Labour hopefuls: still in Corbyn’s shadow
To win the next election, Labour must secure 60% more MPs, or another 124 seats, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. No party has ever achieved such a swing, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. To stand any chance, though, Labour will need to pick the right leader. The contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn has come down to a three-horse race, said John Rentoul in The Independent. Jess Phillips dropped out last week, and Emily Thornberry is unlikely to secure a place on the ballot paper when nominations close on Valentine’s Day. That leaves the two front-runners, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Keir Starmer, and Lisa Nandy, who faces the tricky task of persuading the former’s backers that she’s a “better salesperson for the Corbynite dream of socialism”, and the latter’s backers that she is “not too Corbynite”. Polls suggest Starmer will be declared the victor on 4 April.
Whoever wins will inherit a party in deep crisis, said John Harris in The Guardian. Labour is “all but extinct” in Scotland, and has become estranged from its former heartlands elsewhere. The party’s “old-fashioned statism” looks increasingly out of step with the times, while the Left’s focus on identity politics too often comes across as pious and hectoring. A fundamental rethink is required. The party must suppress its “top-down”, centralising instincts, and find “cleverer means of fighting the supposed culture war than repeatedly telling half the population they are bigots”.
There’s little evidence so far of any rethinking, said The Daily Telegraph. Corbyn’s continued appearances at the despatch box are “object lessons in denial: it’s as though the election never happened”. As for the leadership candidates, they keep talking about the need for complete honesty about the defeat while at the same time furiously dissembling about the reasons for it. Because Corbyn retains “an almost messiah-like status” among the Labour members who will decide the final vote (in a recent YouGov poll, they rated him above any previous Labour leader), the candidates daren’t criticise him. When asked to mark his leadership, Long-Bailey gave him ten out of ten. “The unwillingness to see what everyone else can see has paralysed the leadership contest.”