00:00You were a central figure and politician in the glory days, I guess, of Tony Blair's government
00:06in the late 90s, early 2000s. What do you make of this, the Labour Party now, obviously with the
00:14huge election win in July, there's so many new Labour MPs that have come into Parliament who,
00:21you know, some of them will be future Labour leaders. What do you make of this new cohort
00:24and the future of the Labour Party? Well I'm trying to weigh it up in terms of how
00:28I felt and what we experienced those years ago. I was very, very fortunate. Firstly,
00:35I had a seat in Sheffield, which was an enormous great fortune in the community, which I loved and
00:41I'd been brought up in, and the support that went with it, as well as the criticism. I mean,
00:47people could support you in Sheffield and they could give you a good going over, but they would
00:54also give you a hug. So that was a strength. Secondly, I was really lucky because I was in
01:00the right place at the right time with the experience of having led the city for seven
01:04years. And the experience that I wouldn't want again, which was 10 years in opposition,
01:10but it did give me a grounding. And when we won in 97, I was very clear what we needed to do.
01:17Tony had told me I was going to be Education and Employment Secretary. Later, of course,
01:21I became Home Secretary and then worked in pensions. But I knew what I needed to do.
01:27I got the background experience of having run a big authority and also developed policies in
01:34opposition. And now I think that's slightly different. I think we wanted to win. We hoped
01:42we would win. I think many of us were quite surprised that we stood a chance of turning
01:47it round in one parliament because the Conservatives had beaten us hands down in
01:522019 and we were back to 1935 levels. And having reached the point where it was a chance to win,
02:01we also were holding our breath about what the majority would be. Here's one of the twists about
02:05the 2024 election. I was saying to people, I think we'll get a majority of around 20 to 50
02:14on the grounds that we'll be very fortunate if we get 10 percentage points ahead of the
02:19Conservatives. And actually, that's what we got. But what I'd not predicted was firstly,
02:27a big abstention by Conservatives, which accounted for the turnout. And secondly,
02:33the intervention of reform. So Reform Party, under this showman Farage,
02:43came second to Labour in 89 UK constituencies and it completely jiggered the Conservatives
02:53to use a vocalism. And they're down to 121 and none of us predicted that. We just
03:01couldn't have predicted it. So two challenges. One is to use that enormous majority wisely.
03:09And secondly, to use the MPs that have been elected, and over half the House of Commons
03:18is now new, to ensure that they've got a role. Because there's only so many people
03:25who can be ministers, or bag carriers to ministers, they're called Parliamentary
03:30Private Secretaries. And give them a chance, not just to represent the constituency,
03:38be in the constituency, taking up problems, listening, learning, reflecting that back,
03:43but also a role in the policymaking and parliamentary process. And I'm hoping from
03:49this autumn's conference, we'll be able to do that. Because if you don't, then you get
03:54major disquiet on the back benches. And people get restless, you know, what is their role? What
04:00are they doing there? If they're just voting fodder, then they're going to get fed up pretty
04:05quickly. So some of us are saying, if we can be helpful without hectoring, we don't want to say
04:11to people, this is how we do it, we did it, you should do it. We want to say, these are the lessons
04:17we learned, good and bad. And if you want to use that old fashioned wisdom, then please do. And
04:24we're there available to help. And perhaps pulling policy gatherings together on key areas and saying,
04:32look, we made mistakes, like the one we've talked about, learn from it, and then build on it. So we
04:38can get it right. We've got four and a half years, probably four years, realistically, to turn things
04:45round and to have done enough to give people hope. Because if we don't, the electorate are volatile,
04:52they'll turn on us and they'll say, you know, they certainly will. And although we didn't
04:58promise the earth, although we made it clear that there were no simple solutions, simplicity
05:05is for the populist rhetorical gang who try to persuade people that there's an easy way out of
05:14everything. There isn't. But people do expect change. And we did promise change. And we've
05:20really got to deliver.
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