Miliband needs to listen

Can`t you just envisage hearing  this in 2015, from the new Labour leader? "I want to apologise to the electorate.We didn`t listen". Similar words to the ones uttered by Jim Murphy when launching his leadership bid in Scotland; similar, too, to those heard so many times in the last few years from most Labour politicians, after Euro or by-election results, or slumps in opinion polls. On the other hand, let`s hope Labour leaders don`t listen to advice emanating from political commentators like the increasingly right-wing, Andrew Rawnsley! 

   In a recent Observer article, first in his list of reasons for Labour being "in so much trouble in Scotland" was "taking its core voters for granted", which Rawnsley follows with the mistaken claim that a "move to the left" will not solve the problem. Really? Traditional working class supporters of  Labour are deserting the party in droves, not because its leader makes a mess of eating a bacon butty, but because its policies hardly  differ at all  from those of the other parties, and offer too little to those "core voters". When Miliband did show courage in standing up to the energy companies, and berating "predator capitalists", a boost in the polls for Labour followed, but his party has,so far, failed to take the hint. Fear of upsetting "more middle class voters" may well be the reason, but how many of these better-off voters do not want to see more fairness in our society, an education system which increases, not reduces as at present, social mobility, more progressive taxation, and more commitment to get all companies and rich individuals to pay their fair share? How many would support real attempts to reduce the massive inequality, and are ashamed that the UK, as Will Hutton informed readers recently, currently ranks 28th in an equality league table of 34? Are they not likely to vote for a party not only committed to raising the minimum wage at the earliest opportunity, rather than waiting till 2020, but intent on reducing the ratio of CEOs` pay to their average worker`s from the obscene 143:1? "Left"-leaning policies, like ending the privatisation of everything from the NHS to Royal Mail, properly regulating rented property so that tenants do not pay inflated rents to profiteering Rachman-like landlords, and allowing the gradual re-nationalisation of railways to proceed when franchises become available, would at least indicate voters were not being "taken for granted".

 Policies which aim to re-shape society so that it works for the common good, and not just for the financial sector and the 1%, would actually show Labour was listening to the right people, and not to columnists more interested in "lip-smacking ironies" than a Labour victory!