Labour must change if it is to win

In the past 40 years, only two leaders of the opposition have gone on to become prime minister: Tony Blair and David Cameron. Both were elected on a platform of ‘change to win’ by parties keen enough for power to do just that. Looking at the current Labour leadership contest, it is painfully clear how far the party is from that position.

The one candidate prepared to break decisively with the past four years has already dropped out. Jess Phillips has left the race because she can’t get the nominations from either constituency Labour parties or trade unions and other affiliated groups to make it on to the final ballot, which goes before party members next month. The lack of an audience for Phillips’s message is a reminder that the party has not yet come to terms with the scale of its rejection by the electorate last month. A poll of Labour members this week showed that they still view Jeremy Corbyn more favourably than any other Labour leader of the past 100 years.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow Business Secretary, is the candidate keenest to associate herself with the Corbyn project. When asked in a recent interview to give his leadership marks out of ten, she gave him ten. But the other candidates, while not being quite so obviously fawning, are still not prepared to tell the membership hard truths. They accept the fundamental premises of the manifesto rather than regarding it as a disaster. Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit Secretary, says it was ‘overloaded’ — which implies that what it was trying to carry was good. Lisa Nandy believes the failure was one of prioritisation rather than of principle. She also excuses Corbyn’s failure by saying he was ‘trashed’ by certain sections of the media. Emily Thornberry, the shadow Foreign Secretary (and the candidate who should be able to be a truth-teller given how unlikely she is to win), says it ‘was too broad, too ambitious’ which, again, suggests that the ambition wasn’t wrong, just too great.