Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
We didn’t go to the Moon because it was easy.. we went because it was hard. And it will be hard to rebuild trust in Labour
LISA Nandy draws her inspiration from John F Kennedy’s ambition to land the first man on the Moon.
The Labour leadership contender quotes the assassinated US president word for word: “We choose to go to the Moon and do other things not because they are easy but because they are hard.”
And that is how the Wigan MP sees the challenge of leading the Labour Party – a hard job, not an easy one.
The very existence of Labour is now under threat and in her words it must “change or die”.
She adds: “We have to win the argument and we haven’t been making the argument. By the time of last year’s General Election no one was listening.
“We’d had four years of factional infighting and cared more about talking to ourselves. So when Labour made promises people just stopped listening. We have to rebuild trust in the Party. We can do that but it will be hard.”
Lisa backs taking railways back into public ownership, and decentralising – as opposed to nationalising – energy firms so communities are in control.
She is also keen to take decision-making out of Londoners’ hands and spread it wider. Her plan for the future of the BBC is to give licence fee payers a direct say on who runs the Corporation by electing directors to the board.
She adds: “The people who determine what is made and when it’s aired sit behind a desk in London. It’s not a national conversation.” On social
to give viewers more say and move control out of London
for railways and changing energy firms’ set-up
More regulation to stop online abuse
Call for more openness on scale of the problem media she says: “There’s a particular problem for women MPs in constituencies where there’s been huge economic decline. We need proper regulation as for mainstream broadcasters.”
On dealing with anti-Semitism she wants a lower threshold for suspending Labour members, an independent process to sift allegations and more transparency. She
US lunar trips were JFK goal says: “We need to be open about the scale of the problem.”
The bookies put Lisa, 40, in third place behind rivals Sir
Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey in the contest to be decided on April 4.
Lisa trails with only 72 local party nominations INTERVIEW
With our Nigel compared to 369 for Sir Keir and 161 for Rebecca. But she is still bullish, saying she is “most likely” to benefit if the race goes to second preferences.
And along with JKF she draws inspiration from her dad Dipak, an Indian academic Marxist who came to Britain in the 1950s and devoted his life to fighting racial inequality.
Lisa was born in Manchester to Dipak and mum Louise and grew up alongside big sister Francesca.
The former Labour councillor says: “I learned from my dad not to shy away from difficult battles. He gave me a sense of what it means to be an outsider and taking on the system.”