Clause IV

And when God found out, he struck them dead.

Donald Soper was a devout believer in Clause 4 of the Labour Party Constitution of 1918, which said that the purpose of the party was to secure for the workers, by hand or by brain, the full fruits of their industry – and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

And Soper said that this clause expresses, quote, the ultimate principles that emerge from our Lord's teachings.

This socialism is the extension of the teaching of our Lord.

I, uh, Blair did his before he was in office.

I mean, Clause 4 was really saying...

I mean, no one understood outside the Labour Party quite how important what it was, but Clause 4 was saying, "You're all wrong about almost everything," right? Um, and they bought it, 'cause they saw he was a winner.

Now, I remember David Blunkett, who I used to see quite a lot of when, when I was reporting on New Labour.

He used to say, "Get your betrayals in early."

What do you teach your students about their history and the way the Labour Party works?

Broadly speaking, we look at the modern day Labour Party, starting with Tony Blair's new Labour movement, getting rid of Clause 4, which is the kind of traditional principles based on socialism of moving towards nationalisation.

Now, he had to ditch that policy and move towards more of a kind of market economy so that the Labour Party could be seen as electable due to its long history in the 1970s and 60s of being too associated with union activity.

And how does that then sit alongside the Conservatives?

And confronting them, I think, is something that you only want to do in pursuit of what you think are ultimately a big winner.

So on Clause 4, actually, Tony Blair really disguised that.

He didn't confront.

He did it with the press, the newspapers afterwards in the briefing.

I mean, I think it's the best speech in decades.

It will be remembered as long as the Clause 4 speech or the sort of Kinnock, you know, a Labour council speech.

Scuttling around, scuttling around in taxis.

You know, and both of those were about internal Labour politics.

And I'm honestly trying to think of the speeches in my political lifetime that can we compare that speech by Andy Burnham to.

And I suppose Thatcher after the Brighton bomb, uh, Neil Kinnock taking on Militant in the 1980s, Tony Blair on the need to reform Clause IV in the 1990s in Blackpool, and honestly, I think that speech is up there with it for the confidence that he showed, for the willingness to make an argument, for the way he reached out to the public.

And I suspect what marks this out from those other speeches is the raw emotion of having lost his father earlier on this month, and that still being ever present and causing him to well up.

And certainly the delegates I spoke to afterwards, and MPs were, I think, blown away by it.