Mandelson: shadow cabinet must push deficit reduction message

Peter Mandelson has warned Labour’s shadow cabinet to be more honest with the public and spell out the scale of cuts that would have to be imposed if the party wins the general election in May.

As a poll suggested that Labour has opened up a seven-point lead over the Tories, the former business secretary said that George Osborne’s “sharp step to the right” in the autumn statement has created an opportunity for Labour.

But Mandelson said that Labour would only be able to exploit the opportunity in the final five months before the election if shadow cabinet members followed the example of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls who have made clear that deficit reduction would be one of their main objectives in government.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1, Mandelson said: “There is no point just leaving it to the two Eds to make these statements. The shadow cabinet, as a whole, have got to play as a team in this. Yes, in the last few weeks Labour has scored. It has put that deficit ball [in the] back of the net.

“To keep it there each member of the shadow cabinet has got to be honest with the public, they have got to set out what this means for their own departmental budgets and demonstrate to the public that they mean it, that they share the same sort of discipline that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have shown.”

The former European commissioner was speaking after an Opinium / Observer poll showed a two-point increase in support for Labour to put the party on 36%. The Tories remained unchanged on 29% while Ukip fell by three points to 16%. The Liberal Democrats were also unchanged on 6%, one point ahead of the Greens on 5%.

Mandelson praised Miliband and Balls for a skilful response to the autumn statement in which Osborne outlined spending cuts deemed by the Office for Budget Responsibility to herald a return to 1930s levels of state spending.

“When people look back at the last few weeks in politics they’ll see it as a defining [period]. To be honest I was slightly surprised that the Conservatives chose to take such a sharp step to the right. But they created an opportunity for the Labour party, which they swiftly took and moved on to the centre ground with their own deficit reduction proposals. The Labour party therefore has put itself in a very good position for the coming election.”

Mandelson’s remarks show that supporters of Tony Blair believe that Miliband and Balls have taken great strides in recent weeks.

Osborne had hoped to set a trap for Labour by outlining painful spending cuts in the next parliament.

Miliband responded by saying in one of his main pre-election speeches after the autumn statement that the next Labour government would make deficit reduction one of its main priorities, forcing it to embark on day-to-day departmental spending cuts while protecting the NHS and spending on infrastructure. But the Labour leader met the chancellor’s central challenge – that he has failed to acknowledge the deficit – by saying that he would cut the deficit, though he would do so on a more benign timescale than the coalition government.

The former cabinet minister, who made clear during the 2010 Labour leadership contest that David Miliband was his preferred candidate, playfully suggested that the former foreign secretary may have a future role in British politics.

“David … has a lot to contribute wherever he is,” he said. Winking, he added: “Of course I’d like to see him back in British politics.”

Marr said: “You were just winking at me.”

But the Labour leadership suffered a blow with the publication of critical remarks from a meeting run by the LabourList website. Nancy Platts, the party’s candidate in Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven, told the meeting at the House of Commons on Monday that she was furious over a leaked internal Labour document which appeared to suggest that candidates should discuss other areas of policy if voters mention immigration. Platts told the meeting, in remarks reported in the Sunday Times: “When I heard that come out … it made me want to discuss it even more. Because we shouldn’t have any subjects that we say to people in our communities ‘are not up for discussion’.”