Labour’s success in Wales shows the lack of identity in our English counterpart

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/28/welsh-labour-identity-polls

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Here we go again. Straight from a general election defeat into Labour’s favourite distraction therapy: a leadership contest. Just like in 2010, when the coalition established the narrative that Labour was to blame for the global crash.

I write as a Labour minister in a Labour government. You’d forgotten we had one of those, hadn’t you? Well, here in Wales Labour is still in government. In the National Assembly for Wales elections in 2011, a year after the last general election defeat, we won 30 out of the 60 Assembly seats, and we have governed successfully as a minority government since then.

Personally, I had expected to be negotiating with a Labour home secretary on the devolution of policing. Instead I find myself, after a gap of two years, with the prospect of renewing my acquaintance with Michael Gove.

Is there space for a three-nations Labour in a federal British party? Time will tell

Next year we face re-election. Our task, in the face of likely further cuts in the Welsh budget, will be to establish a message of hope for the people of Wales that things can be better. Not easy when Labour councils in Wales are having to cut services (just as Welsh councils run by Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and independents are having to do). We protected councils in Wales better than they were protected in England in the first three years of the coalition government, not least because the One Wales coalition government we led with Plaid Cymru from 2007-2011 had taken the brave decision in 2010 not to prioritise health spending above all other budgets, as the Guardian recognised at the time.

We have protected Welsh students against higher fees wherever they study. We kept the education maintenance allowance. Education standards are going up. We introduced the Jobs Growth Wales scheme, which has a better job success rate than the work programme. We put an additional 500 police community support officers on the beat when the UK coalition was cutting police. We created jobs for Remploy workers when the Tories shut the Remploy factories. The relentless Tory war on Wales over health has been a constant thorn in our side, but most people in Wales are highly satisfied with the healthcare they receive.

Middle Wales responded to the Tory general election campaign just as Middle England did. We failed to win our Tory target seats and lost two seats to them. Outside London, as the BBC Wales Welsh affairs editor has noted, the map of remaining Labour seats across England and Wales almost matches a map of former coalfield areas.

Related: Here's some lessons in real job creation from much-maligned Wales | Polly Toynbee

But Wales is also different from England – and, as the Guardian pointed out in April, it is different from Scotland too. I like and respect Leanne Wood, but her party Plaid Cymru came fourth in the UK general election in terms of votes, behind the Tories and Ukip, lies third in seats in the National Assembly behind the Conservatives, and didn’t merit equal billing with the SNP in the TV debates. Our first minister, Carwyn Jones, remains the most senior elected Labour politician in the UK – and UK leadership candidates should be beating a path to his door.

Just what, after 7 May, does British Labour amount to? No one could have done more than Jim Murphy to raise Labour’s fortunes in Scotland, but we were cuffed resoundingly there. In southern England outside London we barely have a seat, and in northern England, Ukip is eyeing up its chances. As John Denham has argued, Labour in England needs its own identity. Is there space for a three-nations Labour in a federal British party? Time will tell.

However, we didn’t lose seats to the Conservatives because we weren’t Welsh enough. We need a more optimistic message that people of all backgrounds can identify with. The message of miserablism rings loud and clear from the mouths of nationalists of all kinds, Ukip and Plaid together. Our job is to give people hope that things can get better for them and their families, and that we can achieve that better future working together.