Labour's trouncing by George Galloway prompts leader to meet locals and understand why party lost
Ed Miliband went to Bradford on Thursday to hear from 100 local people about why the party had been obliterated in the Bradford West byelection, fulfilling a promise to "listen and learn" from the rejection.
Labour lost the previously safe seat at the end of March to the founder of the Respect party, George Galloway.
Opening a meeting dominated by searching questions, Miliband said: "I am determined to learn the lessons of why we lost here in Bradford. I may not agree with everything that is said but I guarantee you I will listen.
"There are factors local to Bradford but factors which are relevant nationally and internationally too. There are huge issues of injustice in this country and I passionately believe in the Labour party being able to change people's lives for the better.
"We can only do that if we are rooted in the communities we serve. We are not going to put everything right today. But we can at least make a start."
Supporters of the Respect party were present, and the questions ranged from foreign policy to the treatment of women, lack of jobs and Bradford council's role.
Miliband promised to return to hold a meeting with Muslim women. He was also pressed to have a direct debate with Galloway, but refused this saying that he believed the MP "turns everything into a circus". Galloway had been expelled from the Labour party.
The local Labour party appears to have been oblivious to the possibility that it could be swept away in a late surge of enthusiasm for Galloway, especially from young students and women angered by the traditional political establishment in the city.
Labour now faces the possibility of Respect preventing it from being able to take control of Bradford council for the first time in a decade. Respect is putting up 12 candidates in mainly inner-city wards where it did well in the byelection. The council currently has no overall control.
But Miliband is said to recognise that the byelection result was not just a reverse for Labour but a sign of wider disenchantment with established political parties.
Labour strategists denied the decision to hold the meeting was modelled on Tony Blair's so-called masochism strategy when he repeatedly put himself in front of hostile audiences to defuse some of the anger directed at his government, especially over the war in Iraq.
On the morning of the byelection Miliband had given a commitment to go to Bradford and Thursday's meeting with 100 members of the community was a fulfilment of the promise. The audience was invited by Labour, but a party source said a lot of Respect people were there.
Galloway overturned a Labour majority of nearly 6,000 to win by more than 10,000 votes after the election was called owing to the ill-health of the retiring MP, Marsha Singh. The seat had been Labour's for 30 years, and Galloway described his victory as the Bradford spring.
The result has prompted soul-searching in the Labour party, including whether it had adopted a complacent attitude to minority ethnic voters and become too dependent on family elders to deliver votes for Labour.
The party has been taken aback by the extent to which Respect supporters used social media to galvanise support over a few days. Labour had also assumed the Iraq war effect had subsided among Muslim voters, but found that in Bradford foreign policy issues were important, including Afghanistan and Syria.
Earlier Miliband sought to reflect the disenchantment with politics among voters on a stump speech in Derby, a theme that David Cameron mined in opposition after the expenses scandal.
He said: "The fourth party who says 'a plague on all your houses' is an issue we've got to confront. Now, how do we confront it? By showing what we all believe, which is that we can make a difference to people's lives."
He insisted his party was embarking on "real, deep, genuine change" to reconnect with disenchanted voters.
In a reference to Bradford West he added: "The uncomfortable truth for Labour is that people turned to a protest party rather than to us. We are determined to learn the lessons from Bradford, some of them local to that constituency.
"But for me it's a reminder of the scale of our task. People turning away from an unpopular government doesn't automatically mean they turn to Labour."
He promised deep change inside his party, though indicated no specific moves.
In a sign of the continuing anger at the political establishment in Bradford, Selina Ullah, chair of the Bradford Muslim Women's Council, warned in the local media that for too long the voices of women and young people had "been ignored, at best because of a paternalistic approach, at worst [because] they were not deemed worthy of having opinions relevant to the issues in hand".