We are listening, we are delivering, but we know we need to do more

Thursday was not a great night, election wise for Labour - we get little satisfaction from knowing the Tories had an even worse set of results and the Green party also seem to hit the buffers. We would have wanted to retain all our County Councillors and added to our total, however we lost hard working councillors.

Why? Nationally we have have made mistakes - taking the fuel payment from pensioners certainly cost us votes- but our main issue may be communication, with a hostile press we need to be the people shouting out about all the good things we have done - workers rights, NHS Waiting times down, pay rises for many and we now have a Prime Minister who is helping set the international agenda rather than being laughed at, which is what was happening under both Johnson and Truss.

But we need to do more and as Keir Starmer stated- faster . More people need to benefit from the changes we are brining in.

Local, we are also delivering - and over the next year we will see more improvements to the town centre, from Lloyds Avenue make over to the reopening of the Grimwades building, we continue to build new council homes, all of a very high quality.

However, we are not just hoping that the Reform surge is just a protest vote, the Tories seem to think their voters will return, I think they are wrong and what they will see, is more Tory politicians jumping ship. As a Labour Party, we should not be scared of talking about immigration, we are already turning the Border Force into an organisation taht can get results, in particular tackling and taking action against people smugglers plus those who are willing to turn a blind eye and employ and house illegal immigrants. This is a good news story, a Labour plan that is getting great results but one that the national media would just rather ignore and that leaves a vacuum where both Reform and Tory MPs like Jenrick can fill and as opposition politicians they can say what they like as they do have to deliver.

Accepting our own short comings and understanding why many are turning to Reform, is just part of the story- I am also angry, we need to pint out that in many cases, Reform politicians are just fail4d Tories. The new MP in Runcorn, an ex Tory councillor, the Reform Mayor in Lincolnshire we a Tory Minister and made a Dame by Johnson. Closer to home the recent Reform candidate in St John's was a former Tory Councillor and 3 of the senior people in the Ipswich Reform Party were Tory councillors with one who was suspended by the Tories after he declared his support for Putin over the invasion of Ukraine.

Reform this weekend have been quick to say it will take them a while to sort things out as they have not been in power before, but the truth is a number of their councillors ( and future council leaders) were Tory councillors previously, the same people who failed to fill in pot holes, ensure SEND  pupils got the education they deserved or sorting out the care system.

Of course, and no one should be surprised, Reform have also got councillors who have a more 'shady' past, supporters of Far Right groups like Britain First, and many who have openly posted racist posts 0r promoted conspiracy theories.

Then you have their leader, Farage who man who seems to be happy to support both Trump and Putin!

But we cant just hope they will implode, we need to get our message over to voters - and with little help from the national press, we will have to do that on our own, so almost every weekend in 2025 you will Labour politicians knocking on doors listening t0 Ipswich residents, whilst the Tories will still be in hiding and the other 3 groups- Lib Dems, Greens and Reform will probably only make their first a appearance on Ipswich streets next April.

So plenty for the national Labour Party to do, as well as us local politicians, however I voted Labour last July to give Keir Starmer a 5 year mandate to do what ever is necessary to get this country back on the right track after 14 years of Tory chaos and a disastrous Brexit, i am not going to give up on him or my party after just 10 months! 

Just took a week

Last Saturday was a key moment in Labour history, the day that the members decided (by a large majority) that the party needed to return to it's main core function- getting elected to govern this country.

However with the current Corona crisis, it may take longer for Keir Starmer and his new Shadow Cabinet to start to show the public that we are now serious about wanting to govern, because it is obvious to many of us at the moment that the public do not just want to see the opposition attacking the Government but in fact they want politicians to work together, to help us get out of this crisis as quick as possible. that does not mean the Shadow Cabinet should not highlight the failings of Ministers, and today both Starmer and Raynor have highlighted again the lack pf PPE and that the daily press briefings held by Ministers, are failing to give the public honest answers.

But Corbyn supporters, the so called 'left' of the Party, (or as they describe themselves ' the only true socialists in the Party) have decided today to use a leaked internal report into how the Party handled antisemitism, to show that antisemitism was used as a weapon to attack Corbyn and that the right of the PLP cost us the election in 2017. Yet again the 'left' of the Party show they have no rivals for top spot. when it comes to rewriting history

Antisemitism was used by some to attack Corbyn, I think that is obvious to many but he himself could have put a stop to that very easily, his failure to defend or even speak to Louise Ellman, his inability to openly criticise Livingstone and Williamson and then his failure to follow the report by Chakrabarti with immediate action, were just indications that he put misguided loyalty to former comrades ( like Livingstone) and keeping the support of the 'far left' above making the Labour Party electable.

The fact is, as highlighted by Starmer in his leadership speech, "Anti-Semitism has been a stain on our party" - and to go forward as a united party we all need to accept that as fact.

However instead we have some members, a vocal group picking up on this internal report (helped by the support of Owen Jones) and trying to deflect away from the true facts, John McDonnell admitted antisemitism was a problem in the Party, why cant others who supported Corbyn?

I never liked Jeremy Corbyn but I continued to campaign hard for a Labour Government, I was publicly critical of him at times and that often meant Labour members, some local attacked me, told me to leave the Party, but iI stayed, I kept campaigning- it was hard, I was not sure Corbyn could be a good Prime Minister, however I wanted Ipswich to have a Labour MP, and even if I thought Corbyn was weak, he was still better than Johnson and I hoped others in The Shadow Cabinet would step up and the PLP would act as a brake on any stupid policies that the likes of Milne, McClusky were likely to come up with.

Even when I was critical of Corbyn, it was not after just one week of him being leader, I kept campaigning - but after just 8 days we have a local Suffolk member calling on all party members to go on strike! We have others highlighting the lack of BME members in the Shadow Cabinet, but it is just one less than under Corbyn, and we have now have Nandy as Shadow Foreign Secretary, the likes of Lammy in important roles, but what they really mean is we do not have Corbyn supporting BME MPs  on the Front Bench. But how could Starmer have Dawn Butler on the Front Bench ( or Burgon) when they would not sign up to the pledges from the Board of Deputies that he had? Even if Rebecca Long-Bailey had won she would have had the same problem.

So will those already calling for Starmer to resign, stay in the Party? I am sure most will, they know that to leave they will never be elected themselves again, just look at how Williamson did in December or how the Militant left overs have done in Coventry, where they stand each year. Respect did get some seats, and those same seats could see rival left groups prosper again but in most towns and villages, the Labour Party is the only show in town.

I may not be happy that they are critical of Smarter, However I would be a hypocrite to say they must leave it they are not 100% behind the leader, I was often critical of Corbyn, but I still went out and campaigned hard, and I would still expect them to campaign for a Labour Government, not to call for a strike of members, and I would also hope that they would have given him more than a week to prove himself as leader!

I have found that often those most shouting about how we are no longer a socialist party (after just 8 days of getting a new leader!), are the same people who hardly ever campaigned, happy to go to a socialist book club, or wave  a banner at a mass rally in London, but knocking on doors, talking to voters on Ipswich council estates, was something they were never going to do. For those people the Party is probably better off without you.

For those who are elected members, I would expect nd hope you to join us when the Corona crisis is over by campaigning hard for a Labour Council and Labour Government, if you do not want to you should then think of standing down as a Councilor. We all need to be out there talking to voters, rebuilding their trust so that we can yet again have a Labour Government, so we can make real changes, like we did when we were last in power - Surestart, minimum wage, more investment in education and the NHS - rather than as now, where all we can boast of is that we had a good manifesto or if you are still living in a Corbyn dream world, that we won the argument!

Back to real campaigning

At first it felt great to be out on the doorstep, knocking on doors, talking to residents rather than fighting each other in the Labour leadership battle, which at times had quite a toxic feel to it.

But once I started talking to residents it became quite obvious we have a big battle in front of us, the polls are not wrong - Jeremy Corbyn is still not seen as a future Prime Minister to many voters, in particular to those who did not vote Labour in 2015 who we have to attract to win seats like Ipswich.

Constant 'own goals' such as the Corbyn aides comments on Syria/Russia and then examples of what could be seen as an orchestrated establishment/;press campaign against Corbyn such as how the MPs report on anti-semitism has been spun to make it seem the report was just solely an attack on Corbyn and the Labour Party.

What also became obvious is that Ipswich residents are not happy with this Tory Government, it is becoming obvious every day that Brexit will now bring problems for most of us, and then in addition to that in May we are holing County Council elections and Tory run Suffolk have made a mess of highways, 'Travel Ipswich' , care homes and education. Even Tory supporters can see that Labour run Ipswich Borough Council are doing a good job even with the cuts to our funding from this Tory Government. so it is galling to Labour activists that we can't make the most of these Tory deficiencies locally as the public are yet to get behind Corbyn and the antional party.

But all is not lost, I still have doubts about many of the Corbyn front bench but we now do have some excellent and capable MPs in some of the very important junior posts - the likes of Keir Starmer and  John Healey plus some of the Labour heavyweights will also be taking key roles as Chairs of Select committees.

Jeremy Corbyn has won a second leadership battle and has earned the right for all of us to campaign hard behind him to try and win in 2020 but that does not mean we should be silent when groups like Momentum and some of his closest supporters act in a way that will make the cahnces of winning in 2020 almost impossible.

It was good to hear the new Shadow Defence Minister (our third one already) say that we will continue to support the Trident renewal - but it is important at some time that Corbyn also commits to this as we can't have the majority of the PLP and the Shadow Cabinet sticking to Labour Policy whilst the leader sends out mixed messages on this important issue.

So the future? We campaign hard for a Labour Government led by Jeremy and whilst doing taht trying and gain more Labour County Councilors and in 2018 and 2019 retain our control of Ipswich Borough Council - it is obvious from talking to Ipswich residents that the local Labour Party is trusted by them.

Examples of that trust were on public display on Saturday afternoon as first of all Labour councilors were at the local tennis club where improvements have been made to their courts with support of funding from the local Area Committee (same committee the Tories wanted scrapped - not that it stopped Tory MP Ben Gummer from attending the event ).

But later in the afternoon was a real example of why Ipswich Labour are trusted over the local Tories, a number of us attended the Senior Cup Football match at Ransomes - and were fortunate enough to be shown round the new million pound pavilion and changing rooms - a complex built by Labour run Ipswich, unfortunately the visitors from North Suffolk to win but it was a comment from one of the Ransomes players that was the highlight of my day, the player commented to one of councilors - " You delivered, what you promised, thank you"  this player like most of the club and local residents have been told at every election that we only took over control of Ransomes so we could build council houses on the site. Saturday was the final nail in the coffin of that Tory lie!

The Tories can't be trusted in Ipswich and Suffolk and residents know they can trust the local Labour Party, residents also are losing faith in the Tory Government and it is now up to us (with an improvement in performance from Corbyn and all our MPs in Westmisnter) to get the message over that we can be trusted to run this great country again.