Things did get better; don't try and pretend otherwise

I clearly remember my friend John being very worried. He was warning as many people as he could that, because of it all, we were going to have to work much harder than before. I have to admit, he got me worried. After all, I had no idea what the word labour meant. It could mean work, for all I knew. I was seven.

And then it turned out all ok. As the No More School Party swept to power in our class election. No surprises really. I can't even remember who else was on the ballot. Or, in fact, if Mrs McGregor even counted the votes. But I do remember having the result whispered in my ear, to announce to the whole of my Yr 2 class. I made a fine returning officer, if I say so myself.

Oh, and it was sunny. But then, don't your memories of childhood always seem sunnier in comparison?

That's it. That's what I remember about the general election of 1997. I was way too young to realise that, around the country, a political earthquake was taking place. In 1992, there'd been talk that Labour may never hold office again. But within five years, the situation was completely different. Labour won 418 seats, and led the Tories by 12.5 percentage points. A Labour majority of 179. The Conservative party destroyed, slumped to its worst election defeat since 1832. Tony Blair later admitted that he felt he had done something wrong, so great was the scale of the electoral slaughter of his opponents.

I don't want this to turn into a retrospective analysis on the whole New Labour government. I did one of those, a long time ago. Go and read that (and laugh at me in my student years). I'm not sure I still agree with bits of it, but overall it holds up fine.

No, what I want to say today is a couple of things. Firstly, the Blair and Brown governments were the most redistributive in British history. No government before them took as much money from the top and gave it to those at the bottom. They should have shouted more about it, they should have pointed it out again and again and again. That they didn't is a crying shame, but they had their reason, a fear of being defeated. By avoiding defeat, the Blair/Brown governments managed to sustain this improvement in the lives of working people, until the financial crash knocked them off course and set the kaleidoscope in motion.

But for those of you who say there's no difference between a Labour government and a Conservative government, wake up and grow up. There is patently a difference. There is all the difference in the world. If the purpose of the Labour party is to ensure a Labour government in office that can improve the lives of working people, then 1997-2010 were indeed good and productive years, all the rest of it aside.

Lastly, is the point that always terrifies me. As the polling stations opened on that sunny May morning, twenty years ago today, millions of 18-23 year olds went to cast their ballots for the first time. None of them had known a Labour government within their memories. The last Labour government had fallen in March 1979, brought down in a vote of no-confidence on the floor of the House of Commons. The last Labour election victory had been in October 1974. Many of those first time voters hadn't been born then. A handful had lived every day of their lives under a Conservative administration.

At a time when Labour is staring into the abyss of electoral wipeout, more akin to 1931 than 1983, it is a sobering thought that the voters who may one day end the Conservative regime are at most 12 years old. The youngest are six or seven. We may have a long way to go again until there is another new dawn, until the same sense of optimism and hope propels the left back into power in this country.

And I hope it will be sunny.