With Chuka Umunna out, the choice for Labour party members is simple. If they want to win the next election they will choose Liz Kendall as their next leader.
There is a very simple test for suitability for the job: their reply to the question ‘did the last Labour government spend too much money?’ Kendall is the only one who has passed. On yesterday’s Newsnight she was straightforward: yes, Labour did spend too much. Yvette Cooper, by contrast, said on Radio 4 this morning: ‘I think there were things that we were spending wrongly on, there were issues that we would have been spending money, too much money on – for example there were things that went wrong with the NHS computer system, with all sorts of things like that – but the deficit at the time was 0.6 per cent, the current deficit, and all the political parties at the time were all supporting the spending plans.’
Andy Burnham has not addressed the deficit since the beginning of the leadership campaign, but on 1 May he was asked the question on Radio 5 live and said that blaming the deficit on Labour was a ‘triumph of political spin over the facts’.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in