The Labour peer and former Home Secretary, Lord David Blunkett, has urged the government to give new MPs a role in the party and politics and not to use them as "voting fodder" to avoid discontent over the current parliament.
The former Sheffield Brightside MP (now Sheffield Hillsborough and Brightside) spoke to The Star's 'The Sheffield Scoop' podcast where he warned the electorate would let the party know at the polls if they hadn't delivered on the promise of change during the General Election.
Lord Blunkett sat down with The Star's Harry Harrison for The Sheffield Scoop podcast, and you can find the full interview wherever you get your podcasts from September 20.
The former Sheffield Brightside MP (now Sheffield Hillsborough and Brightside) spoke to The Star's 'The Sheffield Scoop' podcast where he warned the electorate would let the party know at the polls if they hadn't delivered on the promise of change during the General Election.
Lord Blunkett sat down with The Star's Harry Harrison for The Sheffield Scoop podcast, and you can find the full interview wherever you get your podcasts from September 20.
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NewsTranscript
00:00You were a central figure and politician in the glory days, I guess, of Tony Blair's government
00:06in the late 90s, early 2000s. What do you make of this, the Labour Party now, obviously with the
00:14huge election win in July, there's so many new Labour MPs that have come into Parliament who,
00:21you know, some of them will be future Labour leaders. What do you make of this new cohort
00:24and the future of the Labour Party? Well I'm trying to weigh it up in terms of how
00:28I felt and what we experienced those years ago. I was very, very fortunate. Firstly,
00:35I had a seat in Sheffield, which was an enormous great fortune in the community, which I loved and
00:41I'd been brought up in, and the support that went with it, as well as the criticism. I mean,
00:47people could support you in Sheffield and they could give you a good going over, but they would
00:54also give you a hug. So that was a strength. Secondly, I was really lucky because I was in
01:00the right place at the right time with the experience of having led the city for seven
01:04years. And the experience that I wouldn't want again, which was 10 years in opposition,
01:10but it did give me a grounding. And when we won in 97, I was very clear what we needed to do.
01:17Tony had told me I was going to be Education and Employment Secretary. Later, of course,
01:21I became Home Secretary and then worked in pensions. But I knew what I needed to do.
01:27I got the background experience of having run a big authority and also developed policies in
01:34opposition. And now I think that's slightly different. I think we wanted to win. We hoped
01:42we would win. I think many of us were quite surprised that we stood a chance of turning
01:47it round in one parliament because the Conservatives had beaten us hands down in
01:522019 and we were back to 1935 levels. And having reached the point where it was a chance to win,
02:01we also were holding our breath about what the majority would be. Here's one of the twists about
02:05the 2024 election. I was saying to people, I think we'll get a majority of around 20 to 50
02:14on the grounds that we'll be very fortunate if we get 10 percentage points ahead of the
02:19Conservatives. And actually, that's what we got. But what I'd not predicted was firstly,
02:27a big abstention by Conservatives, which accounted for the turnout. And secondly,
02:33the intervention of reform. So Reform Party, under this showman Farage,
02:43came second to Labour in 89 UK constituencies and it completely jiggered the Conservatives
02:53to use a vocalism. And they're down to 121 and none of us predicted that. We just
03:01couldn't have predicted it. So two challenges. One is to use that enormous majority wisely.
03:09And secondly, to use the MPs that have been elected, and over half the House of Commons
03:18is now new, to ensure that they've got a role. Because there's only so many people
03:25who can be ministers, or bag carriers to ministers, they're called Parliamentary
03:30Private Secretaries. And give them a chance, not just to represent the constituency,
03:38be in the constituency, taking up problems, listening, learning, reflecting that back,
03:43but also a role in the policymaking and parliamentary process. And I'm hoping from
03:49this autumn's conference, we'll be able to do that. Because if you don't, then you get
03:54major disquiet on the back benches. And people get restless, you know, what is their role? What
04:00are they doing there? If they're just voting fodder, then they're going to get fed up pretty
04:05quickly. So some of us are saying, if we can be helpful without hectoring, we don't want to say
04:11to people, this is how we do it, we did it, you should do it. We want to say, these are the lessons
04:17we learned, good and bad. And if you want to use that old fashioned wisdom, then please do. And
04:24we're there available to help. And perhaps pulling policy gatherings together on key areas and saying,
04:32look, we made mistakes, like the one we've talked about, learn from it, and then build on it. So we
04:38can get it right. We've got four and a half years, probably four years, realistically, to turn things
04:45round and to have done enough to give people hope. Because if we don't, the electorate are volatile,
04:52they'll turn on us and they'll say, you know, they certainly will. And although we didn't
04:58promise the earth, although we made it clear that there were no simple solutions, simplicity
05:05is for the populist rhetorical gang who try to persuade people that there's an easy way out of
05:14everything. There isn't. But people do expect change. And we did promise change. And we've
05:20really got to deliver.