Voters were right to boot Labour out in 2010, says Ed Miliband ally

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/13/sadiq-khan-voters-right-to-reject-labour

Version 0 of 1.

Voters were right to "boot out" Labour in 2010 after mistakes on issues such as immigration, the banks and Iraq, Sadiq Khan, one of Ed Miliband's closest shadow cabinet allies, has said.

The shadow justice secretary, who ran Miliband's leadership campaign, said the party had to be humble enough to listen to the public and learn from the reasons why people did not vote Labour at the last election.

In an interview with the Guardian, Khan said it would have been wrong to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats when the public clearly did not want the party to be in government any longer.

The MP spoke as he launched a book of policy ideas for London, including ways to solve its housing crisis, which may be seen as a platform for a potential bid to succeed Boris Johnson as mayor in 2016.

Addressing why Labour struggled in the south at the last election, Khan said: "During the 80s, there was a common mantra Labour politicians had and the phrase goes: 'No compromise with the electorate' – because we know best.

"But no, the electorate, like juries, are nearly always right, and they were right in 2010 to boot us out.

"There's a different debate about whether the Tories won, which you could have. But we didn't win … We've got to recognise that and once you've recognised that, you've got to recognise some of the things we got wrong.

"We got the Iraq thing wrong – even those of us who were against it, the party we represent and belong to got it wrong. We got it wrong in relation to not regulating the banks enough, we got that wrong, we've got to accept that. We got immigration wrong, not recognising that actually the pace of eastern European migration would have an impact on our communities."

Listing the reasons some former Labour supporters did not vote for them last time, he pointed out that four-fifths of the five million people who deserted the party did so before 2005.

"Some stayed at home, some thought we became out of touch, some thought we didn't understand their needs, we became arrogant. And so one of the first things Ed Miliband did when he became leader was recognise this."

Khan, who is also shadow minister for London, said it was right to worry about Labour's presence in the south, saying the party needed to do better in the region if it was to form the next government.

However, he described questions about his mayoral ambitions as "tiring".

"My obsession is team Labour," he said. "You could hide under the blanket or say you're going to run for mayor. I'm going to do neither. I'm a team sportsman, whether it's football, cricket or politics … I don't want to enter into a beauty parade."

In the book, Our London, Khan said Labour would give landlords incentives to use "sustainable rental contracts" after the next election. These would give tenants three- to five-year contracts with any rent increases set out clearly and potentially linked to inflation.

He also said the party would explore lifting the cap on council borrowing to build more social housing and consider ways to make affordable housing genuinely affordable. On top of that, Labour would get on with building garden cities around London. He suggested Ebbsfleet in Kent as a possible location for 10,000 new homes. Housing would be the biggest issue in all London elections in 2014, 2015 and 2016, he said.

In another chapter of the book, Lady (Doreen) Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen, said the lives of black teenagers growing up in London had not improved since his death 20 years ago.

Khan said it was a "sobering" point and warned against "complacency" about the progress of race relations in London.

The shadow justice secretary also defended Miliband's strategy for rolling out new policies in the lead-up to 2015, after some Labour figures criticised their leader over the summer for not coming up with enough ideas.

Khan said Miliband's critics need to "chill out" and recognise that the party is 18 months away from a general election, instead of "always giving him a hard time".

"One of the things the commentariat has not understood is that for the first time in history we've got fixed term parliaments.

"Normally you'd be worried the government is going to cut and run for an early election … But we know the next general election is not until May 2015, so we've got a sense of calm …

"But I think what's quite clear is that the public aren't going to wait until four years and eight months.

"They want to have a rough idea now what we're going to do. Which is why Ed did something during conference that no opposition leader has done before 18 months from an election, which is set out some policy.

"I challenge anyone to find me an opposition leader who's unveiled as much policy as Ed Miliband has done now."

On his justice brief, Khan said it was too early to know whether he could go into the next election looking to unwind the coalition's privatisation of the probation service, despite the party's firm opposition to the idea.

"My worry is – I've looked at the cost of the contracts," he said. "Over 10 years it's worth £4-6bn, all the contracts … The annual budget of the Ministry of Justice is only £6.5bn.

"I could spend the whole year's budget buying back the contracts, which means no money left for courts, prisons, legal aid … That's one of the reasons it's difficult to make commitments this far in advance about what we would do."

He described his Tory counterpart, Chris Grayling, as "getting away with murder" on cuts to legal aid and the coalition's so-called rehabilitation revolution as a "breach of the trade description act".

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.