Coalition For A Labour Victory

"Ed Miliband has been tasked by Gordon Brown to take responsibility for preparing Labour's manifesto for the coming election and has invited contributions and advice from within the party for this purpose. Some 45 Labour MPs, supported by dozens of Constituency parties and trade unionists, as well as Compass and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, are now launching a Coalition for a Labour Victory based on a radical redistributive programme which we believe will resonate with Labour voters whose loyalties have been strained. We are therefore pressing Ed Miliband to focus Labour's campaigning for the election around the following 5 key principles:

1 The recession should be tackled, not with cuts in essential public spending, but by a massive public investment programme in job creation in house-building, infrastructure improvement, public services, and the new green digital economy, in order steadily to reduce the deficit by getting people off dependence on benefit and into work paying tax, national insurance contributions and VAT.

2 Banks should be split up with their casino investment arms hived off. Publicly-owned retail banks should be required to meet new social and community objectives and support manufacturing, with lending to businesses and homeowners restored to 2007 levels. Pay and bonuses should be tightly regulated.

In addition there are 3 other key policy priorities:

3 A clean break must be made with market fundamentalism - de-regulation and privatisation. Public provision should be expanded - in health care, education, housing, pensions, energy and transport. Royal Mail must remain wholly in the public sector.

4 In the face of the huge and unacceptable growth in inequality, a big redistribution programme must swing resources away from the rich to provide sizeable increases in pensions, the minimum wage, the lowest benefit levels, and to fund job creation and improved public services. Union rights must be restored - it is in economic crisis that workers are most in need of that protection.

5 To achieve the 80% carbon emission reduction target by 2050, renewable sources of energy should be promoted on a far bigger scale, industry (including airlines) should be required to reduce its climate change emissions by at least 3% a year, household carbon allowances should be introduced, and the UK targets should be fully met by domestic action and not by carbon-offsetting abroad."

Labour movement support for the above statement should be sent to Ed Miliband here

Hat Tip Michael Meacher

Also see Dronfield Blather here and here.

Update 5 February : see coverage in today's Tribune.