01/10/2012 Today at Conference

Good evening and welcome to today at conference. This week, we're in

Manchester, with Labour. It might be damp in the North West, but the

party faithful are in good spirits, as Labour rides high in the polls.

Those same polls suggest the two Eds aren't as popular as their

party. Today we heard from the first, Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls,

whose typically robust speech called on the party to summon the

spirit of 1945 to rebuild Britain. His warning he would not flinch

from tough decisions on public spending frustrated trade union

leaders. Elsewhere the Shadow Foreign Secretary outlined what he

saw as Britain's role in the world an the Shadow Defence Secretary

said he wants an in-out referendum on Britain in the EU.

All the talk, well, some of the talk here at the Midland Hotel bar

is of Ed Balls' speech. The Tory bashing, the napbs napbs loving all

went down well in the hall. But there was a harder message for the

party to swallow. There was no promise to reverse spending cuts

and talk of harder times ahead, even after 2015. Conference, we

meet here in Manchester, two years on from our leadership election, a

contest held in the shadow of a general election defeat. We all

know what's supposed to happen when political parties lose elections -

acrimony, division, the party turning in on itself, out of touch

with the views of the country. Well, conference, two years on, in this

generation, we have bucked that trend.

APPLAUSE I can't remember our party ever

being so united, so determined to win back the trust of the people

again, with our economy in recession and the unfairness of

this Tory-led coalition now laid bare, let us show we are the people

to rebuild Britain strong and fair for the future.

APPLAUSE Conference, making the case for

change, setting the agenda on reform of our media, our banks,

responsibility in our economy from top to bottom, showing the strength

of purpose and moral conviction which won him the job and will get

him to Downing Street, let us pay tribute to my friend, our leader,

the next Prime Minister of our country, Ed Miliband.

You know, I am proud to serve in Ed's Shadow Cabinet. Now with more

than 40% women, the first time that has ever happened in British

politics. APPLAUSE

What a contrast to David Cameron's Cabinet, where the men get the jobs,

the women get the sack and only the chaps get the knighthoods. What

kind of Prime Minister, what kind of Prime Minister thinks it's fair

to sack a 54-year-old woman in his Cabinet because she's too old and

then give the job to a 56-year-old man instead?

APPLAUSE Let me tell you, a Prime Minister

who only appoints five women in the first place, sacks three of them,

demoats the other two and then attacks the Labour leadership for

not being butch enough. Butch? Butch?? Whatever did he mean? If

David Cameron's butch... LAUGHTER

If David Cameron's butch where does that leave George Osborne?

APPLAUSE Perhaps this is why, perhaps this

is why George Osborne will never be sacked. A Prime Minister and a

Chancellor going down fighting together and this time, let's see

them ride off into the sun set butch Cameron and the floot line

kid. -- Flat line kid. Remember what

David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg promised - tax rises

faster, deeper spending cuts faster, would secure the recovery and make

Britain a safe haven. Theirs was the only credible plan to deal with

the deficit. And that we were all in this together. Conference, the

recovery secured, we are just one of only two G20 countries in

recession, the longest double-dip recession since the Second World

War. A credible plan to deal with our deficits, because we're in

recession, the deficit is not going down, it's going up. Up by 22% so

far this year. Rising borrowing, not to invest in the jobs of the

future, but to pay for the mounting costs of this Government's economic

failure. Conference, there is nothing credible about a plan that

leads it a double-dip recession, to thousands of businesses going bust,

it a million young people out of work, to billions wasted on a

soaring benefits bill, to borrowing going up, not down. That's not

credible. That is just plain wrong. APPLAUSE

And as for "we're all in this together". We don't hear that line

any more. Not from a Chancellor who presented the most unfair and

unpopular budget in a generation. A Chancellor who tried to raise taxes

on pasties, caravans, churches and charities, but who refused to look

seriously at proposal for a mansion tax. A Chancellor, who in six

months' time will raise taxes for pensioners on the very same day he

cuts the top rate of tax for the very richest, a �3 billion tax cut

giving �40,000 a year to a millionaire. �40,000 a year. What

kind of Government asks pensioners to pay for a tax cut for

millionaires? You know what the worst thing is? For two years,

they've told us all this pain will be worth it in the end. That it

will be short-term pain for long- term gain. What we are now seeing

is short-term pain doing long-term damage in our economy. With Hillary

Ben and Jack dromey, this is what we propose, the Government is

anticipating a windfall of up to �4 billion from the sale of the 4G

mobile phone spectrum. In good times, Labour used every penny of

the �22 billion from the sale of the B2 lie -- 3G licenses to repay

national debt. In difficult times we urgently need to put something

back into our economy. So with this one-off windfall from the sale of

the 4G spectrum, let's cut through this Government's dither and

rhetoric and actually do something, not more talk, but action now.

Let's use the money from the 4G sale and build over the next two

years, 100,000 new homes, affordable homes to rent and buy,

creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. Let's get our construction

industry moving again. The financial crisis exposed deep-

rooted problems in our economy. After the global financial crisis

it was always going to be difficult to get the deficit down. Even if we

do get our economy growing again, even if we do reform the banking

system, we are going to face tough choices in the years ahead. The

longer this Government staggers on with a failing economic plan, the

worse it will be and the harder it will get. Hard times are going to

last longer than any of us hoped. We can't promise to put everything

right straight away. Which is why however difficult this is, when we

don't know what we will inherit, we can't make any commitments now that

the Labour Government will be able to reverse particular tax rises or

spending cuts. Unlike Nick Clegg we will not make promises we cannot

keep. APPLAUSE

Of course, we'll make different choices. We'll do things in a

fairer way and puts jobs and growth first. As I said to the TUC, we

have to be up front with the British people that under Labour

there would have been cuts. On spending pay and pensions there

will be difficult decisions in the future from which we won't flinch.

Where we face long-term challenges, we must seek a consensus that puts

short-term politics aside and puts the national interest first, just

as we did when we made the Bank of England independent. Nowhere is

such consensus is essential than on national infrastructure. That is

why we need a comprehensive long- term plan to rebuild Britain's

infrastructure for the 21st century and cross-party consensus to

deliver it. It's why, too, when Government budgets are tight, we

must think innovatively to finance the vital projects, drawing on the

private sector and long-term pension savings. Ed Miliband and I

have asked the chair of the Olymic Delivery Authority to consider how

long-term infrastructure decision making, planning, delivery and

finance can be radically improved over the coming decades. I can

announce today that Sir John has agreed to lead this work and to

draw up plans for a commission or process independent of Government

to assess and make proposals on the long-term infrastructure needs of

our country, over the coming days, decades, and help build that

consensus. APPLAUSE

Not repeating the mistakes of the past, but learning from them,

building a consensus which crosses party lines without chopping and

changing one Parliament to the next. This is what we mean by building a

consensus to rebuild Britain for the future. Conference, there is

another lesson we must learn from our history - many people have said

over recent weeks, this has been Britain's greatest ever summer, but

let me remind you of an even greater summer still, the summer of

1945, the end of six hard years of war, when our nation welcomed its

heroes home from the battlefields of Europe, Asia and America and

celebrated together the defeat of fascism. Conference, our

predecessors were elected that year to rebuild a country ravaged by

conflict. They faced even greater challenges than we face today. An

economy feeble by war, national debt double the size of our today

and they made tough and unpopular decisions to continue with

rationing, to cut defence spending and to introduce prescription

charges. When our grandchildren look back at us, what will they

say? Will they say we cast a generation of young people on the

scrap heap of unemployment? Will they say we as a generation,

dismantled the NHS and made it harder to go to university? Will

they say we plunged Britain into a decade of economic stagnation while

other countries race add head? Will they say, we left Britain less

prosperous, more unequal, more unfair? Or will they say - even as

we made tough and painful decisions that ours was the generation that

got a record number of young people into apprenticeships and university.

Ours was the generation that safe guarded the NHS and started the

rebuilding of our national infrastructure. Ours was the

generation that tackled our debts by growing and reforming our

economy and making sure the banking crisis could never happen again,

that ours was the generation that broke from the cycle of political

short-termism and started to rebuild Britain anew in the long-

term interest. Let us go forward not flinching from tough decisions,

giving young people hope, rebuilding Britain for the future,

that is our challenge. That is our mission. Let us go forward and do

it together. Thank you. Elsewhere there was dissent over

the course of the day. Two trade union General Secretaries expressed

their frustration with the leadership. Dave prepb sis for

Unison and first Len McCluskey from Unite. -- Dave Prentice. Out there,

beyond this conference millions of people, our people, are hurting. No

jobs, no prospects, falling living standards, public services

crumbling under the cuts, struggling with the worst slump in

living memory. Our party needs to offer them just one thing this week

- hope. Real hope. We can tell the country that the next Labour

Government, the one that all the polls are telling us that people

desperately want, that we will act. That it will be different from the

present class war Conservative-led coalition which is leading our

nations on a path to poverty. And that it will be different from the

last Labour Government which put too much faith in an unregulated

City and allowed inequality to worsen. APPLAUSE. This is no time,

comrades, for timidity. Our party must be bold and determined, a

faint heart never won a fair election. We must not get

outflanked by the Liberals. Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are being

given the space to pose as champions of the wealth tax and

state-run investment bank. What a joke. So I say respectfully to our

shadow cabinet, you need to come out of the shadows, to be heard

louder and clearer on these questions and to fight harder.

APPLAUSE. Conference, asking the poorest for further sacrifices, for

a crisis that they did not cause, is the road to political ruin and

to defeat at the next general election. It's time for Labour to

once and for all turn its back on the neo-liberalism of the past,

reject the siren voices heard from those whose policies and philosophy

have been discredited and embrace the radical alternative the country

wants and which is the only way, the only way conference, Labour

will return to power. We live in a divided Britain of rich and poor

where inflation and this vicious pay freeze is wrecking lives. A new

class of working poor, our people hit the hardest and they look to

Labour, our party, for hope and our fight for fair pay should be with

nobody in this room. No one in this room is the enemy and no one in the

leadership of our party gains by undermining our efforts to defend

our members and their families. APPLAUSE. To those who believe that

driving down further the pay of public service workers will save

jobs, I say you are downright wrong. Wrong morally, and wrong

economically. In the real world, where our members overwhelmingly

low paid women are struggling, they look to Labour in opposition to

understand what they're going through. More than anything they

want hope from our leaders, not lectures, which simply justify a

Tory agenda. They want Labour in opposition to be in touch. Labour

leaders to show that they're on the side of those harmed by the

coalition. They want Labour in opposition to fashion an economic

alternative that leaves ordinary people in no doubt that Labour

speaks and acts for them. If our members, the people we rely on to

provide our public services, if they decide to fight this pay

freeze as they will, then both they and their union expect our

political party to stand with them and support them. It wasn't all

about the economy. Here is the shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas

Alex and letter -- Alexander. fundamental flaw of the

Conservatives' approach to foreign policy is two years into office

they remain damagingly unreconciled to that modern truth. Let's take

the most pressing, the most urgent example, of course, it's Europe.

Does it matter to Britain? Absolutely. Does it require

fundamental reform? Certainly. Does this Conservative Government have a

clue how to effect that reform in Britain's national interests?

Absolutely not. Now, we all know that change is coming to Europe and

that is why under Ed Miliband's leadership Labour will argue for

reform in Europe, not exit from Europe. Why will we make that case

for Britain? We make that case because British jobs, British

exports, and yes, British influence in the wider world benefits from

Britain's continued membership of the European Union. Now, of course

next week we will no doubt hear some boasts and pwhrusers from

David Cameron about Europe as he tries to asaupblg his ever restive

backbenchers. But let's be honest about why that is happening. It's

happening because if you start with a bunch of bur Burleys on your

backbenchers you end up with the non-veto where the front bench

managed to unite the whole of Europe. The only problem is they

managed to unite them against the the United Kingdom. When David

Cameron became Prime Minister he said this, this is a direct

quotation: Afghanistan will be my Government's number one foreign

policy priority. Conference, that is as it should be. With thousands

of young British men and women still in harm's way in Afghanistan,

they deserved nothing less. Now we have heard again from some members

of the British Armed Forces on this platform in this debate. They are

quite simply the best of British and they deserve once again our

thanks and appreciation. APPLAUSE. Conference, the young men and women

in harm's way in Afghanistan deserve something more than our

public applause. They deserve from the British Government a political

strategy worthy of their military heroism and their military efforts.

And yet, David Cameron, the self- same Prime Minister who told us in

May 2010 that Afghanistan would be his number one foreign policy

priority, has now not made a single speech on Afghanistan to the House

of Commons in 14 months. Conference, that is shameful. APPLAUSE.

Conference, from this platform I say today to David Cameron, break

your silence on Afghanistan. Take the risks for a sustainable

settlement and we in the Labour Party will support you. Douglas

Alexander speaking earlier. The Prime Minister is toying with the

idea of a referendum on Europe. What should Labour do? Adam took

out his moodbox to find out what party members think. There's no

point asking the question about backing out of Europe. I am happy

to be European. Yes. Why is that? Well, I think it's a waste of time

at the moment. There are far more pressing issues that we should be

spending our time on. OK. Why do you say yes? Well, I think the

legitimacy has come under a great deal of questioning from the right

and left and it's about time that people from a new generation should

have the opportunity to say whether or not they want to support it.

It's my favourite subject. Good. will vote no and I would happily

take 1,000 of those balls and put them in the no. A kind person has

given me this, a booklet called Five Reasons Why The EU is Better

for Britain. I think this is situation at the moment is good and

I worry about... The situation is good? Yeah. In the EU? Europe works

for us but I wonder whether people would understand issues properly,

whether the campaign would be run properly. Never answer the question

that's been asked. They vote on other reasons whether they hate

Nick Clegg, for example. Hitler favoured referendums. Here is a

former Europe Minister, he should know. No, I have to answer a phone

call. Bye. Boring! No, definitely not. Why not?

Because we have had one. We decided to become members. That referendum

was passed by more than two thirds majority. I wasn't even born then.

I know, well, I was. Why indeed have a referendum on EU

membership and not UN membership, United Nations, OECD? The person in

the street would be saying how come these guys in prison are getting a

vote and how come these are getting human rights and they might have

murdered somebody, you know, when they've done an inhuman act, why

should they... Because of Europe. Yeah. Do you always wear shoes that

match our balls? Yes. Is it party policy to support the idea of a

referendum? I think people like the idea of referendums but we are

having a referendum in Scotland in two years on independence, we just

had one on AV, I don't think we want to be a country where we have

referendums every five minutes but at some point we need to have that

debate, I think. The last few weeks we have been celebrating the

Olympic Games when we applauded the other competitors from other

countries and recognised there was good from other countries even if

we didn't win everything. That's pretty clear, a big majority

going for no. Looks like the only referendum that's happening around

here on the EU is this one. So the rank-and-file don't want a

referendum. Pwhau do frontbenchers want? Andrew Neil spoke to the

shadow Defence Secretary, Jim Murphy. Under what circumstances,

if any, would Labour give the British people a referendum on

Europe? I think think at some point there will have to be a referendum

on a European Union. In Scotland, we have tussled with the issue of

the Scotland's relationship within the United Kingdom and I think that

will finally be settled and the argument will be settled once we

have a referendum on Scotland's membership of the union of the

United Kingdom. I think that a relationship with the European

Union will be settled once we have a referendum on that union of

Europe. It won't stop the argument. My gosh, the day after a referendum

in Scotland the Scottish National Party will continue to argue for

independence and eurosceptics after the referendum of course if the

campaign wins will continue to be kind of fixated by Europe. But it

is important and I - in terms of a timeline it's not for me to

announce but it's important at some point we have that referendum. I

don't think it's today, at some point it should happen. You say at

some point there should be a referendum, can you give us any

indication of what some point means and also can you indicate what kind

of referendum will it be? Will it be, for example, an in-out

referendum? David Cameron is toying with the idea because he has to go

to this conference next week in a party that's really split down the

middle. I am asking about you, Mr Murphy. Of course but we are really

not under that sense of pressure here within our party. We have a

settled view in the Labour Party, which is that it's good for the

United Kingdom to be engaged in Europe, not in the euro but engaged

in Europe. So in terms of a time- scale, we will work through that

but I I know it shouldn't be in the midst of the financial crisis

that's affecting the globe, affecting Europe. We have to get

through this recession. We got to get through the euro crisis before

we do that. There's a big change coming to Europe, the 17 nations of

the euro in themselves are going to have a closer union. Now at the end

of that Europe will look differently and as we come through

that and the financial crisis after that the time for referendum would

be upon stkpwhrus you can't give me any. You can't tell me whether it

be in an in-out referendum? Can you? That doesn't sound like any

policy to me. That's a fair heckle, Andrew. I didn't give you - it

should be. My preference would be an in or out referendum when that

time comes in the same way Scotland will have an in-out referendum.

It's a sensible way to do it. I don't today have a calendar with a

date circled. We will do it when the time's right which means

getting through the financial crisis, then having a proper debate

and referendum conversation based upon the Europe that we want.

That's all from Manchester tonight. Labour members are washing down Ed

Balls speech and looking ahead to the next big moment of this week.

Tomorrow on the conference floor, we'll hear from newly enobled Dame

Tessa Jowell on the Olympics, and - the main event - the Leader of the

Opposition, Ed Miliband. This conference will only be judged a

success if Labour can give a clearer picture of who Ed Miliband

is and what a Labour Government would do for the country. And the

leader's speech is the party's best opportunity to do just that. The

Daily Politics will be back tomorrow at midday and have live