by Keith Richmond
Jon Cruddas has put forward a raft of left-wing policies to help Labour win the general election. In a barnstorming speech to 1,000 activists at the Compass conference on Saturday, he said: “There are nine months before a general election. Let’s have an authentic battle between left and right – and let’s have an authentic Labour Party which knows what it stands for.”
The Dagenham Labour MP put forward a platform which, he said, could be implemented and would boost the party’s fortunes in the polls and help win the next election. He argued for electoral reform; a Post Bank; more homes; and “economic democracy” to curb the power of the big banks. He wants to cancel Trident (“a diplomatic virility symbol”); scrap national identity cards; close down tax havens; and cancel the third runway at Heathrow. And he wants to link the poverty index to the RPI to protect people from future Tory spending cuts.
With one eye on history, Mr Cruddas posed a big “what if” to the audience: what if Labour’s performance at the polls on June 4 was not an electoral blip but a sign of imminent demise – as with the Liberal Party which, after the landslide of 1906, was all but destroyed by 1922 after “a split over an unpopular war” and allegations of sleaze. “The message of the European elections is that we have to earn the right to exist.”
He cracked several jokes, too. Referring to a week of fevered press speculation, he said: “Who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down… who gives a toss, really?” And he brought the house down with his observations about “a leading rebel” who got up at the meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday last week and said: “We’ve got the right policies, it’s the leader who has to change.”
Mr Cruddas observed dryly: “I don’t know the technical description of a rebel without a cause but… they hang in there for a top job and when they don’t get it storm out. It’s political suicide – but then they apologise! If you’re going to launch a coup, then launch a coup. But please don’t apologise when you get caught. I can’t imagine Che Guevara being led down from the mountains by his captors saying: ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I didn’t really mean it’.”
