Lisa Nandy is Labour’s only hope. It’s a shame they’re not going to pick her
Lisa Nandy was the first Labour leadership candidate brave enough to face a grilling by Andrew Neil this week, proving herself more courageous than the Prime Minister. She came across as strong, sensible and calm. Unfortunately for her, Labour is in a shrill, righteous, teenage mood. Her chances are not good.
On Thursday, the hard-left campaign group Momentum released a video of its favourite candidate, Rebecca Long-bailey, speaking to supporters in Salford. The video is strangely difficult to watch, and not just because of the wobbly camera work.
Ms Long-bailey stands limply, as if in desperate need of a soapbox, sunglasses obscuring half her face. She speaks as if she has been ranting for hours to an empty park bench, like an evangelical preacher haranguing commuters on their way to work. Her topic is the evils of Margaret Thatcher and privatisation. The Tories, she says, want to create “even more division”, by selling things to disgusting types of people like “private landlords”. The irony of condemning “division” while analysing every problem through the lens of “us and them” does not, of course, occur to her.
In any functional organisation, Ms Longbailey wouldn’t even make it through the first round. But the Corbynista gang is short of options. She is the only candidate who is verifiably a member of their clique and hasn’t rocked the boat by saying anything awkward about anti-semitism or their abysmal electoral record. She is essentially the Theresa May of the
‘Ms Long-bailey is essentially the Theresa May of the hard-left’
hard-left. They know, in their hearts, that she isn’t really up to it, but she’s an acceptable default choice. Keir Starmer, meanwhile, is the safe option for urban professionals whose priority is to have a clever lawyer tell them that their world view is the right one.
If the Labour leadership contest were a matter of talent, Ms Nandy would be hot favourite, pursued by the belligerent, Tory-hater Jess Philips. But it’s not.