UK Labour’s Long-Bailley urges change
>>LONDON: Britain’s Labour Party needs to do more to promote aspiration and look more like a government-in-waiting, the party’s business spokeswoman, Rebecca Long-Bailey, said when she formally launched her leadership campaign on Friday.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is stepping down, after the party’s worst election performance since 1935 gave Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives a large majority in parliament. Ms Long-Bailey is currently second in the race to succeed Mr Corbyn, behind the party’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer, according to a YouGov poll of party members. Speaking to party members in Manchester, northern England, not far from where she grew up as the daughter of a trade union official, the 40-year-old lawyer said Labour had failed to convince the public they were competent to run the country. “The truth is many didn’t trust us, whether it was Brexit, or tackling anti-Semitism — they didn’t believe in us enough,” she said. “There is no point promising the world, if people don’t trust you with the basics,” she said.
Labour’s policy of renegotiating Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal then holding a second referendum upset both Brexit supporters and opponents, and under Mr Corbyn there was a surge of complaints about anti-Semitism in the party. “To win, the Labour Party does need a new professionalism. We need to look like a government in waiting,” Ms Long-Bailey said.
Ms Long-Bailey is close to trade unions and is seen as wanting to keep more of Mr Corbyn’s policies than Mr Starmer, a 57-year-old former head of England’s prosecution service who wanted Mr Corbyn to take a tougher line against Brexit. In a nod to the party’s right, she said Labour policies needed a greater focus on aspiration. “We talked about individual polices in relation to helping the most vulnerable — which we should do, because we’re the Labour Party, we’re the party that does that. But we didn’t match that with a message of aspiration.”