06/11/2011 The Politics Show Northern Ireland

Hello. Welcome to the programme. Were at the SDLP annual conference.

The party has a new leader. Beating off three contenders, Alistair

McDonnell has claimed the prize. He was denied 18 months ago when he

lost to Margaret Ritchie. The SDLP was once the biggest nationalist

party and he is taking it into the future. He said he would take the

party back to the top table, comparing Sinn Feiner added DUP, to

Afghan warlords. What sort of challenge lies ahead for the new

leader? With me is the deputy leader of the SDLP, Dolores Kelly,

and our political editor, Mark Devon port. Thank you for joining

us. Big challenges ahead. Is heavy right man, in your view?

membership says that he has, and he has the confidence of the party

membership. The other contenders said openly and clearly that they

will support the new leader and he said there is a collectivist

approach required, and he has given commitment to building team SDLP at

all levels of the party. He has been in the past a more divisive

figure, with people voting for anyone but Alastair. I Alastair has

many fine attributes. He has a significant majority in south

Belfast. He has now got the job. We all know that it is a make-or-break

time for the SDLP. Everybody knows the challenges that lie ahead.

Alastair will have my full support and the full support of the

complete party membership. Did you vote for him? It is a secret ballot

and they think we should respect the ballot box. In the SDLP system

of voting, it is a PR election, so I could vote for everybody. He is

the new leader, but will he make ministerial changes? Alex Attwood

has done a matter of some job as Minister for the environment and

prior to that as minister for social development. I'm sure that

Alastair will take that into consideration. He said he wants to

hit the ground running. He is calling a meeting tomorrow morning,

where we will start to look at how the collective leadership can work

and make quickly with the party Executive. That will be Alastair's

alter that decision, but he has made it clear that he wants a team

approach. And, amid there that I almost pulled it out of the back. -

- Conor McDevitt. Yes, he is a rising star and those who did not

vote foreign feel that he is a future leader of the SDLP. -- for

him. Although he himself said he was never a dark horse, Alastair

Macdonald was a little bit under the radar. His launch was a low key

as Barnsley attended compared to other candidates. Some people was

told that he was in the linen Hall Library with all these tomes behind

them, isn't yesterday's man? There was a sense that he had tried

previously and had been beaten by Margaret Ritchie and he could not

win it then why should he be able to do it this time? But he is a

great hands on campaigner. He just that a lot of hands-on contact with

individual party members. His people were fairly confident. They

were only high in the Lords with the bookies because the MacKellar

went with it when they got the chance of a good return on the

money. It sounded like a glued one liner at the time, but it turned

out to be true. -- glib. Was it his initiation of the process against

Margaret Ritchie that went against him, in the end? There is that old

adage about he who wields the dagger does not inherit the crown.

It was thought that he was leading the field. He decided that the

party needed some shaking up and if it had not been for him it is

questionable whether we would have been having that electioneer study.

So, he did that, but as the campaign went on there was a sense

that he was not getting the traction he would have hoped for.

There was one point in the campaign when I thought we might see a

Malone-that Kelly ticket, but that did not transpire. And he did not

gain the traction that he thought. Early on in the campaign he might

have thought he would have soaked up more of the vote outside Belfast

given that all the other candidates are Belfast-based. What happened

there, when it was supposed to be the two of your running together?

That's is what people read into it. I threw my hat in the ring for

deputy leader of Colin Eastwood, another rising star within the

party, who will have leadership potential in the future, as well. I

kept my council very much to myself, because I believed that's who over

the leader is, I don't want the story to be that the deputy leader

voted for somebody else. I certainly what Alastair and the

membership to know that I, as deputy leader, and a team player

and will be working with Alastair, facing up to all of those

challenges and opportunities which lie ahead. Leadership elections

have become a recurrent feature of SDLP conferences. The party

faithful hope that this will be the last such contest for some time. We

have been talking to party veterans and newcomers, and all of them

agree on the need for stability and Apparently, there is a major event

happening in Belfast this weekend. It involves big names competing for

the top prize. Along the way, there have been Pat -- personality

clashes. The MTV awards are not the only show in town. There is also

the SDLP conference with the added attraction of the leadership

election. Leadership is not easy but following in the footsteps of a

political giant is even harder. Mark Durkin was groomed for the

ball but the party fortunes declined and his watch. Margaret

Ritchie presided over further slippage but was warmly welcomed at

the conference. When I came into would usher I was confronted with a

major Westminster election at which she was a participant, and not only

two but three elections this year, so there is now that the space,

that opportunity, of three years for the development of ideas.

Margaret Ritchie learned for politics at the side of Eddie

McCreadie, who she succeeded in the South Down seat at Westminster. His

enthusiasm for politics is undiminished. I want the party to

go from where it is now into the future, not to try and replicate

what happened. It is a different era, different circumstances. I

think there is a clean sheet out there and we can make what they

like of it. Tony Gallagher was a victim of the party's sinking

porches, losing his Fermanagh seat in the elections. But he still

wants to have input into policy. own personal view is that we should

be thinking seriously about going into opposition, but lots of big

decisions that will be involved, with the views of more people than

myself. Whether we look at the landscape then or not, I am not

sure about the timing of it. Sean Farren and Patricia Farren were

competing with sales at the conference. Both the promoting

books. The former Stormont Minister says he wanted to write a sequel

and he believes that it will not be to go away. Nearly 50% of the

delegates I don't know on a personal basis. The complete

reversal of the situation 10 years ago when I would have known

everybody. Who would have gone to such a conference. That must be an

indication of the fact that there is new light coming into the party.

Bridging the gap between one generation and the next, these

young SDLP representatives are regarded as the future of the party.

Taking a break from the conference at the nearby beauty spot, they

share their vision. We have had a few years to regroup and reorganise

and think a little bit about the direction you want to go in and the

new project that is the SDLP. know and believe that we have the

right answers and policies that will deliver a credible jobs plan,

a credible way out of the economic mess we are in. The leadership

election is not necessarily an unhealthy thing. It has put us back

in the spotlight again. And, for too long, we have been squeezed out

of it by this big two Pike politics. -- type. We move forward now, and

we move forward as one party. This is the man who will carry the hopes

of SDLP members young and old. Alastair Macdonald has pledged to

stop the party's fire, in every parish. He will have to unite its

disparate wings and reversed his political decline. A tough job for

a man regarded by his supporters and by his opponents as a tough

politician. The conference is now n it's thought day, the longest of

all the Northern Ireland party gatherings. You can see John Hume,

Pat McGlone and corner McDevitt beside him. Saturday saw fooled day

of discussion, which included the single biggest issue facing any

politician anywhere at the moment, the economy. I am joined by the

chair of the Enterprise Committee at Stormont. Do you think that

Alastair McDonnell can unite the party going into the future?

Absolutely. I think he will be a tremendously good leader. He has

got all the skills of the good leader has. And of course, he has

shown through his life experience, he has been a businessman, he has

been a doctor, a successful politician, in terms of carving out

that seat in so Belfast, not just in the Assembly but in Westminster,

so he has a proven track record and that is what the party needs. The

other thing is, the interesting thing about Friday night, he was

the one we candidate who refer to the other candidates in terms of

harnessing their talents in order to collectively move this party for

word. That was a very smart move on his part. He does a lot of jobs.

How has that going to pan out? Hume had a lot of jobs. He was a

member of the European Parliament, member for Westminster, member of

the Stormont Assembly, he did of those jobs reasonably well. It is

up to the electorate to decide. there was an Assembly in those days.

There was, but the point I would make is that yes, it is difficult

for me, perhaps for you, but for Alistair McDonnell, I think that he

can do it and do it extremely well. What about all the candidates being

from Belfast? Do you think that having a leader from Belfast will

help the party that has lost out in places like Fermanagh, so if Derry,

and Antrim? I think that Alistair McDonnell has universal appeal. He

is a Glens man. That is in his political DNA, and his real DNA. He

understands people. Right throughout the society. He is a

doctor. He knows people. In the real sense of getting to grips with

their health problems, and so forth. He is a great personality. He has

been caricatured as the bill in the China shop. That is a wrong

caricatured. He is a man of tremendous energy and great talent.

And he could bring a lot of people to the SDLP for perhaps have

remained outside or perhaps have stayed at home in previous

elections and that is one of a great problems, the SDLP supporters

have remained at home. That is a problem, we have got to address

that, and Alastair Macdonald will be good at doing that. There is a

lot of emphasis in his literature and his campaign about organisation

and in his speech, we're going to hear more about organisation and

special task forces and so on, but we don't know where he stands on

whether you should go into opposition on some of the left-

right choices that will face the SDLP, whether to carry on pressing

for corporation tax cuts, or not. Do you expect any shift in the

ideological position of the party? No, I don't. The party is a left-

of-centre party. It has always been in that direction in terms of

social and economic policy. What Alastair has put emphasis on it is

getting the party together, in terms of its organisation, reaching

out to people, attracting people into the party. He has a proven

track record of doing that. He wants to expand that through the

rest of Northern Ireland. I think he can do that. I think he has

caught the skills to do that. And that is what people voted for. In

terms of policy, there is no difference in policy are amongst

the four contenders for the leadership. It had been said that

two are to the left of the party, and two of them to the right of the

party. I think that is a false distinction. I think Alastair

Macdonald, he has been a very strong social democrat that has

always been reflected, in his political work. Yes, he's a man

that will push for economic development, that is what we all

want. And he has a proven track record of being a businessman, and

being entrepreneurial, in his life, but he has also been a political

entrepreneur as well, at that has produced results, and that is the

important thing in terms of his There was no set plan for a

farewell speech from the outgoing leader sh Margaret Ritchie, but

yesterday she took the opportunity to remind conference what had been

achieved under her leadership. She received a standing ovation as she

said it had been an an nour to serve as leader. -- an honour to

serve as leader. The truth is SDLP apart, the devolved government here

has done little to support people. I think that part of that reason is

that the people at the top have lost touch. There was a time when

the DUP and Sinn Fein leaders would have understood the hardship and

working class communities. But not any more. Our millionaire First

Minister, Peter Robinson, surrounded by his barristers and

�90,000 a year advisors, is too well insulated from the hardship of

citizens. And our globe trotting deputy First Minister, now back to

what he regards as porridge is to too consumed of aspirations of

living in a palace in Dublin to care. We have heard of big house

unionism. Did you ever think you would have big house Republicanism?

Gerry and Martin have in every sense gone south. APPLAUSE. What

then has the SDLP done as part of this executive to support those

most in need? The answer colleagues is quite a lot. Although we only

had one department, we did make a significant difference for those

who needed help most. Our social development ministers in tightly

financial restraints built double the number of social hows as were

built in the years before. APPLAUSE. Now may remember we ended,

hopefully forever the entire proposition of funding paramilitary

groups from prams -- progrags intended for those in reel --

programmes intended for those in real need. If politic is not about

maintaining the young and maintaining the health of citizens,

supporting the vulnerable and providing security for people in

their old age, then why would anyone be in politics at all? And

so I would remind this conference that amid all the poster, the T-

shirt and the excitement of this weekend, the historic calling of

the SDLP politics is that we engage in politics to make people's lives

better. That and that alone. I want to tell you colleagues that it has

been an honour to serve you as the leader of the SDLP. And I want to

thank the very many people who have assisted me in that role. And I

want to pledge my loyalty to whoever is elected as our new

leader. The very same loyalty that I gave to those leaders who

preceded me. While I have a huge and I must say exciting agenda for

South Down, I will be honoured to serve the party centrally in any

role that is asked of me. This SDLP still has something very special to

offer our communities and our nation. People continue to look for

us and look to us for leadership and for solutions. I came into

politics to serve and support people. I found a special home for

that in the SDLP. We are here for the right reasons. We're here to

help people. And that is what I will all do and that is what we do

best. Thank you. APPLAUSE. Well that was Margaret Ritchie yesterday.

But these shots now are of the conference at the moment and

delegates are hearing from the deputy leader, Dolores Kelly and

shortly they will here the leader's speech. Let oo's here from two of

the MLAs. What do you make of the new lead sner Delighted with our

new leader. He has the qualities the SDLP need to bring us into a

new beginning. A new vision and it is exciting times. I'm glad that

I'm part of the team. Did you vote for him? Well we're a democratic

party and we're able to vote for all four candidates. That is

something I did. It is divisive, he has been a divisive figure in the

past, people are either for or against him. Do you think he can

bring everyone together. Without a doubt. He has qualities that will

be able to lead us into the future. He has qualities, he is a good

listener, although I am new, he has always given us time. The doctor in

him has come out. He can listen. I have no doubt that the 14ML as -- -

14MLAs that he will listen to them and to our voters. You're a rising

star, but you decided to step aside for deputy leader. Why did you do

that? It wasn't the right time for me. It is important to allow the

contest to go ahead. It was an important discussion that the SDLP

had. What we have learned this a we need to keep talking to each other.

Keep talking to the grass roots and we have a good deputy leader in

Dolores Kelly. It is a great team and one that won't just be about

the two of them, but a collective leadership. That is the way forward.

It is about the team and that is what will happen. Is it realistic

to get back to the good old days, should you not accept that you are

where you are? I think we do. It is important that the SDLP has

realised that we have a major challenge. It has been difficult

times for the SDLP, difficult elections, but the first thing you

have to do when you try to change that is to realise that. The leader

has put a blue print before us for that. Are you kisai -- disappointed

in the three Belfast candidates going forward and particularly in

an area likes your, Derry has lost support and Antrim. How do you grow

that back? Derry has three MLAs. That is a big achievement. But you

have lost. We have lost support, but we will get it back. Northern

Ireland is a small part of the world. Alisdair is from Antrim and

he has been in every constitution in the past few years. That will

stand him in good stead. He know what is the communities are like.

But it is not just about a lead inner Belfast, but having leaders

in every community. From your point of view, there seemed to be a lot

of young people around the conference yesterday, do you think

that he can appeal to the younger voters and supporters of the party?

Without a doubt he will. I have been coming to conference for a

number of years and I witnessed a different buzz about our party

conference, a positive buzz from Friday, through you can see it all

happened around us here today. That is something we're looking forward

to. We're just seeing Alasdair McDonnell come up to make his

speech now. Obviously, as you say, the buzz is there. Definitely, you

can see the qualities of a family man coming out. I have no doubt

that Alasdair McDonnell will bring back to the kitchen table politics

to Northern Ireland. Thank you both. You can now go and enjoy his speech.

Thank you. I don't deserve all this, it's going to my head already. I

hope everyone had a comfortable night. A good night. And didn't

imbibe too much. Any way, last night was the fun today the hard

work begins. Friends, delegates, the last few weeks have been

intense and fruitful for this party. As we talked and discussed across

the north all the issues. Could somebody turn off those lights

please? I'm blinded! I know, but I can't see. I have come through the

process with two abiding memories. One is the determination of people

every where that this party will survive, the value upon which it

was founded will be carried forward into a new generation. And into a

new Ireland. The other thing we heard over and over again was why

can't yous work together? And my answer is yes, we can. That is what

I asked for. That is what you have mandated me for and endorsed this

weekend. Not just a new leader, but a new leadership system. A

collective system that will ensure that the interests of the whole

party will always come first. All leaders need to be accountable

and to have built in check and balances. And that applies to me as

well as everyone else. I think that during the last leadership contest,

some commentators referred to me as a bull in a China shop. My wife

doesn't agree, but... But friends and colleagues can I tell you that

we're going to have some time over the next few weeks. I will play to

my strengths and I think at times diplomacy can be overrated. And I

believe that the gimmick and the media spin, I will leave those to

others. I will take the bull analogy as a tribute to my reserve

of energy and my passion. Which tempered with vision and wise

counsel can produce a lot. With me, what you see is what you get. And

what you will get is the action necessary to save this party.

So well you might ask, what will we smash? APPLAUSE. Well first I'd

like to smash the myth that the SDLP's fate is settled and sealed

and that this party is somehow doomed to fail and die. All that is

wrong with us and I have repeated this, is we get get -- don't get

enough votes. That is all. I have spent some of my life as a GP and a

doctor and I can tell you that this is tpwhrt an uncurable condition

that we have reached. This -- this is not an incurable condition. I

have the prescription and you have it too. I sent it to you in the

post. This is a proven formula that we can conducted, the first

successful trials on in South Belfast in 2005 and produced a

greatly enhanced performance in 2010. Next I would like to smash

the mirth that Sinn Fein and the DUP are -- myth that Sinn Fein and

the DUP are invincible. They are not. They are just a bit better

than us at getting votes. But I want to splash through the limits

to our own -- smash through the limits to our own political vision.

We have had too much of our energy into creating a comfortable place

for others around the Good Friday agreement that we became hypnotised

by it. We must face reality that the agreement has been left by the

DUP and Sinn Fein to run out of road. In the hands of the DUP and

Sinn Fein, it may provide basic political stability, but it will

not deliver the real political We can value stability, of course,

we can protect the institutional arrangements that have been set up,

and such elements of power sharing and partnership that survive, but

we have to realise that the agreement will not deliver the

normalisation or any sort of normal poor fix in the hands of Sinn Fein

and the DUP. -- normal politics. That will require real steps to

combat sectarianism, and a commitment to make a share of

future work for others. And the DUP and Sinn Fein are not going to do

that. Why should they? They have captured the Good Friday Agreement

and the made it in their own, divided image. We have made the

thing almost unworkable, they have for the letter of it, but have tore

the heart out of it. There is -- such that to this little

reconciliation left in it, at all. And from their point of view, they

are doing very nicely out of it. Why should the sectarian parties

bought for an on-site -- the sectarian talkies vote for a non-

sectarian Christmas? What we have now is all that were going to get

out of the agreement. There is stability but there is no future in

it. The big difficult to go on for what is that, with all the

pressures coming around, there is going to be less and less money,

and a lot more poverty, and a valuable power sharing element that

has been replaced within the agreement has been replaced with

something that is going nowhere and will produce no resource for people.

It is like a sullen ceasefire, but there is no productivity andopening

up. Just as we had nine peace walls, way back when the agreement was

signed, we now have, in the 50s. That is what those two parties want,

I am blinded by those lights. Can you turn them off, please? Thank

you. That is what those two parties are working for and they alike two

children, at many stages, and we, and the SDLP, are going to have to

do something about it. We need to make things work, we need to make

things happen, and we need to make sure that the SDLP recovers boats,

to make those things happen. -- votes. I intend to meet as soon as

possible with the Executive and the Assembly grip, to assure -- to be

sure that we build the basis and foundations for the collective

leadership that I talked about, going forward. I will talk to my

Assembly colleagues and stress the importance of working right across

the all-party with the various interests in the party, between the

Executive, and I want to build sub- groups across the party to work on

this policy interests. So that is the out walking of the collective

leadership. -- out-working. Were going to work and create and

openness in the party that will work for all were benefit, -- all

of our benefit can I have the likes of please? Why do they keep coming

on. They a blinding me, I am sorry. I don't need that. I don't need

that. When I am finished the day I am going to walk round the hall,

and collect all the copies of the manifestos that were produced, by

Executive colleagues and my rivals in the leadership contest, I am

going to collect all of those ideas and take them home and study them,

so that we can come up with all the good ideas and distil all the good

ideas over the weekend, because I believe we badly need those, take

all of those together, and unite the party, and I would ask you to

do the same. I would ask you to go back to your branches and

constituencies and the various places that you work for us and

work with the SDLP, and discuss the issues that have been race this

weekend, because I want those ideas to be distilled, and to work right

through every level of the party that we can, and to ensure that

everyone is signed up, and everyone is going forward. The ideas will

help and reinforce the strength and collectivity of the leadership and

the party, and the growth and the regrowth of the party, and if you

don't have a branch in your area, I would ask you to seriously consider

starting one and making things happen.

I want, early next year, to convene a special conference on all of this,

but before that I want to have special meetings in every

constituency, and I want to insure much more robust constituency

associations, because at those meetings, I would ask you and your

fellow members what you feel about all that we are doing, and leading

up, in that way, to be in conference -- to the conference

that we intend to have next spring. I think we need a massive recovery

in voting numbers in the Assembly elections in three or four years'

time. And by next task will be to meet with the chief Executive of

the party, the general secretary, and to discuss how we will put

together the special conference that we need. That renewal

conference will be held early next year, and it will discuss and

crystallise all of the things we have talked about here in this

leadership contest, over the weekend. We need to hit the ground

running, and we don't have ears to debate and to worry about electoral

performance. We know we have some difficulties and unless we can

quickly and clearly demonstrate to the public that we have the will

and the ability to move forward the agenda, the level of support might

well come up a little, and then fade away again. I don't want to

allow any of the energy that I have sort you have to be dissipated. --

saw here. Everybody needs to put a shoulder to the wheel. I am asking

every single one of you to put your shoulder to the will to make sure

that we get some advantage at of the last eight weeks, and in

particular, the last three days. We must stick to hour vigil and

will lump. We must ensure that the special renewal conference will

produce results and there was a clear road to recovery for the

party, on the ground -- and give us. We must create political momentum

that we can move with, and ride on top of, and ensure that, on the

ground, perception is that as a group, we are moving forward. We

must be back on the road again as an electoral force. We cannot wait

until there is an Assembly election. It must be done, well before that.

It is an enormous task, and that is so big right now that you might say,

you do not know where it ends. I can tell you that it starts now and

it ends when we are Ark back in a good position, politically. -- we

We are going to look for help. I am a great believer in delegation and

looking for help where we can find it. We are going to look for help

mapping out the past and scoping out the work that has to be done

and we will look for this practice wherever we can find it. That is

why I will be looking to her friends, consulting this week with

people inside the party and our chief Executive, and I will be

trying to set up a small commission, or Task Force, charged with the

task of bringing forward proposals that have been put to the

conference early next year, and to create an efficient electoral

machine, arising out of that. Let me say, immediately, that the

efficiency we are looking for, is to get more SDLP boards through the

ballot boxes. That will be the benchmark. And that is the only

benchmark I c, going forward. Were going to look to her friends

for help, and we have many friends across the political spectrum. We

are part of the European social democratic grouping, and many of

those parties are very able to help us in the context of best practice.

We have friends in Dublin and London. I will be looking to all of

those to give us some advice and some ideas, but the real task comes

back to us, here. The task force will rely heavily on the

organisation drawn up by our chief Executive two years ago, that we

did not quite put into practice as we intended. We must be prepared to

make the sweeping changes that are necessary, and not to be hidebound

by existing structures would they have not work for us. We cannot go

on with the fiction that there are lots of functional branches out

there. We have some very good branches. But we have a few that

are not functioning. And we do not need dead wood branches. We have

got to amalgamate smaller branches, and make them work in a way that

produces collective efficiency and effectiveness.

So, the number of branches that is being carried by a few people will

have to be strengthened and developed and the constituency

councils will have to be strengthened and developed, as well.

There are many branches that hardly ever meet, and we cannot continue

with them. We must find new ways of reaching out to everybody, and even

people who are not members, reaching out to people beyond the

party, members who are supporters, let's call them associate members,

people who want to help. And membership should not any longer be

targeted through geographical branch. We should have a central

registration for members and, perhaps, we should find a better

way of registering member centrally, and allowing members flexibility as

to where they work, because we find people tried to constituencies,

people from west Tyrone, who happen to be working or living in Belfast.

We have to take best advantage of the people that we have. We have

made the mistake in the past of missing out on a generation of

young people, and we cannot allow that to happen again. We have to

find space and create space for new young people and there is a

tremendous generation of young people around here, at the moment.

We have paid dearly for missing out on that generation and I don't want

to see that happening again. Most important of all, I would want to

bring forward a permanent mechanism for consultation with all members

within the party, because I believe there has been a sense that,

sometimes, senior members like myself do not listen enough. From

my perspective, this must involve a weekly programme of leadership

visits to various constituencies, where that is possible. That is

very necessary. And we must improve communications, because internal

communications are not, to my mind, where they could be at times. There

are lots of modern electronic communication methods that we must

use because I have found that so I will ask the task force to pling

forward proposals for -- bring forwards proposals for that

internal party discipline and communication and discipline as

well, so that we can make things work, make things work efficiently

and allow people to give of their best. To put it simply, what I'm

trying to get at is we need everyone pulling on the same rope.

I believe a collective leadership will be better placed to improve

discipline. The special conference is in the spring is to have some

difficult decisions to take and to make. But I think the task force

will prepare us for that and set up that, the ground for that. The task

force may have to pose some questions about how we take forward

our selection of candidates and the question of... If you like the

absolute right of the constituency or the people locally to select

candidates and I mean, the difficulty I have is we must find a

situation, a balanced combination between the local constituency and

the party centrally, because I don't think that local parties have

the right to select a losing ticket. I think we must create

circumstances where every time we run an election, we pick winners.

But I'm determined that the decisions such as we, the decisions

we take will not be taken in the mouth of an election. That the SDLP

is going to be prepared and battle ready at all times. We have to make

our choices long before the date of an election. Our candidates will be

well known in advance and be promoted as party representatives.

With the appropriate resources and the backing. That is how winning

party do it. That is how we're going to do it. There are other

thing we must do to signal that we're back in business. This party

will organise a conference on the economy for one and there may be

others, but the economy is particularly important. We have

established over the years a track record and with the help of our

policy team, senior political representative and our staff,

producing well written policy papers which have won praise from

economists and others. And not a little of times imitation from our

There is no other source of political leadership on economic

issues in the inner city at the moment. And it is a time -- in the

north at the moment. And it is a triem when people are crying out

for a strong lead. But the most important reason is that we are the

social democratic and Labour Party and we have to produce a social

democratic response, or what is happening in our system. Our

economy is in the grip of a Tory orthodoxy which would not give the

time of day to democratic institutions, democratic notions of

shielding the vulnerable and we're meeting with this each day and Alex

has done a tremendous job in trying to face down the exchequer and the

Either the DUP nor Sinn Fein will contest that exchequer orthodoxy,

they have no intention of putting it up to the Chancellor, as Alex

Salmond has done in Scotland. None whatsoever. The Tory plan is simple.

Squeeze the expenditure, side of the thing, cut the money this a

going out and then devolve the responsibility for the cuts

implementing the cuts to the Sinn Fein and the DUP in the Executive.

And Sinn Fein and the DUP are little more than ba lives for the -

- bailiffs for the landlords in the My biggest worry is that there are

cuts coming down the line the liebs of which we have not seen in our

lifetime. There is cuts in jobs, schools, hospitals, cuts every

where. And I'm sorry that the current Executive, with its Sinn

Fein ministers and DUP ministers, have no plan except to blame each

sometimes and blame London at other time and often to blame both. As

the SDLP, we reject the notion that we cut our way out of a recession.

As the SDLP, we are in the business of opposing those cuts, providing

jobs we believe is always, is not the only business, of the private

sector. And the economy and society are not separate worlds. As some

would have us believe. Now is the time to put forward our own vision,

now is the time to say that clever government spending can be used to

boost the economy and protect existing jobs and create ones, new

ones. Now is the time to say that it is bad economics to push our

most vulnerable people into further pain. Not because we think the DUP

and Sinn Fein will understand us, never mind heed us, not because we

believe the Treasury would let them do these things, but because it is

our job to make some sort of sense out of what is happening to explain

to people to hard working family and businesses, that it doesn't

have to be like this. There is another way and a better way.

I think we have to tell them that we have idenified that other way.

That is what social democrats do and why the SDLP will be

approaching this new, the special economic conference as soon as

possible. The other things that we will do within a hundred days is to

start to put our party fund-raising on a sustainable basis. To my mind

the day of the big political donor is over and state funding alone

while welcome will not be our salvation. In this and many other

areas, I want to see us return to democratic principles of voluntary

effort, devolving fund-raising, along with control of the party to

the ordinary members on the ground. I think that is important. I think

if people feel they have been left out it will drift, the drift away

and they become less interested. APPLAUSE. We face mood financial

pressure and I intend to -- we face immediate finance pressure aye

intend to do something about that. I looked at the odds in the

bookie's and odds lengthened... And I asked the Chief Executive to go

and gather a few pound and put it on Alasdair McDonnell at 6/1. I

don't know whether he did it or not. But we will have to make him

answerable one of these days! I then reminded him of what he might

have won. But joking aside... that is we leave the leader's

speech. To discuss what was said, I'm joined by our political

correspondent. Very difficult to assess it, because of the technical

issues. That's right. We had a leader who said the SDLP needed to

be battle red you and today it shot itself in the foot. It had a

brilliant opportunity, live on TV to show case a new leader, a leader

who did a brilliant job yesterday in his victory speech. Now, you

know, it is a eureka moment, live TV anything can happen. He needed

to joke more about it. But I think part of the this is the legacy of

having no money. The previous leadership had no money, what did

they do? They cut the budget for the director of communications.

That is what happens when you don't value your press office. Because

they should have had this rehearsed and the other thing is that the

press corp get a copy of the speech before the leader delivers it and

we go through it. We need sound bite. I spoke to another veteran of

the press corp and he said this is full of sound bites. I said yes it

is a brilliant speech and there was some meat in there about the Good

Friday agreement has run out of road from their point of view and

the DUP and Sinn Fein. I think what happened is all the lines fell flat

and he talk about the fact commentators joked he was a bull in

a China shop and made a virtue of that and talked about the fact he

was going to have a smashing time and smash through Sinn Fein and the

myth that Sinn Fein were invincible and the DUP were. And you know it

has not worked out for him. But Alasdair McDonnell is a tough guy

and I think he will pick himself up and this was supposed to be a

declaration of war on Sinn Fein and it has not worked. What happens for

you then, can you go past the delivery of the speech? It will be

difficult to go past it. He used an unfortunate phrase where he said

could somebody turn out the lights. I think his critics will jump on

that. Maybe he wasn't used to the autocue. It is a nerve wracking

experience, but it was very difficult to look past it. You were

almost feeling so uncomfortable watching it. The lines about things

like wanting to improve discipline in the party, wanting to get rid of

dead wood candidates, his kind of critique on the Good Friday

agreement, all these line were interesting, but they were lost.

Let's look at some of the speech. He talked about organisation and we

have heard that throughout this campaign for a new leader. Do you

think they can get back to where they once were? Or is that

unrealistic? It is difficult, he above the rest of the candidates

has been talking about organisational change rather than

an any big policy change. One of his advisors said that in that

regard, you don't teach a drowning man to swim, you save him first. He

will make sure the party is battle ready, getting rid of dead wood

branches and candidates. And that will be his main priority. I don't

think we're going to see any major reform within political reform.

Briefly, what sense are you taking from this conference? Well they had

a bad morning, a brilliant day yesterday in terms of candidates

all spoke well and I think the party member reved up and energised

by the race. But they had a bad day. But it has been a long and painful