New Labour crisis as Hartlepool falls
LABOUR’S warring factions last night blamed each other for the party’s humiliating Hartlepool defeat as its civil war intensified.
Hard-left MPs accused Sir Keir Starmer of not being radical enough and called for an urgent change of direction.
But furious centrists insisted the party was suffering from “long Corbyn” and said the leadership must listen to the public.
Sir Keir said: “This is not a question of left or right. It is a question of whether we are facing the country.
“We have changed as a party but we’ve not made a strong enough case to the country, we’ve lost that connection, that trust, and I intend to rebuild that and do whatever is necessary to rebuild that trust.
“It means stopping as a party quarrelling among ourselves, looking internally and facing the country and setting out that bold vision for a better Britain and changing the things that need changing.
“That is the change I will bring about.”
Sir Keir did not rule out a reshuffle of his top team amid claims he will purge the hardleft from the shadow cabinet.
Bookmakers slashed the odds on the Labour leader being out by the end of the year to 3/1.
Lord Mandelson, architect of New Labour’s winning electoral strategy and a former Hartlepool MP, said ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn has cast a “long dark shadow” over Labour.
He said: “If I really had to boil [the defeat] down to two things I would say they were two Cs – Covid and Corbyn – with a bit of Brexit, previous Brexit Party voters backing the man, Boris Johnson, who delivered them Brexit, and also promises of a large dollop of Tory Government money thrown in for good measure.
“All this as a whole turned out to be too heady a cocktail for Labour’s campaign to take on.”
Blairite former cabinet minister Lord Adonis said: “Clearly the public isn’t persuaded that Labour has either the leadership or the policies or the critique or the energy and the dynamism in terms of its view and we all need to consider that.” Unite general secretary Len McCluskey called the loss of Hartlepool “staggering and worrying”, adding that Labour needs to work on delivering “clear, bold policies”.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said Labour had gone into the by-election “almost policyless”.
Calling for a return to a “real grassroots campaign”, he said: “We must never again send our candidates into an election almost naked.”