Gordon Brown, the last Labour prime minister, said he believes there is more momentum behind the party than in the run up to Sir Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide victory.
He argued support is swelling under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership because there is a “more sweeping and more noticeable desire” for change than when Labour last returned to power.
Brown said the public are backing Labour because the party is offering “real change” and not the “cosmetic change” he says lies behind the Tories’ levelling-up plans.
The former Labour leader gave his assessment after launching his report calling for democratic overhaul of the UK, including the abolition of the unelected House of Lords.
Travelling on a packed train from Leeds to Edinburgh between stops on their launch, Mr Brown said public hunger for reform was greater than ahead of Sir Tony’s defeat of John Major’s Conservatives.
He told the PA news agency during a joint interview with Sir Keir while sitting in first class that “more so than in 1997, people want change”.
“I was around obviously, in the many years from the 1980s to 1997 parliament and I saw the rising demand for change,” the former chancellor said.
“The worry about the decline in public standards, which happened when we had all these sleaze allegations, the failure of the economy after ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism) and people’s desire for change, but I think it’s a more sweeping and more noticeable desire, and it’s in every part of the country.
“In 1997, we had a desire for devolution in Scotland, then in Wales, but now you see the desire for local power in Manchester, in Liverpool, in Newcastle but not just in the cities.”
Asked if that correlates with momentum behind Labour, he said: “I think so, because Labour is offering real change and not cosmetic change.
“Levelling-up seems to me to be cosmetic change. Because if you can move people up from the bottom rung, to the second bottom rung, you can say you’ve succeeded. What we want is equal opportunity for every part of the country. And that’s a big change.”
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