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Thank you

Posted by Richard Burden, MP for Birmingham, Northfield, at 15:02, Fri 18 June 2010:

Thank you for signing up to hear from me as your local MP using the www.hearfromyourmp.com website. I thought you might be interested to know that I send out regular updates to constituents by email - which you can sign up to receive online at www.richardburden.com/signup.

Here is a copy of my June update:

As this is my first email update since the election I want to start by saying thank you to the people of Northfield constituency for re-electing me as your local MP.

The second thing I want to say is welcome to people who live in Kings Norton ward who have become my constituents as a result of boundary changes at this election. In Lynne Jones, Kings Norton has had a talented and hard working MP for many years. I want to continue Lynne’s good work and extend it to meet the new challenges of the coming years.

And welcome also to Steve Bedser and Ian Cruise, the new Labour councillors for Kings Norton and Longbridge, who were elected in the local elections which also took place on 6th May. I look forward to working with them both to fight for a fair deal for our area.

There was no one clear message that came out of last month’s election. The Tories did not achieve the majority they had hoped for and which the polls had predicted just a few weeks before. In fact, here in Birmingham, Labour support held up well - we held all of our parliamentary seats (including an astonishing win in Edgbaston which was one of the Conservative’s top 50 target seats) and won back seats on Birmingham City Council.

Nationally, the result was inconclusive. The Conservatives won the largest number of seats – but not enough for a majority – and no party had the backing of most of the electorate with the Conservatives getting 36% of the vote, Labour 29% and the Lib Dems 23%. Of course, none of us in the Labour Party should kid ourselves that this was anything other than a bad result for us after 13 years in government. We must now use the coming leadership election to think through those things we did right in government, where we made mistakes and how we can make the changes needed to meet the challenges of the future.

This has got to be about more than regrouping to take our turn back in government whenever the next election comes. The election results provide more evidence of what we should have recognises a long time ago; that people want a change in the way politics works, not simply a reshuffling of the colours of those in government. That requires something a lot more profound than the cobbling together of a coalition deal between David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Electoral reform is a must and we should back the thousands of people now calling for a fairer voting system. And, as well as standing up for ordinary people in the tough economic circumstances that remain, those of us on the progressive wing of politics also need to think far more creatively about how we can boost democracy and re-connect political processes with the people they are meant to serve.

We need to do politics differently. That is something I have campaigned for over my 18 years as Northfield’s MP. I will continue to do so.

Best wishes,

Richard Burden MP