Is the Labour Party Thinking Seriously About Downing Street or Planning to Become BNP-lite?

I have yet to get really excited about the Labour Party leadership race. I was deeply depressed by the manner of Andy Burnham’s entry into the fray. Too many Labour politicians and activists were over-impressed by talk of immigration on the doorstep. They think that because the subject was raised again and again, then it is the key to Labour’s failure and therefore its potential future success.
The point is that the issue was raised in 2001 and 2005, but Labour knew it would win on both occasions on so chose to ignore what its core voters were saying about foreigners. They believed they had their votes in the bag. That was probably a mistake, although the core vote seemed to hold up rather well even in 2010 considering what a useless campaign Brown ran. Ask most voters what their key concerns are and immigration will come pretty close to the top (and that includes Guardian readers).