Britain's opposition leader announces fresh start for Labor party

Sat, 27 Nov 2010

London - The leader of the British opposition, Ed Miliband, on Saturday called on his Labor Party to make a fresh start after their bruising defeat in general elections earlier this year.

"We have to show again we are the people who are the idealists, we are the people who are the optimists, we are the people who can represent the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations of the British people," he told his party's national policy forum.

He said the party had "lost its way" and needed to move "beyond New Labor," the concept thought up by his predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Labor could not afford to be wait for the governing Conservative- Liberal Democrat coalition to "screw up" and "simply be a strong opposition" but needed "to do that hard thinking of our own," he continued.

In a two-year revamp program, a series of working groups chaired by shadow cabinet ministers were to be set up to look at policy with reports eventually forming the basis of a general election manifesto.

Miliband also called on universities, charities, think-tanks and other independent institutions to come forward with ideas.

The former minister for Wales, Peter Hain, told BBC Radio 4 that the scale of the changes needed were comparable to those made by Blair when he took over the party in 1994, "at least of that magnitude," he said.

Blair was responsible for breaking with the party's traditionally socialist policies.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/355443,fresh-start-labour-party.html.