Student Politics, Part 2: The Labour Party

14th Mar 2010

Mar­tin Theaker talks to the University’s Labour Soci­ety about the party’s past and their hopes for the forth­com­ing election

WITH the gen­eral elec­tion loom­ing, it’s time to con­tinue our inves­ti­ga­tion into the issues that will make a dif­fer­ence in 2010. This week, I met with Labour Soci­ety Chair Louise Suen and Vice-Chair Cal­lum Ander­son to dis­cuss their party’s chances in the upcom­ing contest.

‘We’re con­fi­dent of stay­ing com­pet­i­tive’ says Suen, ‘this isn’t a fore­gone con­clu­sion, and the lat­est polls have us only five points behind the Con­ser­v­a­tives’. ‘It’s cer­tainly going to be close’ adds Ander­son, ‘but I think most anger with the gov­ern­ment is about the per­son­nel, not the move­ment. We’ve had thir­teen years of New Labour and peo­ple are ready for some kind of change’.

So what do they think of the oppo­si­tion? ‘Labour cer­tainly rep­re­sents more of soci­ety than the Con­ser­v­a­tives, but it’s not all about image’ claims Suen. ‘I don’t care if David Cameron went to Eton, it’s his poli­cies that I don’t agree with. At the end of the day, the core val­ues of the Labour Party have stayed the same; fairer dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and assist­ing those sec­tions of soci­ety which need it most’.

This leads us neatly onto one of the main issues for the elec­tion – the econ­omy. ‘The cuts are only going to make it worse’ argues Ander­son. Suen agrees that ‘we need to reject this laissez-faire idea that every­thing will sort itself out. The Tories want to depend more on the vol­un­tary sec­tor for social sup­port, which is wrong’.

What about polit­i­cal threats from out­side of the big three? ‘The expenses scan­dal is going to pun­ish all the Par­lia­men­tary par­ties equally’ main­tains Ander­son, ‘but we are all alert to the dan­ger of extrem­ist par­ties, par­tic­u­larly in a recession’.

Addi­tion­ally what about the con­tin­u­ing pub­lic anger with Blair’s legacy and British mil­i­tary com­mit­ments in Afghanistan? ‘We can’t argue that all Labour mem­bers are either for or against the war’ says Suen, ‘but all the gov­ern­ment can do now is ensure that the army is being prop­erly equipped and that return­ing sol­diers have access to facil­i­ties they need, such as treat­ment for post-traumatic stress dis­or­der. At the end of the day, for­eign pol­icy is a fad­ing issue when peo­ple have to think ‘how am I going to feed myself for the rest of the year?’

So why should stu­dents vote Labour? Both Suen and Ander­son agree that Labour has already actively assisted stu­dents through Edu­ca­tion Main­te­nance Allowance (EMA) schemes and by open­ing up higher edu­ca­tion to the under­priv­i­leged. At the end of the day, Suen con­cludes, ‘Labour’s com­mit­ment to appro­pri­ate fund­ing for uni­ver­si­ties is fairer and rep­re­sents a larger com­mit­ment to stu­dents than any­thing offered by the oppo­si­tion. The Birm­ing­ham Uni­ver­sity Labour Stu­dent Group cam­paigns weekly and reg­u­larly invites speak­ers and activists to its meet­ings, and if we could get stu­dents in Selly Oak to take an inter­est in local pol­i­tics, we could seri­ously affect the way the local area is run’.

Next week: Lib Dems