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The Labour party faces "a crisis of working-class representation," according to Ed Miliband.
The party leadership contender said that the New Labour focus on affluent voters "will no longer win elections".
In a pamphlet for the Fabian Society Miliband, who is running against his brother David, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and Diane Abbott for the leadership, said in the early 1990s some people thought they were defending the Labour party by opposing Blairite reforms.
"Today our danger is to defend traditionalist new Labour solutions on every issue because this will consign us to defeat," he wrote.
"It is my rejection of this New Labour nostalgia that makes me the modernising candidate at this election."
Miliband said that the party's failure to retain the support of less affluent voters cost them the election.
"Five million votes were lost by Labour between 1997 and 2010, but four out of the five million didn’t go to the Conservatives. One third went to the Liberal Democrats, and most of the rest simply stopped voting. It wasn’t, in the main, the most affluent, professional voters that deserted Labour either."
Miliband quoted a YouGov poll published last week that found 71 per cent of Labour party members thought the party had been "too subservient" to the USA over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
64 per cent think that the party became out of touch with ordinary voters and 62 per cent that Labour did not do enough for working-class supporters.
Article Comments
He is the only candidate with genuine ideas. Unfortunately this is usually a loser in English politics.
wittgen
17th Aug 2010 at 11:09 am
And so Ed trots out another message involving class with his wealthy upbringing and Oxford education. When will politicians stop trying to ignite class warfare?
Mike
17th Aug 2010 at 9:22 am
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