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Labour backbenchers demand change to avoid "hammer blow"

13/09/2008

Twelve Labour backbench MPs have demanded that the party leadership outline a bold new strategy if a "hammer blow" defeat is to be avoided.

Writing in Progress magazine, the dozen-strong group, six former ministers among them, have claimed the party has "no explanation yet" as to how it will "steer the economy through the troubled waters ahead".

"One-off taxes and pay-outs, no matter how justified in their own terms, do not amount to a strategy," they write and criticise the leadership's failure to outline its plans to affect people's day to day lives.

The article comes after a junior member of the government was sacked after saying she wants a leadership election at this year's Labour party conference.

It was the first time a member of the government had openly called for challengers to confront Gordon Brown about the party's leadership.

Soon after, a government spokesman said Siobhain McDonagh would be sacked and her replacement had already been appointed, adding that she had always been "anti-Gordon".

In the Progress article, the Labour MPs claimed that famed policy initiatives such as Harold Wilson's "pound in your pocket" and Thatcher's likening of the economy to a household budget may have been "derided by the pundits" but were "understood by the public".

The government's public service approach is described as being in a "malaise" while policies to deal with the housing market and 10p tax rate crisis are called "defensive".

"There's a yawning chasm which we on the centre-left need to fill," the article concludes. "Failure to do so would be a hammer blow, not only to the future of progressive politics, but also to our government."

The article was authored by the following MPs: Janet Anderson; Karen Buck; Patricia Hewitt; George Howarth; Eric Joyce; Sally Keeble; Stephen Ladyman; Martin Linton; Shona McIsaac; Margaret Moran; Tom Levitt; and Paddy Tipping.