The Labour Case

Across the constituencies, the process is now under way The atmosphere, though perhaps more animated in places than in earlier years remains recognisably democratic in character Candidates of every description, from the resolutely familiar To the more recently assembled Have spent the day making their final appeals In what is, after all, one of the country's more durable habits The periodic conversion of uncertainty into paperwork For the governing party, the argument is, in essence, one of seriousness That the condition of the country, however noisily described elsewhere still requires something less theatrical than durable Something less ecstatic than governable Labour's case, tonight, is that adulthood remains if not an especially lyrical virtue a necessary one We did not come to sing in flames We came to speak in finished sentences To put the folders in their trays To close the brackets properly To keep the lights on To keep the thing from lurching You do not govern by applause Or feed a town on anger You do not mend a fraying roof By promising it grandeur The walls were wet The wires were bare The books were cooked with care So we arrived with steady hands And learned the weight of there Not every answer shines at once Not every debt can vanish Not every wound will close on cue Because the crowd demands it A country is not healed by noise Or purified by speed Sometimes the work of holding on Is all the work you need We are the grown-ups in the weather Keeping paper, keeping power together Not the dream But the hand on the rail Not the cry But the system made to fail less Call it careful Call it slow Call it less than you were owed Still we stand where standing matters When the easy language shatters We know the cost of promising More than the state can carry We know the thrill of moral heat And how it cools by January A budget speaks in smaller words Than banners ever do A file can kill a finer phrase By asking if it's true You wanted change We brought a form A method first A lesser storm You wanted clean and sudden light We brought the grid back through the night You wanted history in song We kept the heating on We are the grown-ups in the weather Holding wire and warning tape together Not the dawn But the lamp in the hall Not the leap But the floor beneath it all Call it careful Call it thin Call it duty dressed as skin Still we stand where standing matters When the bright arrangement shatters Every promise meets a door Every doorway has a frame Every frame becomes a limit Every limit gets a name Trust is not a burst of brass It is threshold, line, and list It is saying no to chaos Even when you're called a fist We did not come to be adored We came to be available To sign, to read, to answer for The dull, the hard, the viable And if the song sounds smaller now Than what you thought you heard before That is the sound of government With both its feet against the door We are the grown-ups in the weather Holding this unfinished country together Not the fire But the watch through the night Not belief But the keeping on of light Call it careful Call it grey Call it less than came to stay Still we stand where standing matters When the easy theatre scatters The work is slow The work is cold The work is not the thing you're sold But someone has to take the file And stay