Meeting held on Tuesday 16th July 2024 at 7.30pm.
Seven people were present. Four gave their apologies.
Since our last meeting the General Election had brought in a Labour Government. The meeting reflected upon the results nationally and locally and we considered the implications.
In High Peak Labour took the seat from Tories with a majority of about 7000 on a high 70% turnout. Despite this, some of us wondered what Labour really stood for. The King’s Speech (tomorrow) should contain at least 35 new bills which should give some idea and there was general optimism amongst the group. We were particularly impressed by Milliband and his moves on Windmills and other alternative energy sources. We wondered whether, now that Labour was in power, they might no longer be so shy about putting forward their policies.
In Derbyshire Dales the Labour candidate, John Whitby, won by a very small margin (350?). He was selected by the central labour offices without involvement of the constituency party. While this authoritarian approach was irritating, first impressions of John were positive. He won over the Tory candidate because the Reform Party gained 7000 votes, presumable coming more from Tory than from Labour supporters. Such tactical voting had lead to distorted representation across parliament. For example, while Lab won two thirds of the seats, they only had one third of the votes. This would seem to support the need for Proportional Representation. However, we had to acknowledge that PR would, in this election, have meant Farage’s Reform party getting perhaps 70 seats.
We thought it unlikely that Starmer would be promoting PR, but were aware that two thirds of Labour Party members did.
We noted the extent to which the new Labour cabinet was no longer dominated by public schools and privileged backgrounds, and was also much younger. We were also impressed that several of the ministers had a serious interest in the fields of their responsibility. So there should be more stability in the cabinet than there was under the Tories. There were also strong signs that the new government would put an end to the “culture wars” that were so central to Tory thinking. But would this government really lead to greater equality. We would have to wait and see. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves) certainly had a view of financial management which is no different from the Tories and takes no account of New Economics thinking. Also, Labour would want to go forward carefully without disturbing the markets. We were generally hopeful, I think.
Our next meeting will be on 20th August.