Dear Liz Kendall voter
Liz Kendall is right: we lost in May because of a toxic combination of doubts about our economic credibility and the leadership of our party. This is surely indisputable. Liz has consistently recognised how too many of the public viewed us and is fighting to put an alternative forward that meets the challenges posed by these doubts.
My respect for Liz has grown every day over the course of this campaign. Every speech she makes has real content, new substance and is future-focused. I agree with her that we need a English Labour party and real devolution so areas like Cumbria where I represent – which could not be further from Westminster physically and in so many other regards – can have the tools to be in charge of the destiny of their own local economies, public services and wider public realm. She is right about a rebalanced economy, early years and much more besides.
To those of you who are supporting her I know it has not been easy. You were the first to be called ‘Tories’. Few of us supporting other candidates said anything (I called this out immediately) but, as you will have seen, the welfare vote changed everything and according to a small number of angry vocal people on social media we are apparently all Tories too.
How did it come to this? I know many party colleagues who have shied away from their CLP nomination meeting because the atmosphere in some quarters of the party has turned ugly. As Liz supporters, you have watched your candidate – with grace and patience – take the brunt of similar ugliness on social media. Vicious, relentless personal attacks that no one should have to endure. Often sexist and splenetic, no one should have to accept such vitriol – let alone a female candidate to become leader of the Labour party in the 21st century. My respect for you, let alone her, is second to none. You did the right thing by our party in the run-up to May, are doing the right thing now and I know will do the right thing going forward.
You should hold your heads high when you vote Liz Kendall number one. Put your country first, your conscience first, your candidate first. Whatever happens in this election, Liz will emerge as an enhanced figure who speaks for a mainstream majority in the country and the party.
But the nature of this contest now means that your second choice is now critically important. Can I ask that having put your country first – and a distinct vision for winning a majority Labour government – please put our party second. Andy Burnham is in my view – and that of our polls – best placed to be Labour prime minister after 2020. I assume we disagree on this so let me put it this way: Andy is the only candidate able to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader and ensure that our party remains a party of government. So I need your help.
As a shadow health minister, I have worked alongside Liz and Andy for four years. Both are incredibly talented, both are working for Labour to form a government in 2020, both know that every minute we spend in opposition is another minute that we fail those millions of people in our country who need and deserve a government committed to a better, fairer, stronger, wealthier society. Liz and Andy do not always agree – you know this – but Andy has held the big jobs in government. He and Liz worked hand-in-glove on promoting a better social care model for our nation’s elderly, and Andy has admitted – like Liz – to our spending problems pre-crash and is ready to be pro-business in a way we have not been for years now. And please never forget his efforts over Hillsborough. As much as anything else, this was about breaking open our politics, letting the ‘outside’ inside and changing our country for the better.
Our party’s weakness and incoherence in the 1980s enabled almost two decades of Thatcherism. Never forget that the state of our party made that possible, almost more than any other factor. None of us need a crystal ball to predict the future when we can simply read the history books.
So I am asking you to give Andy Burnham your second choice preference in the Labour leadership contest.
Either way, we are in this together: on the frontlines to build a Labour party capable of forming a government and transforming the lives of millions of Britons for the better. Our party is the biggest, best and most successful force for progressive change that our country has ever seen. Let’s keep it that way.
Thanks in advance and see you on the frontlines.
Jamie Reed MP
