Well done to the BBC for hosting an hour long debate this evening for the candidates in the upcoming Labour leadership campaign. It was a welcome addition to the democratic process and will hopefully provoke some debate in the country. Sadly, I gave up on it very quickly.
Sorry, my left of centre friends, but I am no more enthused about who will be the next leader of the Labour Party than I was when I saw the initial threadbare list a few weeks ago. In fact, the list is even more threadbare now because Mary Creagh didn’t even make the ballot paper, but it doesn’t matter because she had as little to say as the remaining candidates, probably less.
Andy Burnham is the favourite and remains my least worst option. I know pretty well where he is coming from and I agree with much of what he says. However, I have not forgiven him for “admitting that Labour spent too much” in its final years. If he wins, that line will come back to haunt him and quite right too. Liz Kendall says she isn’t New Labour, Old Labour, a Blairite or a Brownite and I agree. So far, she is coming across as a kindler, gentler Tory, even to the extent that the Sun supports her candidature. It doesn’t get any worse then that. And dear old Jeremy Corbyn? Well, if you long for a return to 1983 where Michael Foot went to the country with a manifesto that was described as “the longest suicide note in history”, then he’s your man. Not for Corbyn realistic, progressive, modern socialism, but a return to the Bennite days which offered little more than simplistic left wing slogans. In those days, the Labour Party was a nasty party too, ruled as it was by the iron fist of the far left, aided and abetted by the Militant tendency. Run by committees in smoke-filled rooms, undemocratic block votes, policy decided by union barons, a party that thought it better to have fought and lost than never to have lost at all. And Yvette Cooper? Please.
Corbyn has the easy lines, sticking to his version of pure socialism. That’s fair enough. People like him can say what they want because they sit in safe seats and whatever happens in the rest of the land doesn’t matter. If Labour is wiped out, he’ll be fine. And the truth is that the country is not ready for a hard left Labour Party. Putting aside Iraq, Tony Blair’s biggest mistake was to not change the country enough. Blair’s Labour improved schools and saved the NHS but the poor stayed poor and the rich just got richer. Britain became no more of a meritocracy under Blair, privilege still ensured that money bought power and influence. With two landslide majorities and one good one, he could have shaped the country to love Labour, to love the prospect of greater equality where everyone could enjoy the proceeds of success. He and Brown had 13 years to persuade Britain that the first steps of New Labour could transmit into something greater and longer lasting. But five years of a Tory government, aided and abetted by the Lib Dems who moved from a left of Labour position before the 2010 election to a right of centre pseudo Tory Party after it, undid much if not all of the Blair legacy.
None of the Labour candidates offer the road I would like to go down. None of them yet has a vision of what Labour would look like under their leadership, except with Kendall whose Labour would look like the Tory Party. And this was Ed Miliband’s failing. No one, not even a card-carrying just-about-leftie like me, had any idea of what Miliband’s Britain would look like. Added to that, the failure of Labour to deal with the Tory lie about “Labour’s recession”, the clever spin suggesting the SNP would dominate any Labour minority government and, most importantly of all, that not many people believed Miliband was up to being PM.
I haven’t given up on Labour yet, well not quite. It’s not even two months since Cameron’s surprising win and I am still disappointed by the result. Perhaps I am not as objective as I should be, perhaps I am far more pessimistic than I should be.
And perhaps I should just sit back and enjoy David Cameron’s obvious discomfort at the current state of the Tory Party over the question of an EU referendum where his careless words have seen him twice in a week having to perform embarrassing U turns. If his actions were those of a Labour PM, the Sun, Mail and co would have slaughtered him. But then, if I think of Labour over Europe, that worries me too. They seem to have already decided to vote yes in the EU referendum, regardless of any changes Cameron negotiates. But what if the PM negotiates away regulation over employee rights? What if he goes to the country with our freedom of movement impaired? What if the only changes benefit the rich and powerful?
So it’s still Burnham for now, with little hope and no enthusiasm. For deputy leader, I am more enthused. Tom Watson, Ben Bradshaw, Angela Eagle, Caroline Flint and Stella Creasy. My vote, should I decide to place one, would go to Stella Creasy who really impresses me every time I hear her speak. Flint is good too and I have a lot of time for Bradshaw, Watson and Eagle. A Burnham/Creasy ticket might just bridge the old and the new aspects to Labour.
We need Labour more than ever and by 2020 we may need it to save this country from Osborne’s ideological journey to turn this country into America with everything run for profit and public services being a thing of the past. If a week is a long time in politics, then five years is a lifetime. Barring accidents along the way, George Osborne will be the PM in 2020 and the current power behind the throne will be the power on it. Osborne is the fixer, the tactician, always making moves for the short term. In order to defeat him, Labour will need a strategy, a plan, a vision in which we can all believe. No party has any of these things right now, so now would be a good time for the Labour leadership team to start working on theirs.
