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The wrong ways and the right ones to pick Labour’s next leader The wrong ways and the right ones to pick Labour’s next leader
(about 20 hours later)
It was a cruel choice to book the Attlee Room for the parliamentary hustings between the Labour leadership contenders. They gathered in a venue named after a revered winner to hear the contestants explain how they would rebuild the party after one of its worst defeats. Many Labour MPs came away pronouncing themselves uninspired. One lamented that she saw no one with “the X-factor” – and she included in that observation the candidate she had nominated.It was a cruel choice to book the Attlee Room for the parliamentary hustings between the Labour leadership contenders. They gathered in a venue named after a revered winner to hear the contestants explain how they would rebuild the party after one of its worst defeats. Many Labour MPs came away pronouncing themselves uninspired. One lamented that she saw no one with “the X-factor” – and she included in that observation the candidate she had nominated.
This is asking too much of the runners. Leaders with obvious superstar quality don’t come around all that often in politics. After their devastating defeat in 1997, the Tories went through three before they finally found an election winner in David Cameron – and even then he has only managed a majority of 12 at his best. Labour had to endure four defeats, two of those crushings by landslides, before the constellations were finally aligned for the ascension of Tony Blair. Both of them came to party leadership in a less bleak context than that which faces Labour today. The contenders must wrestle with the nightmarish task of both accounting for the severity of their loss and persuading their party that there is a path to victory next time round. They must suggest that they have an idea how to recover seats in Glasgow from the Nationalists, reach out to those lost to Ukip and woo Tory voters in suburban England. The complaint that none of the candidates for the Labour leadership cuts the mustard is displacement activity. It is easier for the rest of the Labour party to moan about that than do its own hard thinking. This is another reason why it would have been much better for the party to thoroughly interrogate why it lost before it went in search of a winning leader.This is asking too much of the runners. Leaders with obvious superstar quality don’t come around all that often in politics. After their devastating defeat in 1997, the Tories went through three before they finally found an election winner in David Cameron – and even then he has only managed a majority of 12 at his best. Labour had to endure four defeats, two of those crushings by landslides, before the constellations were finally aligned for the ascension of Tony Blair. Both of them came to party leadership in a less bleak context than that which faces Labour today. The contenders must wrestle with the nightmarish task of both accounting for the severity of their loss and persuading their party that there is a path to victory next time round. They must suggest that they have an idea how to recover seats in Glasgow from the Nationalists, reach out to those lost to Ukip and woo Tory voters in suburban England. The complaint that none of the candidates for the Labour leadership cuts the mustard is displacement activity. It is easier for the rest of the Labour party to moan about that than do its own hard thinking. This is another reason why it would have been much better for the party to thoroughly interrogate why it lost before it went in search of a winning leader.
Nominations from MPs close at noon tomorrow. Unless Jeremy Corbyn, the veteran Islington leftwinger who is well short of the signatures required to get on the ballot, can persuade more of his parliamentary colleagues that the way forward is to take the Labour party back to circa 1983, there will be the three of them in the race. If the ballot were tomorrow, it is widely thought that Andy Burnham would beat Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. The shadow health secretary won the sprint to get endorsements from parliamentary colleagues. He is well known to Labour activists. He appears to be favoured by some of the leaders of big trade unions, though that ought to count for a lot less now that rule changes mean union executives can no longer stuff ballot envelopes with campaign literature urging support for their preferred candidate. He is saying some of the right things. One of them is that Labour needs to reforge an “emotional connection” with the electorate. True enough. In different ways, insufficient voters identified with Labour and too few thought Labour identified with them. But being better at “emotional connection” only gets you so far. I really don’t think that many of the public feel a passionate “emotional connection” with David Cameron and George Osborne. Voters preferred the Tories to Labour for reasons more to do with the pocket book. An “emotional connection” does not add up to credibility on the economy, to name one of the even more important things that Labour lacked when the nation made its choice.Nominations from MPs close at noon tomorrow. Unless Jeremy Corbyn, the veteran Islington leftwinger who is well short of the signatures required to get on the ballot, can persuade more of his parliamentary colleagues that the way forward is to take the Labour party back to circa 1983, there will be the three of them in the race. If the ballot were tomorrow, it is widely thought that Andy Burnham would beat Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. The shadow health secretary won the sprint to get endorsements from parliamentary colleagues. He is well known to Labour activists. He appears to be favoured by some of the leaders of big trade unions, though that ought to count for a lot less now that rule changes mean union executives can no longer stuff ballot envelopes with campaign literature urging support for their preferred candidate. He is saying some of the right things. One of them is that Labour needs to reforge an “emotional connection” with the electorate. True enough. In different ways, insufficient voters identified with Labour and too few thought Labour identified with them. But being better at “emotional connection” only gets you so far. I really don’t think that many of the public feel a passionate “emotional connection” with David Cameron and George Osborne. Voters preferred the Tories to Labour for reasons more to do with the pocket book. An “emotional connection” does not add up to credibility on the economy, to name one of the even more important things that Labour lacked when the nation made its choice.
The ballot is open until mid-September, which means it could be unwise to read too much into early favourite status. His detractors say the shadow health secretary is “a prettier Ed Miliband”. While he has acknowledged some of the flaws in Labour’s approach under its previous management, he has yet to demonstrate that he truly and deeply gets it. He recently remarked that Labour’s losing offer was “the best manifesto that I have stood on.” In an article for today’s Observer, he suggests that the party’s “painful soul-searching” should now end, which is a mistake if that implies it should recoil from further self-examination rather than confront the depth of the hole it is in. He argues that he can combine “the best of Tony and Ed”. Miliblairism? Blairbandism? That won’t wash if it’s just a formula for ducking or fudging the tough choices facing the party. If Andy Burnham lacks the capacity to grasp the epic challenge that is facing Labour, then the long campaign could find him out.The ballot is open until mid-September, which means it could be unwise to read too much into early favourite status. His detractors say the shadow health secretary is “a prettier Ed Miliband”. While he has acknowledged some of the flaws in Labour’s approach under its previous management, he has yet to demonstrate that he truly and deeply gets it. He recently remarked that Labour’s losing offer was “the best manifesto that I have stood on.” In an article for today’s Observer, he suggests that the party’s “painful soul-searching” should now end, which is a mistake if that implies it should recoil from further self-examination rather than confront the depth of the hole it is in. He argues that he can combine “the best of Tony and Ed”. Miliblairism? Blairbandism? That won’t wash if it’s just a formula for ducking or fudging the tough choices facing the party. If Andy Burnham lacks the capacity to grasp the epic challenge that is facing Labour, then the long campaign could find him out.
To Liz Kendall, by contrast, the campaign must look scarily short. She became the sole standard bearer of the New Labourites because other potential candidates fell out of the race or didn’t even get as far as the starting gate. Before she declared, hardly anyone had heard of her. In terms of name-recognition and networks, she starts a long way behind her rivals. She has three months to catch up. That is not as long as it might sound, especially when one of them is the dead month of August. Being the lesser known quantity can be a winning position. As he likes to remind friends, when David Cameron contested the Tory leadership in 2005, he started off with very few supporters and was up against much more seasoned rivals. His big chance to shine was provided by the Tory party conference, which offered a platform to convince party members, his colleagues and the media that he could be a winner. A similar opportunity for the insurgent candidate does not exist in this Labour leadership contest. The closest to it will be the televised hustings, the first of which will be on BBC2 this week. That is an important opportunity for Ms Kendall.To Liz Kendall, by contrast, the campaign must look scarily short. She became the sole standard bearer of the New Labourites because other potential candidates fell out of the race or didn’t even get as far as the starting gate. Before she declared, hardly anyone had heard of her. In terms of name-recognition and networks, she starts a long way behind her rivals. She has three months to catch up. That is not as long as it might sound, especially when one of them is the dead month of August. Being the lesser known quantity can be a winning position. As he likes to remind friends, when David Cameron contested the Tory leadership in 2005, he started off with very few supporters and was up against much more seasoned rivals. His big chance to shine was provided by the Tory party conference, which offered a platform to convince party members, his colleagues and the media that he could be a winner. A similar opportunity for the insurgent candidate does not exist in this Labour leadership contest. The closest to it will be the televised hustings, the first of which will be on BBC2 this week. That is an important opportunity for Ms Kendall.
She will be called too rightwing by her rivals. Yvette Cooper has accused her Labour sister – she didn’t name her, but we know who she meant – of “having swallowed the Tory manifesto”. Ms Kendall responded: “The only thing I have swallowed is the sheer scale of the defeat and the huge changes we need to win again.” In her position, the only way to succeed in this contest is to be bold. She rightly calls the election “catastrophic” for Labour. She says, rightly again, that it is a “fantasy” to suppose that David Cameron is in Number 10 because Labour was not leftwing enough. Her gamble is that Labour members are so shocked by this defeat that they are willing to absorb a brutally frank critique of where the party has gone wrong and embrace challenging prescriptions for making it a winner again.She will be called too rightwing by her rivals. Yvette Cooper has accused her Labour sister – she didn’t name her, but we know who she meant – of “having swallowed the Tory manifesto”. Ms Kendall responded: “The only thing I have swallowed is the sheer scale of the defeat and the huge changes we need to win again.” In her position, the only way to succeed in this contest is to be bold. She rightly calls the election “catastrophic” for Labour. She says, rightly again, that it is a “fantasy” to suppose that David Cameron is in Number 10 because Labour was not leftwing enough. Her gamble is that Labour members are so shocked by this defeat that they are willing to absorb a brutally frank critique of where the party has gone wrong and embrace challenging prescriptions for making it a winner again.
Yvette Cooper has formidable organisers on her campaign team and a reputation for being resilient and unreckless. The shadow home secretary will hope to profit from the strong feeling in Labour’s ranks that it is time the party had a woman leader. She appears to be trying to come through the middle by positioning herself between her two rivals. Triangulation could be a successful strategy. It is forgotten now, but back in 2010 Ed Miliband did not run as the leftwing candidate. The extent of his union backing only became fully apparent afterwards. He ran as the healing, unifying, middle-ground candidate between his Blairite brother and the Brownite Ed Balls. Since she is married to the latter, that will be remembered by Ms Cooper.Yvette Cooper has formidable organisers on her campaign team and a reputation for being resilient and unreckless. The shadow home secretary will hope to profit from the strong feeling in Labour’s ranks that it is time the party had a woman leader. She appears to be trying to come through the middle by positioning herself between her two rivals. Triangulation could be a successful strategy. It is forgotten now, but back in 2010 Ed Miliband did not run as the leftwing candidate. The extent of his union backing only became fully apparent afterwards. He ran as the healing, unifying, middle-ground candidate between his Blairite brother and the Brownite Ed Balls. Since she is married to the latter, that will be remembered by Ms Cooper.
As the contest gets more personal, the Cooper and Burnham teams are trying to make an issue of Ms Kendall’s lack of experience. She was first elected in 2010. She has never held ministerial office and has not been in the shadow cabinet. A fellow member of her Labour intake remarks that this contest “has come a bit too early for our generation”. That noted, if top-level experience is the sole criterion for the job then the Labour party should be turning to, er, Ed Miliband. There is an advantage in not having been a minister. It would be much harder for the Tories to do to Ms Kendall what they did to Mr Miliband when they pinned on him all the mistakes of the last Labour government, both the genuine ones and the ones they made up. Liz Kendall is a clean skin. That can’t be said of her rivals.As the contest gets more personal, the Cooper and Burnham teams are trying to make an issue of Ms Kendall’s lack of experience. She was first elected in 2010. She has never held ministerial office and has not been in the shadow cabinet. A fellow member of her Labour intake remarks that this contest “has come a bit too early for our generation”. That noted, if top-level experience is the sole criterion for the job then the Labour party should be turning to, er, Ed Miliband. There is an advantage in not having been a minister. It would be much harder for the Tories to do to Ms Kendall what they did to Mr Miliband when they pinned on him all the mistakes of the last Labour government, both the genuine ones and the ones they made up. Liz Kendall is a clean skin. That can’t be said of her rivals.
Experience is a risky issue for Mr Burnham and Ms Cooper to raise because it is double-edged. They are vulnerable to being portrayed as tired figures from the past. Yvette Cooper served as a minister for 11 of the 13 years Labour was in government, including a period as chief treasury secretary at the time of the Great Crash. Andy Burnham held the same post and was health secretary at the time of the Mid-Staffs hospital scandal – lines on his CV that the Tories would try to strangle him with. They face the flipside of the experience question: how can they be change candidates capable of refreshing Labour’s appeal when they are lugging around so much baggage from the past? Experience is a risky issue for Mr Burnham and Ms Cooper to raise because it is double-edged. They are vulnerable to being portrayed as tired figures from the past. Yvette Cooper served as a minister for 11 of the 13 years Labour was in government, including a period as chief treasury secretary at the time of the Great Crash. Andy Burnham held the same post and was health secretary in the aftermath of the Mid-Staffs hospital scandal – lines on his CV that the Tories would try to strangle him with. They face the flipside of the experience question: how can they be change candidates capable of refreshing Labour’s appeal when they are lugging around so much baggage from the past?
In an ideal world, there would be a candidate who combined both freshness and experience. We do not live in an ideal world. And Labour is currently in a world which is about as unideal as it is possible to get. The sensible way to judge them is on their values, their character, the quality of their ideas, their potential to grow into a credible candidate to be prime minister and their strategy for turning Labour back into a party that can win elections. If one of them manages to exhibit a bit of X-factor as well, that would be a bonus.In an ideal world, there would be a candidate who combined both freshness and experience. We do not live in an ideal world. And Labour is currently in a world which is about as unideal as it is possible to get. The sensible way to judge them is on their values, their character, the quality of their ideas, their potential to grow into a credible candidate to be prime minister and their strategy for turning Labour back into a party that can win elections. If one of them manages to exhibit a bit of X-factor as well, that would be a bonus.