Owen Smith takes on Jeremy Corbyn in the first Labour leadership hustings this evening. The moderates are desperately hoping that these head to heads can change enough minds among the Labour electorate to give Smith a chance of beating Corbyn, hence their eagerness to have them televised and the Corbynite desire to keep them off air.
But as I argue in the magazine this week, Labour’s problems go far beyond Jeremy Corbyn. He is a symptom of what ails the party, not the sole cause of it. Even if he announced tonight that he was off to spend more time on his allotment, Labour would still have big, existential questions to resolve.
One obvious problem Labour has to sort is, what is its economic policy? The New Labour model, let the City rip and use the tax revenues to help fund increased public spending, is no longer viable post-crash.
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