The first hustings of the Labour leadership campaign was not particularly inspiring. It did not suggest that any of the candidates either believed their party would win the next election or that they were capable of telling the membership what it really needs to hear in order to get as close as possible to winning.
One of the problems was the format: candidates had 40 seconds to answer each question and couldn’t interrupt one another or take one another up on points they had made. It meant everyone could make their point properly, which was useful, but it also took a lot of the energy out of the session, and the leadership hopefuls struggled to inject their own passion.
All of them agreed on things that would make the members listening happy: we need to unite the party, anti-Semitism is bad and needs to be stamped out, the 2019 manifesto had lots of good things in it, and the party’s Brexit policy hadn’t worked.
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