I’m back (both blogging, and as an MP!)

To the loyal band of followers of this blog, my profound apologies for not posting anything for quite some time!  Secondly, congratulations to Rene Kinzett, a Tory Twitter mate (between you and me I have quite a few of those too!) for agreeing to blog with Think Politics too.

Well what can I say? The polls were right and we now have a hung parliament!  The electorate has spoken, and nobody has won the 2010 General Election. And after the extensive negotiations, the dust has settled and Britain has a new Conservative/LibDem coalition government.

I profoundly disagree with much of Mr Cameron and (though slightly less so) Mr Clegg’s platform.  But those of us in the Labour camp must accept that, although the Conservatives failed to win the election, we also lost the contest.

Indeed, it is easy to disparage the coalition government – and there will undoubtedly be difficulties for both the coalition partners along the way – but part of Labour’s problem this time round was that our own coalition, which saw us through to victory in 1997, 2001 and, to a smaller extent, 2005, essentially broke up.

The blunt truth is we need to win that support back.  We need to convince not just our core vote (which proved to be extremely resilient last week), but a swathe of people who aren’t instinctively traditional Labour voters.  The task is immense in parts of the country.  Anyone looking at a new electoral map will see just how few Labour MPs there now are in the South East and South West regions of England.

But all is not lost.  Certainly we will have a new leader in place by summer. Personally, I hope the contest won’t be a coronation – we’ve done that.  I also hope it won’t be acrimonious (we’ve done that too!).  Let’s use the situation to move beyond the old Blairite and Brownite divisions.  Whoever wins needs the support of the entire party behind them in the challenges ahead. We won’t win at the next election by perpetuating the politics or, indeed, the ‘new’ Labour divisions of 1994-2010.

I genuinely hope Labour will take the opportunity, especially while the new government is bedding in, to talk about policy.  Let’s accept that Labour did brilliant things between 1997 and 2010; I still firmly believe we changed Britain for the better. But let’s also acknowledge the very real mistakes we made (such as Iraq, Lisbon and 10p tax to name three) and that, for some voters, we were just not radical enough – particularly in the days when we had a massive parliamentary majority, and the ability to push through transformational legislation.

If done properly, the next few months should allow for a process of party renewal; for fresh ideas, for policy debates and for the party to successfully begin to challenge the new Tory/LibDem agenda.