Giving People Hope Again

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The backdrop to this year's Labour Party conference is the drip-drip supply of statistics proclaiming the end of the recession and the start of the recovery.

Only six months ago Chancellor George Osborne was viewed as a political liability for David Cameron and the Tories.

Now he is being rehabilitated as the hero of the hour, portrayed as staunchly lashed to the tiller, steering the country through the storm of the recession with economic sunlight dawning on the horizon.

The problem for the Labour leadership is that having allowed the Tories to blame them for causing the recession they now risk being blamed for getting the recovery wrong as well.

That's why at this year's Labour Party conference it's time for the Labour leadership to come off the fence and start fighting back.

The reality behind the economic reports of recovery is that what is emerging is a recovery for the rich and a continuing recession for the rest.

This so-called recovery is non-existent for the vast majority of the population.

The recovery for the rich has been paid for by cuts in the living standards of ordinary working people, the impoverishment of those forced to live on benefits - especially the disabled and children - and the exploitation of workers on low pay with many forced onto zero-hours contracts.

There are two distinct periods when there are opportunities for people to see starkly how this economic system operates.

The first is when an economic crisis hits. It is then that people search for an explanation of what is happening and why.

The Labour leadership missed this opportunity largely because Labour in government, along with many other deregulating, neoliberal governments, was deeply implicated in contributing to the causes of the crisis.

In addition, during the critical period of the initial public debate about the reasons for the crisis the Labour leadership contest was in full flow.

Not only was there a vacuum of leadership but, worse still, none of the Labour leadership candidates even scraped the surface of explaining and challenging this crisis-ridden system.

The second opportunity for exposing the workings of the capitalist system comes when the economic cycle hits rock bottom and begins to bounce back.

There is a political breathing space in which lessons can be learnt and change determined and demanded.

It is often thought that it is in the depths of recession when people are hurting the most that they question and challenge the system.

Experience has shown that it is when the economy begins to recover and people feel that they are being excluded from that recovery, their anger is often at its most intense and they are open to new ideas and most motivated to fight back.

That is the period we are now in and the Labour leadership has a tremendous opportunity to expose the scale of corruption and unfairness of the current system and mobilise for an alternative.

But it needs the Labour Party to come off the fence and signal whose side it's on in ensuring who benefits from any recovery.

A few basic policy commitments could send the message that the fight was on to secure the recovery for the many not the few.

Labour could signal that it was ending the attack on the most vulnerable by committing to scrapping the bedroom tax and benefit cap, sacking Atos and abolishing its vicious disability assessments.

Labour could show it means business in making work pay by making the minimum wage a living wage, restoring trade union rights to protect wages and conditions of employment, ending zero-hours contracts and restoring a commitment to full employment.

Labour could end rip-off Britain by ending privatisation, bringing back into public ownership rail, water and energy and, if it goes through, the Royal Mail.

Labour could give families the hope of a decent home by laying out the plans for building half a million new council homes a year, introducing rent controls and scrapping the buy to let landlord subsidies.

Labour could pay for this investment in the recovery for the many not by borrowing but by ensuring the rich and the corporations pay their taxes and wealth is redistributed to modernise our economic infrastructure and invest in our education, health, environment and public services.

Put simply, Labour could use this conference to show real leadership in giving people hope again.

The voice of Middle Britain.