Corbyn not to blame for collapse, says Burgon
A CONTENDER to become Labour’s next deputy leader has been rebuked by senior party figures after praising Jeremy Corbyn for making “huge strides” in winning back five million votes lost during Tony Blair’s era.
Richard Burgon was last night branded “barking mad” after he tried to deflect blame from Mr Corbyn for the election defeat and insisted Labour should not scrap his radical policies.
The shadow justice secretary, a senior ally of the Labour leader, claimed “nobody had campaigned with greater energy, resilience and principle than Jeremy”, and that it would be “mistaken to focus blame there”.
Setting out his pitch to the party’s pro-corbyn membership, Mr Burgon appeared to rail against calls for a return to the centre-left agenda of New Labour, arguing that “nostalgia has no role to play” in making the party successful again.
However, his argument appeared to be undermined by a Yougov poll published yesterday that suggested Mr Corbyn’s leadership was the biggest factor behind 2017 Labour voters defecting to other parties.
According to a survey of 500 people, 35 per cent switched allegiance due to Labour’s leadership, followed by 19 per cent who did so due to Brexit.
Meanwhile Labour moderates dismissed as “laughable” the news that Ed Miliband and MP Lucy Powell, his former campaign manager, would help oversee a post-mortem investigation into Labour’s worst defeat since 1935.
The decision to involve Mr Miliband, who led the party to defeat four years ago, was challenged by MPS and peers who fear the review will amount to nothing but “displacement activity”.
One prominent backbencher also attacked Ms Powell for claiming that Labour’s defeat was “not just about the leadership”, pointing out that Mr Miliband’s decision to change the voting system for leadership contests had helped Mr Corbyn win power in 2015.
“Ed Miliband and Lucy Powell are two of the people who got us into this mess in the first place,” the MP said. “If they are already saying it is not Jeremy Corbyn’s fault then they are starting off on the wrong foot and will come to the wrong conclusion.”
Meanwhile, Ian Murray, Labour’s only Scottish MP, became the latest figure to indicate that he would stand for a leadership role, after he wrote to colleagues to stress that the party needed a “strong Scottish anchor” and he was “exploring” running for deputy leader.
Meanwhile, his potential leadership rival Mr Burgon attempted to play down the blame being directed at Mr Corbyn by asserting that Brexit was the ultimate cause of Labour’s downfall.
Writing in the Left-wing magazine Tribune, he said: “We can’t allow blame for this election to fall on Jeremy’s shoulders alone, just as we all accepted the praise when, in 2017, we secured the highest increase in our vote since the Second World War. In 2017 we won 3.5 million extra votes, making huge strides in winning back the 5 million votes lost between 1997 and 2010 … Change is going to be needed, but we need to ensure we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
“We also have to recognise that this year, with 10.3 million votes, we got 750,000 more votes than Blair’s winning total in 2005 (9.6million) and a higher share of the vote and greater number of votes than in both 2010 (8.6million) and 2015 (9.4million).”
His attempts to diminish Mr Blair’s achievements came a day after Laura Pidcock, a Corbyn loyalist who lost her seat to the Conservatives, claimed “Blair’s legacy still hangs around this party like a millstone”.
Hitting back last night, a senior Labour MP said: “Anyone who is half sane knows that is barking mad. The reason we got more votes [in 2019] is because of the collapse of the Lib Dems. Unfortunately that doesn’t transfer into seats. You’re not going to tell me that Ian Lavery [the Labour chairman] nearly lost Wansbeck because of Tony Blair who left the leadership in 2007.”