The agony of Labour’s old-fashioned modernisers

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[/audioplayer]The exhausted Labour leadership contest takes a bucket-and-spade holiday next week, with all four candidates agreeing to an uneasy truce on hustings — but probably not hostilities. It’s clear everyone could do with a bit of a rest, not least because they need time to sit down, scratch their heads and ask how on earth things got to where they are.

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Jeremy Corbyn, the veteran socialist, is still ahead — and not just in published polls, but in the returns all the campaigns are seeing. With private data putting him far ahead of the next candidate, Andy Burnham, even dry insiders believe there is a 50/50 chance of Corbyn winning. Labour staffers, fearing they may get the sack if he really does win, are dazed and miserable. Meanwhile, the candidate for the faction that claims it knows how to win elections, the Blairite Liz Kendall, is in last place. Whether or not Corbyn wins the leadership, one thing is clear: Blairism is finally at death’s door.

Blairites tend, rightly, to mention the three elections their hero won when critics ask if they know what they’re talking about. But to win a general election, you need to win your party’s leadership election first. And those keeping the New Labour flame alive aren’t doing so well at that.

Kendall herself talks to a membership she wishes existed: one that believes Labour should support some welfare cuts and Britain should live within its means. But when she made that last, seemingly innocuous point at a hustings in Brighton recently, she was booed. It would be a huge ask for any candidate to move the established political convictions of a party electorate during a leadership contest, and she has clearly failed.