Jobs, not protests

The campaign in Scotland has picked up a little speed over this last week in the media. The pace of visits, hustings and campaigning has also been higher. So I was disappointed to hear on the radio – and on the doorsteps – towards the end of the week some voters say that they still don’t know what the elections are all about.

“Tell me in 10 words why I should vote Labour”, I was challenged on the street in Stockbridge yesterday afternoon. “It is time to vote for jobs, not protest votes” I replied.

Unlike the SNP and the Tories, I believe that government should not just sit on its hands. Active government intervention and spending in the face of the downturn can stimulate the economy and protect jobs.

UK-wide, the Labour government has announced £1 billion of new money to create 150,000 jobs for 18-24 years olds in long-term unemployment. Around £95 million will be available in Scotland to provide 15,000 jobs and training. On a visit to Dundee this week with Iain Gray, David Martin and Catherine Stihler, we met staff and clients at one of the key organisations trying to get people back into work on Tayside.

But the SNP government in Edinburgh is making the situation worse. Industry tells us that the failure of the SNP’s Scottish Futures Trust has cost up to 20,000 construction jobs in Scotland. That is the cost of Salmond’s broken promise to match the Labour school and hospital building programme “brick for brick”. And another 15,000 are at risk.

While the SNP cut back on adult apprenticeships by 80%, Labour in the Scottish Parliament forced the Scottish Government to find the resources for 7,800 new apprenticeships next year.

So where will the new jobs come from? The Party of European Socialists has put a European strategy for smart green growth and jobs at the heart of the European election campaign. Our pledge is to help create 10 million new jobs by 2020, with 2 million in the renewables sector alone. A strong Labour presence in the European Parliament will allow us to work together with socialists and social democrats across Europe to deliver this pledge.

While the nationalists and greens talk a good game on the Green New Deal, they will never be more than a small voice on the wings of the European Parliament.

Meanwhile, Labour is taking real action to create 400,000 new jobs across the UK as part of the transition to a low-carbon economy. Around 40,000 of these will be in Scotland … but this could be more given our natural environment and resources.

The UK Environment Transitional Fund and a Low Carbon Investment Fund, coupled with new investment in electric cars and new low-carbon energy, carbon capture and storage, and on-shore and off-shore wind will all contribute to this total over the next 10 years.

And there is a further benefit. Unlike the 700 job losses which were announced by Hewlett-Packard in Erskine this week, jobs in the green economy are more naturally rooted in the local economy and are less likely to be “delocalised”.

Forget protest voting on 4th June . Vote for positive action and hope instead.

Nil By Mouth

As campaigning today led us to Falkirk and Tullibody, international headlines were dominated by North Korea’s outrageous nuclear test. British headlines featured the death in Coleraine of a 49-year-old father-of-four, Kevin McDaid, who was beaten to death by a sectarian mob after yesterday’s culmination of the Scottish football season.

When he was Scottish First Minister, Jack McConnell described sectarianism as Scotland's "secret shame". He made tackling sectarianism a key priority. The SNP’s heel-dragging on a national strategy to combat sectarianism and their scandalous dithering over funding for the leading anti-sectarian charity Nil By Mouth have taken the steam out of Labour’s drive.

In Northern Ireland, sectarianism remains a very public shame as the tragic events in Coleraine confirm. But police in Glasgow have yet to exclude that the three murders around Glasgow yesterday were related to the end of the football season. Then there was the stabbing outside Celtic Park yesterday afternoon ...

It need not be like this. My Swedish family and friends simply fail to comprehend what religious sectarianism is. They just don’t get it. It is an alien concept. The same applies to most of my colleagues who are EU employees from outside Britain and Ireland.

But travelling around Scotland during this campaign has also revealed some positive work. The Raploch in Stirling used to be notorious. It was one of the most deprived and excluded areas in Scotland, until a Labour-led initiative started to run around the area through a £120 million investment. 900 new homes and a range of community enterprises are revitalising the area through a process undertaken with the local community, not for them. European funding has again played a key role.

For the professionals of the Raploch Urban Regeneration Company, the Education Campus is the “jewel in the crown”. On one fantastic new site in the heart of the community, the campus gathers together a nursery, special needs provision, out-of-school care, Forth Valley College course provision and outreach for employability facilities.

Above all, the two local primary schools – Roman Catholic and non-denominational – also share the same school grounds on the Education Campus. The teachers from the two schools even share the same staffroom. What a beautifully simple but great idea.

As for the football teams, Rangers and Celtic football clubs have both launched projects to tackle sectarian attitudes and behaviour amongst their supporters, educate young people about the problems of prejudice and encourage fans to support their team without indulging in sectarian behaviour.

It really does not need to be like what we endured this weekend.

Find out more about the Raploch regeneration initiative here http://www.raploch.com/ and about Nil By Mouth here http://nilbymouth.org/

Another day, another few hundred doorsteps

Door-knocking in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife, Stirling, Dundee all in the last few days ... with Falkirk, Grangemouth, Alloa, Dundee (again), Perth and Aberdeen to come in the next few days. Campaiging is both tiring and motivating. The Labour activists around the country are a vital resource. This EU campaign is really bringing home just how much they are the lifeblood of the party.

David Martin said at the Labour manfiesto launch last Monday that the "stay-at-home party" would be a threat to Labour on 4th June. Apathy is always a threat. And our voters - because of the standards they expect from their politicians - are indeed the angriest of all at the Westminster expenses scandal.

There is no doubt that the last few weeks have been extremely difficult for politics as a whole, but with 12 days to go until the poll, the reaction we get on the doorsteps is not the rage that is reported by political commentators on studio sofas. People on their doorsteps do not behave like a Question Time audience. Voters understand that there is still a choice to make on 4th June.

For example, I have never been able to understand how Salmond can compare the SNP to a Scandinavian Social Democratic party. To take just one example, trade union and employee engagement is a cornerstone of social democracy in those countries. Scottish Labour - unlike any of our oppponents - has always supported and worked for better rights at work. The SNP failed to vote for the National Minimum Wage and their commitment to workers has never been strong. There are no trade union or employee respresentatives on their new council of economic advisors.

Labour will continue to fight fight for fair rights. And that is why we are motivated to keep pounding the streets - and using the phonebanks - over the next 12 days.

On the stump

I clearly need more training in walking purposefully towards a camera ... the picture above shows me learning this skill from David Martin, Jim Murphy, Secretary of State for Scotland, and Anne McGuire MP for Stirling.

Following a day campaigning in Glasgow Drumchapel on Wednesday - where there is a Glasgow City Council by-election on the same day as the European poll - I took part in the Scottish Environment Link hustings in Edinburgh. The Conservatives, SNP, Liberal Democrats and Greens joined me on the panel. While the organisers had refused a slot on the panel to the UK Independence Party - choosing only to invite those parties currently represented in the Scottish Parliament - UKIP sat in the audience to make their slightly mad - and surprisingly angry - points known.

There was a general question from the audience about what the parties are doing to engage voters in the European elections. Panelists all made similar points about how hard the parties and candidates are working right across Scotland. I allowed myself to talk about the role of education and the decline of civic engagement more generally.

And then there is the media. Is there a politician who has never complained about the media and the fact that they don't write or broadcast the stories we want them to?

At Monday's launch of Scottish Labour's European manifesto, Jim Murphy (above) put Labour's case for jobs and the economy and also warned of the dangers of the British National Party. He then left the launch to play a charity football match at the home of Glasgow Rangers and wore a Rangers strip for the occasion. This was of course very photogenic as Jim is open about the fact that he is a lifelong Glasgow Celtic fan.

One of these two stories involving Jim on Monday got 7 times more coverage in the Scottish press than the other.

As the Americans say, "go figure".

What politics can do

I write this blog entry while the Westminster expenses scandal rumbles on ... indiscriminately discrediting politics and politicians in the minds of many. So let me share with you a really positive example of achievement ... of what can be done when politics combine with committed local people to regenerate communities through skills and learning.

The other day I visited West Fife Enterprise (WEF) with Catherine Stihler MEP and John Park, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife who is leading from the front in the Scottish Parliament on the skills and apprenticeship agenda.

I had a particular interest in this project for a number of reasons. Not only has WEF received many best practice awards, but it took me back to my professional roots working with the European Social Fund (my first job in Brussels in 1995). It also took me home to my roots in Scotland's coalmining communities.

Under the leadership of the impressive and highly motivated Chief Executive Alan Boyle, WEF is a non-government organisation working hard - and with great success - in the former coalmining villages of West Fife to give the most vulnerable in the labour market new opportunities. They work with the hardest to reach groups of the unemployed, economically inactive and young people not in work or education, who all face many barriers to sustainable employment.

The beneficiaries are given training in basic skills, employability skills and jobsearch support. They earn a training wage. We met young trainees in the metalwork and woodwork shops, in the computer suite and in the jobsearch space. The commitment of the staff and trainees shone through. And WEF works ... over 80% of the trainees end up in full-time employment or training.

As well as working hand-in-hand with local employers and colleges, WEF is very much based in the local community. It was striking how many of the 150 or so trainees who came through the door yearly learned of WEF through word of mouth. Networking is not just for middle class professionals.

European policy and funding - and therefore politicians - underpin this work. European Social Funding of around £300,000 per year comes in to the West Fife coalfield communities through WEF. Who says Europe is not real for local voters?

When we met Chris - the confident young guy in the photo above with Catherine, John and me - he was was developing his joinery skills by making bird boxes for sale. The tools in his workshop are all emblazoned with the EU flag.

European politics - like national politics - is fundamentally about the life chances of real people. Labour stands for extra investment in the skills of people like Chris. That is just one reason why I view it as a privelege to be standing as a Labour candidate.

http://www.wfe.org.uk/

Team Labour

Scottish Labour today launched our manifesto for the elections on 4th June with a strong focus on the economy and jobs. We will continue to give real support to the many, not just a privileged few, to get through the economic downturn.

The SNP have no influence in Europe and the Tories are choosing to isolate themselves from mainstream centre-right parties. After 15 years as a policy-maker in the European Commission, I cannot think of any policy area in which the separatists can claim to have made a difference. Tory isolationism has also been criticised by centre right Prime Ministers in Germany and Sweden ... and by the leading Scottish Conservative MEP himself.

By contrast, Labour is part of one of the largest groupings in the European Parliament, the Party of European Socialists. As part of this family of sister parties, Labour has delivered real improvements in recent years. A handy list of 100 Labour achievements in Europe is available here http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/100things

Team Labour was also very much in evidence during and after our launch today when candidates and party members spread out across Scotland to take our message to voters.

In Fallin David Martin and I were accompanied by Jim Murphy, Secretary of State for Scotland, Anne McGuire MP and Richard Simpson MSP ... evidence of Team Labour working together across Europe, Westminister and Holyrood.

As Iain Gray, Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament, said at the launch today, there is no division of responsibility for getting out of recession, because there are no Scotland-only solutions. We have to work together across the UK and across Europe. At times like this, we should be working together, not pulling apart. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8054532.stm.

Click here to download a copy of the manifesto, or log on to http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/euro2009 for information about the campaign.

When innocence is no excuse

What an atmosphere in which to stand for election for the first time. The relentless drip-feeding by The Daily Telegraph of information about Westminster MPs’ expenses claims is undermining the public’s faith in mainstream politicians.

What is the end-point The Telegraph is trying to reach though? Is the aim to drive voters to UKIP … or even the BNP? The BNP’s leader has used the scandal to proclaim that his party is like a “liberating army” moving through the British political landscape.

Make no mistake, this is fundamentally an anti-politics agenda.

Do not get me wrong. I am angry and sickened by the actions of MPs who have brought the whole business of politics into disrepute. And like other Labour party members, I expected much more of Labour’s representatives at Westminster than I did of the other parties.

But there is a witch-hunt element to this spectacle now. Even those honest MPs who acted well within the rules are damned by association simply for being politicians. It seems that innocence is no longer an excuse.

The campaign for the European elections goes on though. And to the handful on the streets or doorsteps who have suggested the contrary, I am not ashamed to be standing as a candidate. I am proud to have been given the opportunity to put the Labour record and case to voters.

The campaign this weekend took us to Fife, Hamilton and Dumbarton. There remains a very real choice to be made on June 4th.

Fascists, Nazis and racists

I came home late this evening after a long session campaigning in Glasgow North East, only to watch media commentators speculating whether disgust at the Westminster expenses scandal will drive voters into the arms of the British National Party – the BNP - on 4th June. The BNP is a collection of Fascists, Nazis and racists led by a Holocaust-denier. Their election to the European Parliament would run counter to the internationalism at the EU's core. It would be a stain on Britain’s reputation around the world

The anti-racist organisation Searchlight has underlined the irony that supporters of a party that claims to be the champion of free speech tried to censor a recent Searchlight video which highlights the racist and authoritarian views of BNP leader Nick Griffin. The short video, hosted on YouTube and sent out as an email to Searchlight supporters, was temporarily taken down after complaints from BNP supporters.

It is now back up on YouTube and - although it is not exactly how I would have chosen to expose the BNP - it is worth watching even if just in the knowledge that it annoys the BNP so much. I have included the link at the bottom of this post.

Tomorrow trade unionists throughout Scotland will mobilise to get out the vote for the European elections in order to keep the BNP out. Searchlight is working with trade unions across the UK and has designated Friday 15 May as “Union Friday” in its Hope not Hate campaign.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress is co-ordinating activity across Scotland to raise awareness of the dangers of the BNP. The length and breadth of Scotland, trade unions will be warning of the racist policies of the BNP by organising street stalls, raising awareness in workplaces and union branches, and leafleting train stations.

Why not try to get along even for just a few minutes to confirm that you too find these racists repugnant?

Details of where to join us throughout the day can be found by clicking here http://stuc.siteiscentral.com/news/639/scottish-unions-mobilise-against-the-bnp

The video the BNP tried to ban can be see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9RdVwpRcdo

The Salmond conundrum

The Scottish National Party today launched their manifesto for the European elections amid many questions about senior Nationalist Angus Robertson's expenses claims. But that should not distract from the real confusions at the heart of SNP policy.

The SNP riduclously claimed to be "focused on protecting jobs”, although over 20,000 jobs in Scottish construction were lost in 2008 because of the failure of the SNP’s Scottish Futures Trust. Just last week, senior business leaders warned that SNP policies are putting another 15,000 jobs at risk. The Scottish economy has lost £1 billion of construction work under the SNP while the First Minister fiddles with his Futures Trust.

As Labour MEP David Martin said while we were campaiging today in Ayrshire, "Alex Salmond's sudden interest in protecting jobs because of the European election is an embarrassing pretence which will not be lost on those who have lost their jobs as a direct result of his failures.”

Campaigning today led several of the Labour candidates to Kilwinning and then on to Thornliebank. Meeting pensioners over lunch at their club in Kilwinning gave us all lots of energy. Margaret (73), Betty (82) and Margaret (who preferred not to disclose her age) refer to themeslves as "the Golden Girls" and are very much representative of the pensioners who have gained so much under a Labour government since 1997 ... and they were full of good advice.

As for the Nationalists, the Financial Times today again exposed the idiocy of SNP separatism. Every single argument that the SNP have made on the economy is in tatters. They said we could rely on oil and gas - but the price has collapsed to $50 a barrel. They said we could rely on our banks - and the UK Government had to invest £50bn to protect workers and savers. They said we should model ourselves on Ireland and Iceland, only to back away from that argument too in recent months.

Perhaps the next 3 weeks until the European elections will shine some light on the Salmond conundrum for me. After 15 years working in the European Commission, I simply do not see any logic in his claim that a vote for separatism strengthens Scotland across Europe. I am not holding my breath for a convincing explanation.

Home turf

Those who know me best may believe it or not, but the first football team I went along to support was actually Alloa Athletic, my local team. It was an away match on 30th October 1976 against Stenhousemuir. I was 8 years old. My Dad took me there and I remember stuffing myself with McCowan's toffee - the Stenhousemuir speciality. Alloa lost 3-0.

On Tuesday 12th May Catherine Stihler MEP and I met with the owner and the chairman of Alloa Athletic to see for ourselves the effects of EU funding in my home town. "The Wasps" pride themselves on being a club at the heart of the local community. Working together with Clackmannanshire Council to bring £550,000 of EU funding to Alloa, the club has helped to revitalise the main artery into the town.

Alloa Athletic take their community role seriously. 7 days a week local kids of all ages can simply walk into the football ground to use the facilities. Vandalism - which had been a problem for the club before - has been practically eliminated now that local kids have a stake in the club.

If dribbling footballs along the main road outside Alloa's football ground helps raise awareness of the EU elections and the positive local impacts of Labour's active engagement in Europe, then Tuesday on home turf has been a campaign highlight so far.

To the capital's fishing village

To Newhaven and one of my favourite parts of Edinburgh today. Following the creation of a deep-water port there over 500 years ago, Newhaven developed into a thriving fishing village and shipbuilding centre. It still retains the feel of a village in the city.

Our team, comprising Members of the UK and Scottish Parliaments as well as local organisers, took to the streets of Newhaven as residents welcomed in a sunny new week. The old fishermen’s houses were a welcome relief for campaigners’ weary legs after the newly built blocks of flats with their defective lifts.

23 days to go to polling day and awareness of the European elections – and press coverage – is starting to increase. The motivation of the Scottish Labour candidates is high … speaking for myself, I am looking forward to more campaigning, listening to opinions and communicating the Social Europe message across Scotland in the weeks to come.

But can somebody please do something about the lifts?

Soaking wet in Glasgow's Drygate

To the other side of Scotland today and Glasgow's Drygate. Drenched by the rain, we spent Sunday squelching up and down stairs talking about the European elections with Glaswegian voters.

Expenses dominated the press this weekend. No matter that it was Alex Salmond and the SNP in the firing line today - can it really be true as the Scotland on Sunday reports that he received £800 food allowances even when the House of Commons was not sitting? - it is our country's entire civic life that suffers. Even those of us standing for office for the first time must face the indignation of the voters.

But confonted with a dripping wet candidate on their 15th floor landing on a rainy Sunday afternoon, most Glaswegian voters we met today remained generous with their time and their opinions. And after a few hundred doorbells, knockers and buzzers and many more stairs ... today really does confirm the lesson that all politics are local. Whether it is welfare, immigration, transport, the environment or housing, that lesson applies to Europe too.

Europe Day on the streets of Morningside

“If you tried to market the EU as an aphrodisiac, it would rate up there with a nice pair of socks” … is how my ex-boss described the EU in yesterday’s Independent. Margot Wallström, the Swedish Social Democrat Vice-President of the European Commission, was explaining the significance of 9th May.

It was on this day in 1950 that a French Minister by the name of Robert Schuman announced a plan for managing coal and steel production between Germany and France. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Schuman believed that if the leaders of Europe could pool control over the raw materials of the weapons industry - steel and coal – then the likelihood of further war in Europe would be drastically reduced. It was a visionary plan that has led to six decades of peace in Europe, and it began the process that created today's European Union.

Margot wrote that Europe is essentially about the triumph of reason over passion:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/margot-wallstrom-so-who-says-the-eu-is-boring-1681015.html

It took a fair amount of passion – as well as reason – for me and my daughters to brave the weather today and campaign on the streets of Morningside in Edinburgh. With David Martin (Member of the European Parliament and heading the Labour list in Scotland for the 4th June elections http://www.martinmep.com/ ) and local party stalwarts we spent Europe Day 2009 putting the case for a Labour vote in June.

Three highlights of Europe Day 2009 for me were:

(1) the local returning officer’s perfect timing in ensuring that the polling cards calling us to vote on 4th June arrived through the post on Europe Day.

(2) canvassing a voter in Morningside who explained that she likes Labour but that – as a Swede – she will vote by post in Sweden … imagine how surprised she was that as a Scottish Labour candidate I could engage her in detailed discussion in Swedish on why she should vote Social Democrat at home next month!

(3) my daughters are campaign naturals … give them a bag of Party of European Socialist balloons and they will hoover up the support of the local kids at least.

They think it is all over

The arrogance of the right is truly breathtaking. The EPP-ED are already claiming that victory will be theirs at the European elections in June.

The Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats has been the largest political group in the European Parliament since July 1999. While the British Tories are pulling away from the EPP-ED, largely because the group is not right-wing or nationalist enough for their taste, the centre right clearly believe that victory is already theirs according to the press release from their pre-election get-together in Warsaw.

http://www.epp-ed.eu/Press/showpr.asp?PRControlDocTypeID=1&PRControlID=8568&PRContentID=14868&PRContentLG=en

They consider themselves to be the established party of goverment in Europe, boasting that they are in power in 19 out of 27 EU Member States, they lead the European Commission and the European Parliament. But what have they done with this power?

Little to tackle the global financial crisis.

Nothing to address rising food and energy prices.

Nothing to fight poverty and inequalities.

Little to deliver more and better jobs.

A vote for Labour on 4th June will be a vote for a fairer, safer society, tackling the challenges we face by putting people first.

It will also be a vote to shake the centre right complacency in Brussels.

Climate change and environmental justice

Hit by my first e-mail blitz of the campaign today ... I just replied to a few hundred e-mails on the subject of climate change.

On the day that the Scottish Parliament debates the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill, I pointed out in my replies to the e-mail correspondents that it was of course Labour's 2009 UK Budget that introduced the world's first carbon budgets, setting a legally binding 34% reduction in emissions by 2020.

My own personal position is that environmental justice - paying attention to the winners and losers not just between developed and developing countries but also within Europe - needs to figure much more prominently in the climate change debate.

Eighteen months ago I was asked by The Fabian Review (http://www.fabians.org.uk/publications/fabian-review) to contribute an article to their series on "6 ways to change the world" after the US Presidential elections. In the winter 2007/2008 edition of the Review I published an article entitled "A green skills fund - the EU must solve the environmental redistribution challenge".

I am reproducing the article here as part of my response to the correspondence I received today on climate change. Let me know what you think.

"Almost four decades after the EU made its first forays into environmental policy, it must now openly address how environmental burdens and rewards can be shared fairly between its countries, between households and individuals, and between generations of Europeans.

Ironically, it was the Bush administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that turned climate change into a foreign policy issue around which the EU could rally, and since then European politicians have shown real global leadership in the fight against climate change.

But this leadership will only be secure once the EU gets to grips with the redistributive issues that underpin the climate challenge at home. The EU has given a unilateral commitment to cut its emissions by at least 20 per cent by 2020. This will imply considerable costs to individual European countries and the Union must ensure that burden is shared fairly. As the Stern report on the economics of climate change underlined, the costs of inaction outweigh the costs of action, but that does not mean the costs and benefits will be spread equally. The costs of adaptation to climate change already show the differences from country to country, workplace to workplace and even from individual to individual.

Climate change requires a technological and societal transformation that will be as deep and fundamental as the digital revolution. We need public policies that embrace and manage change fairly. This will mean, for example, supporting people to move from old to new jobs. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past when people were left behind as new technologies transformed the world of work. There is rightly much debate about green tax reform, shifting the burden of taxation from labour and investments towards taxes on pollution and the inefficient use of materials and energy. This should be accompanied by a green skills fund to equip the workforce with the skills required to embrace transformation.

Europe has a proven track record in improving social welfare through regulation. But the current EU institutions do not have the political legitimacy to address the social justice agenda on burden sharing between social groups or individuals. Member State governments co-ordinating best practice towards a common European target should lead the way."

The vision of a Social Europe

I campaign for a Social Europe that prioritises people and communities over markets or nations. So what would our Social Europe look like? Scotland's two sitting Labour MEPs, David Martin and Catherine Stihler, have been at the forefront in pushing for a Europe that puts people first. Take a look at their Social Europe pamphlet here:

http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/uploads/231e506e-2fa7-2044-9d27-2d57ed46b28d.pdf

I have seen first hand that Social Europe can make an enormous difference. My first job as an EU civil servant in Brussels was to work with the European Social Fund, investing in people, their skills and their dreams. I had the privilege of being responsible for European social funding in Northern Ireland to underpin the peace process in the second half of the 1990s. That experience confirmed for me that Europe can be a powerful, progressive force, especially when it speaks directly with people and to their daily concerns.

Only the Labour Party - as part of the Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament - is campaigning to give people a fairer deal through a New Social Europe. Visit http://elections2009.pes.org/en/your-manifesto/your-manifesto and read the pledges we are signing up to alongside the 32 other labour, socialist, social democratic and progressive democratic parties that make up the Party of European Socialists.

Vote for a new direction for Europe on 4th June. Vote to put people first.

More about the choice on 4th June

The six Scottish Labour candidates for the European Parliament (pictured above with the Prime Minister) gathered at the Scottish Labour Party Conference in Dundee on 6-8th March this year. Check the Scottish Labour Party website for details of all the candidates http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/euro2009

In my speech to conference, I was able to set out in more detail why I put myself forward as a candidate and why these elections really matter. The following is the full text of the speech:-

"I put myself forward as a candidate for the European elections because my international values go hand-in-hand with my Labour Party values.

Like many others in this hall, I too was the first from my family ever to go to university. My Dad and his dad before him were coal miners at Bogside, Devon and Solsgirth.

Long before Tony Blair ever told us that his three priorities were “education, education, education” I sat on my Grandad’s knee and my “Papa” – that’s what we called him – drummed into me that “education is the greatest thing in the world”.

It is amazing to think that it is 25 years since the miners’ strike – a conflict which affected my community and my family so deeply. And it was in the middle of that strike that I posted off my application to university.

It was thanks to Labour investments in education that I got the opportunity – and the full grants – to get my university education. But it was also thanks to the European Union that I – like many thousands of others of my generation – got the opportunity to complete my studies abroad. In my case first in Italy and then in Brussels.

It has been almost two decades now that I have lived, studied and worked in different countries in Europe. One of the things that I have admired has been the system of collective bargaining – the so-called social partnership – that is practiced in some European countries.

My work has taken me to Sweden over the last few years – a country which lies just beyond the now infamous arc of prosperity. Success there has not been built by flash-in-the pan speculators. It has been built up by the hard work of generations of Social Democrats and their commitment to distribute welfare fairly. The Swedish Model has relied on trade unions and employers co-operating around economic and labour market policy.

It is a universe away from the aggressive them-and-us approach that I first saw as a teenager at home when Thatcher brought in Ian MacGregor to “bust” the mine workers.

But international developments – the financial crisis – are shaking the faith of those of us who still believe that partnership is the best way forward. The whole thrust of modern capitalism in the last 25 years has been to generate a fast return for shareholders. I read just before the outbreak of the current crisis of one major London investor who said “a long-term deal is a short-term one gone wrong”.

What the European Trade Union Confederation has called “a combination of excessive greed and reckless speculation” has damaged the reputation of corporate business the length and breadth of Europe.

Of course we should not tar all business with the same brush. But opinion polls across Europe have confirmed increasing impatience with those companies who ignore long-term sustainability, who care nothing about climate change, new life-saving technologies or investing in their workforce.

It is more important than ever that our Party of European Socialists is as strong as possible after the European elections in June.

Lawyers and judges sitting in Luxembourg have interpreted some employment laws wrongly – not least in Sweden where the social partnership model has been strained by recent judgements. But if the law is an ass, we change the law. That is why people like us came into politics in the first place.

The European elections are about real political choices.

For the past five years conservatives have had a majority in Europe – in most member states and in the EU institutions, including the Parliament. They have done little with it.

Little to tackle the global financial crisis.

Nothing to address rising food and energy prices.

Nothing to fight poverty and inequalities.

Little to deliver more and better jobs.

Conservatives follow the market. We follow our convictions.

There are only 88 days between now and the European elections. These elections matter. Of course the voter ID work and the canvassing will help us build for the general election and the Scottish Parliament elections. But the European elections matter in themselves because of the issues that are at stake.

The choice is between a progressive Social Europe safeguarding employment and living standards against the recession; or a conservative regressive Europe in which the peoples’ future is left outside democratic control in the hands of the market.

I speak on behalf of all the candidates when I say that we want to use the next 88 days to work with you to put people first."

99 words to get going

I am proud to have been given the opportunity to stand as a Scottish Labour Party candidate for the elections to the European Parliament on 4th June 2009. Anyone seeking to become a Labour Party candidate running for election is asked to produce a short "personal statement" summing up his/her beliefs and motivations. So when I asked to be given the opportunity to put myself forward as a Labour candidate in Scotland for the European Parliament, I tried to summarise 25 years of personal thinking and action in the following 99 words:

"Labour is a progressive force which takes it strength from the social nature and values of human beings. We are all citizens of a community and we get our sense of who we are from how we interact with others, whether at the local, Scottish, UK or European level. I believe that we can re-engage the party membership by redressing the balance in the European debate from a focus on markets to a focus on community. As an experienced policy maker and campaigner, I believe that I am well equipped to represent the Scottish people and the Labour Party".

Now I have the chance to put these 99 words into action and re-engage Scottish voters, not just Labour Party members, in the European debate. I will use this opportunity to build for a progressive Social Europe safeguarding employment and living standards against the recession. We must work together to get through the world financial crisis. There is no Scotland-only solution.

That is why the elections in 4 weeks time really matter. I will update this blog regularly over the course of the campaign. And feel free to leave your comments on what you believe are the main issues facing voters on 4th June.