These are early days in the race to succeed Gordon Brown as Labour leader, when the ballot papers don’t go out until September 1, with the runners jostling for position before someone tries to make a break for the front.
It would have been better to use September’s annual conference in Manchester as a super-hustings, as the Conservatives successfully did at their own 2005 jamboree in Blackpool, to put the five candidates through their paces instead of announcing the winner. But we are where we are, as an old comrade constantly reminds me whenever I raise an objection, so on the last Saturday of the year’s ninth month, the next leader of the party will be announced.
What have we learned from the initial skirmishes? If there’s been a great revelation, a pivotal moment other, perhaps, than the inclusion of Diane Abbot, I have missed it. Recent events have proved the case for revising a gerrymandered party constitution. Two high-ranking figures heavily involved in drawing up the rules have told me the thresh-hold of 12.5 per cent, the support of one in eight Labour MPs, needed to stand was deliberately set to exclude the left.
Back then, the target was Ken Livingstone (ironically now likely to romp home in the primary to be Labour’s London mayoral candidate in 2012). This time round, it threatened to exclude anyone who wasn’t a former special advisor turned Cabinet minister in the ousted Labour Government.
Harriet Harman and Jack Straw plus, to his credit, bookies’ favourite David Miliband saw the nonsense of this, but John McDonnell hasn’t enjoyed the recognition he deserves for putting Abbott in the starting blocks. McDonnell, chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, doesn’t go looking for praise. That’s probably just as well, when he’s had so little. But McDonnell had more nominations than Abbott when he pulled out to support her run, acknowledging she could borrow, as a black woman, MPs such as Harman who would nominate though never vote for her. Well played, John McDonnell.
On the hustings, Abbott has proved the left of the Labour Party has attractive and relevant policies. Scrapping the hugely expensive weapon of mass destruction that is son of Trident can be popular with the electorate and earns loud applause from audiences whenever she raises it. The living wage has been adopted as one of Ed Miliband’s selling points. David Miliband publicly acknowledges that George W Bush was a disaster for Britain and the world. Ed Balls and Andy Burnham concede that Labour lost touch with traditional, working-class voters who are the party’s base.
One newly-elected MP says she wants to scream every time she hears one of the four former Cabinet ministers declare the leadership became too remote, losing radicalism and cowed by vested, usually wealthy, interests. The problem, adds the MP, was clear to virtually everyone in the party – except those sitting in the back of chauffeur-driven ministerial cars. To collect the votes to be Labour leader, the wannabes must travel the country shaking hands and answering questions. Every Joe and Jane is granted a smile. Democracy puts the would-be leader and would-be voter on an equal footing. The member with the power to hire is worthy of a hearing. Never is a leader more accountable than when running for the office.
Retaining that accountability once they’re surrounded by rottweilers is another question. To borrow the words of a bawdy old song, too often it’s felt as if it’s a case of: “The working class can kiss my ass, I’ve got the leader’s job at last”. A party that continually speaks to itself is in danger of neglecting the importance of speaking to the general public. But this contest shouldn’t silence the need to reform how Labour works or, more accurately, doesn’t work.
This election should be about admitting mistakes and shining a light forward, discussing Labour’s values and what the party exists for, debating policies as well as examining policies. And it should be about restoring party democracy, including a lowering of the hurdle to entering a leadership race. Every promise given by a candidate should be written down and used against them if it turns out to be false.
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Labour needs a new name to expose the so-called “free” schools championed by Michael Gove as anything but free. True, these schools won’t charge fees. They will be outside Local Education Authority control. But we as taxpayers will fund them, kids in nearby schools will suffer when cash is siphoned off to finance them and they won’t be “free” of an Education Secretary who will ultimately be in charge.
What are widely called public schools are actually private, fee-charging establishments, which are no more public than a room in Claridges or a diamond-encrusted necklace from a Bond Street jeweller. In the same spirit, the “free” schools are centralised or Whitehall schools. Let’s call them what they are instead of swallowing Gove’s “free” propaganda.
