The move was played down by the party leader’s office. A spokesman said that the plain Labour had been in use since the leadership election. But the word “new” which its inventor Peter Mandelson and former Labour “modernisers” credited as a factor in winning three general elections but which many party members and traditional labour voters saw as emblematically toxic, has now been officially erased.
Its disappearance will be noticeable at the forthcoming Barnsley Central by-election where Labour is fighting to win the seat held by former MP Eric Illsley with a majority of 11,093. Mr Illsley was suspended from the Labour Party over allegations related to the MPs’ expenses scandal. He is now serving a 12-month prison sentence.
Labour’s by-election campaign will be the first to feature the leader of the Conservative Party in its literature and publicity. Campaign managers believe David Cameron has become a negative factor with supporters of all three main parties, not least working-class Tories who feel the coalition’s policies have betrayed their aspirations.
Mr Cameron’s photograph is to appear above the caption: “Big Society – who do you think you are kidding Mr Cameron? You said the Tories would change. They haven’t.”
Labour has chosen former soldier Major Dan Jarvis as its candidate in a contest in which turnout will be critical. The British National Party is seen as a threat and widely expected to push the Liberal Democrats into fourth place.
The decision to scrap “New” Labour has heartened Labour members who associated the branding with the leadership’s obeisance to the free market and light regulation of the City and banks. It has provoked dire warnings in the right-wing media that Mr Miliband – who campaigned on a leadership platform of “Beyond New Labour” – is “taking the party back to the dark days of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, who lost three elections between them”, a rallying cry for Mr Miliband’s internal party critics.
But the move will help placate worries among some MPs that Mr Miliband is “going soft” on his party’s right-wing. With former minister Liam Byrne in charge of policy development, there are rumours of new roles for former MP James Purnell and the historian Tristram Hunt.
