Ed Miliband admits Labour’s general election mistakes

Ed Miliband has admitted that the Labour party lost the 2010 general election because it offered a message of ‘fear, not hope’ Ed Miliband breaks with his mentor Gordon Brown tomorrow when he will declare Labour lost the general election last year because it offered a message of “fear, not hope”. In a Guardian article, Miliband challenges his party to accept that Labour will never return to power unless its acknowledges that the last government – and not the electorate – made mistakes. Miliband’s article comes ahead of a speech to the annual conference of the Blairite Progress group. It is designed to answer critics who have suggested that he has failed to appreciate the scale of the challenge facing Labour. He will be speaking just over two weeks after Labour’s disastrous performance in the Scottish parliamentary elections and a weak performance in the English local elections. Miliband, who wrote the Labour manifesto for the general election, uses his Guardian article to make clear he understands that Labour lost touch with the electorate. “We lost not just because we made mistakes – on individual issues such as immigration, welfare, banking or even Iraq – but for a much deeper reason,” he writes. “We stopped providing answers to these big concerns.” Miliband writes that Brown and the Labour party were guilty of running a negative campaign. “Our message was far too weighted to fear, not hope. “It was never enough to inspire victory, or to give people a sufficiently clear and positive vision of this country. By the end of our time in government, we had lost the ability to chart the future.” Miliband believes it is important to acknowledge the failings of the last government, of which he was a prominent member, to allow him to deliver his main message – that Labour wins only when it embraces a positive vision of the future. Miliband writes: “At the next general election, we must be the optimists, the party with a positive, patriotic mission for our country. When we have won great victories – in 1945, 1964, 1997 – it has been by defining a new national mission. That is what we can, must and will do again.” Miliband will say this mission will revolve around three key priorities: championing the squeezed middle; tackling growing inequality; and ensuring future generations do not slip behind their parents as Labour works hard to maintain “generational progress”. Ed Miliband Labour General election 2010 Local elections Scottish politics Gordon Brown Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 20, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.