“Who was the best Labour leader of the past 50 years”:
- Rebecca Long-Bailey: “Oh, I don’t know.”
- Keir Starmer: “That Harold Wilson wasn’t too bad, was he?”
- Lisa Nandy: “I’ll avoid that one, too. Barbara Castle would have been great.
The absolute state if the three leadership candidates. All of them know the elephant in the room and they all know who the most successful Labour leader was. (Clue: he won three general elections.) But two of them – Long-Bailey would say Corbyn, but even someone with such limited talent as her knows he wasn’t – daren’t speak His name for fear of losing hard left votes. Once again, it leaves me conflicted.
I was going to vote for the best candidate to be Labour’s new leader and now I am having to re-evaluate that position and vote for the least worst. That, I can tell you, is a huge disappointment. It is not that I am unreformed Blairite who cannot see any other form of Labour achieving power. Also, I do understand that New Labour was of its time. In the 1980s, Labour had drifted to the fringes of politics, almost fading into total irrelevance as Margaret Thatcher strode to power. Until 1997, Labour had been in opposition for 18 long years. Change was absolutely needed and Blair provided the impetus.
And Blair’s government was a great Labour government which brought about huge changes. Whilst the hard left always counter the Labour government’s successes from 1997 to 2010 by saying ‘Yes, but Iraq”, New Labour worked.
New Labour worked not least because Blair managed to recruit centre ground and even centre right voters to the project. He realised that without attracting a wide range of support from different social groups, Labour could not win. He was correct. Now, perspective Labour leaders dare not mention his name. Sorry – but I have to mention his name. Tony Blair was the best Labour leader of the last 50 years. Why? Because he made the country stronger, fairer and better and he won three general elections.
Starmer’s ten pledges do not fill me with great enthusiasm, either, including as they do a good deal of Corbyn’s failed policies. Nandy has proved herself to be a formidable performer, albeit one without a distinct programme for Labour. Long-Bailey has succeeded only in proving that she is out-of-her-depth and nothing more than continuity Corbyn.
I so hoped I would be voting for a particular candidate rather than voting against another, but this is the reality that confronts me. On the basis of the campaign to date, Starmer and Nandy, in that order, are the best candidates, Long-Bailey the worst, by a country mile. So, in this election, as I have done in the last two general elections, I am voting for the least worst option, who will probably be Keir Starmer.
Starmer, it has to be said, is a ferociously clever man with a brain the size of Canada. It is possible, probably likely, that he is a man with a plan and he just might win me over completely. At the very least, he has the ability to hold Boris Johnson to account, something Jeremy Corbyn patently failed to do.
I’ll stay in Labour for the time-being and see where we are after the election. But with little enthusiasm and even less hope.
