HAROLD WILSON, who won four general elections, making him, electorally, a more successful Labour leader than either Clement Attlee or Tony Blair, famously argued: “The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.”

And he was right. The Labour Party, our party, lost its way when it forgot that basic truth, when the party became obsessed with worrying about the latest piece of loaded “research” from a free-market think tank or CBI-sponsored focus group rather than representing the aims and aspirations of the vast majority of ordinary hard-working men and women in this country.

During the dark days of the New Labour years my trade union — in fact, all trade unions — were treated by Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson as if we were distant relatives rather than close family — an embarrassing uncle who has to be invited to the Christmas party — and it was, sometimes, hard to keep the faith. But we did.