Tribune has consistently advocated its preference for a Labour leader who fits the party’s policies rather than a leader whose policies the party has to squeeze into. This seldom occurs and the result of the latest contest is no exception. Now that we have the latter we must await whatever commandments are to be brought down from on high on tablets of stone to see clearly where the party may be travelling in terms of concrete policies. It was always going to be a different path between David and Ed Miliband. Now we are about to see how different.
It is early days, but not too early to identify key and urgent policy areas on which the new leader needs to be clear, bold and determined. There are elephant trap mistakes which should be avoided too. It is not a betrayal of the Labour Government’s considerable achievements to draw a line under New Labour, but it would be a betrayal of Labour’s future to pretend that what the country wants is more of the same.
The economy will be the political and social battleground which determines whether Labour deserves a new beginning in government. In recognising that the new leader must take account of the case forwarded by Ed Balls who argues that the swiftest, deepest cuts are unnecessary and counter-productive. As Michael Burke argues on pages 12-13, this is not the most efficient way to cut the deficit. Keeping people in jobs, paying taxes and moving towards financial stability is. The Shadow Cabinet post to which Mr Balls is assigned will be a key pointer to which way the leadership is taking the party in terms of its position on the political landscape and its chances of a genuinely new beginning.
The leader must act fast, as Alistair Darling outlines on page 11, to rebut a view that is becoming set in the concrete of public opinion, that it was Labour’s economic incompetence which left behind an economic mess for the coalition to clear up. The financial crisis was rooted on Wall Street not Downing Street. The leadership also has to debunk the myth – propounded repeatedly at the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool and to be repeated with even more conviction when the Tories gather in Birmingham – that there is no economic alternative. Both Alistair Darling and Michael Burke are right on this but in terms of a detailed prescription stand on different sides of a gulf which the new leadership must bridge. In attacking the coalition Government, it will be imperative to keep the biggest guns trained on the bigger enemy, the Tories. The testosterone firewall around Trident has to be broken down.
A new relationship, based on mutually desired results, has to be built with the unions, as Joy Johnson argues on page 19. It is time for Labour to shrug off the Daily Mail’s fear of organised labour and champion its achievements for millions of working people. It is time to take a tougher approach to banks and bonuses, a more liberal approach to civil rights and internal party democracy and to reach out to the common sense of fairness and justice denied voters by the result of the last election. They, and Labour, need a new beginning.
