{"id":374,"date":"2007-02-28T12:25:15","date_gmt":"2007-02-28T11:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=374"},"modified":"2007-02-28T12:25:15","modified_gmt":"2007-02-28T11:25:15","slug":"introducing-the-2020-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=374","title":{"rendered":"Introducing &#8220;The 2020 Vision&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Cabinet Ministers Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn have today launched a new web site called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.the2020vision.org.uk\/\">The 2020 Vision<\/a> intended to open a debate about the future policy direction of the British Labour Party, particularly in the context of an impending change of leadership in the Party as Tony Blair steps down in the summer. I welcome a debate and I would like to see a contest, rather than a coronation, for the Labour leadership &#8211; although, given the political history of Clarke and Milburn, there are bound to be doubts about the motives of this particular initiative.<br \/>\nI believe that Gordon Brown will &#8211; and should &#8211; become the next Labour leader and Prime Minister. Like all leaders, he has his flaws, but he is an outstanding politician who has delivered much for this country in his 10 years as Chancellor and earned the right to tackle the top job that he has coveted for so long. But it would be good for him, the Party and the country for the leadership to be contested.<br \/>\nWe don&#8217;t need a detailed set of policies from Brown &#8211; that can wait for the opening of his first 100 days at No 10. But we do need to know the principles on which he will conduct his premiership: how serious are we about tackling inequalities of wealth and power in our society? how committed are we to reducing child poverty? what energy sources are we going to use and how rapidly are we going to combat climate change? what is the role of the private sector in the provision of public services? what is Britain&#8217;s role in the world&#8217;s trouble spots and in creating a fairer trade system? why do we need to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent?<br \/>\nJohn O&#8217;Donnell and Michael Meacher have already declared for the Left, but it looks unthinkable that both could win the 44 nominations required from Labour MPs. Meacher is much the more credible candidate and I hope that he gets the chance to run.<br \/>\nBut there should also be a heavyweight candidate from the Blairite Right of the Party. Ideally it should be someone still in the Cabinet who is willing to risk ending his political career for a wider cause. Whatever his current problems at the Home Office, John  Reid seems to have the right profile and age.<br \/>\nMeanwhile the race to be Deputy Leader is becoming almost surreal, not least because there is no guarantee that the Deputy Leader will become Deputy Prime Minister and, even if he or she does, there is no certainly that the role will be meaningful. That all depends on Brown. Of the six declared candidates, I would back Alan Johnson who used to be my boss at the CWU.<br \/>\nMeanwhile David Cameron is doing really well repositioning his reluctant Conservative Party and is going to give any new Labour leader a real contest at the next General Election &#8211; which is as it should be in a mature, vibrant democracy. Let battle &#8211; and debate &#8211; commence &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Cabinet Ministers Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn have today launched a new web site called The 2020 Vision intended to open a debate about the future policy direction of the British Labour Party, particularly in the context of an impending change of leadership in the Party as Tony Blair steps down in the summer. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}