- The Scale of the 2019 Election defeat Laid Bare in Election Review Report
As you can imagine this website has been waiting for the Labour Together Review for some time with eager anticipation. After the catastrophic defeat in 2019, which many of us had predicted, I was hoping for a period of clam and honest reflection that faced the true scale of what had happened.
- In praise of Marcus RashfordThe England striker brought heart, and common humanity, to questions that are fundamentally, deeply political.
View from the Margins 