New Labour leader must rebuild after General Election collapse
THE THREE MPS WHO COULD REPLACE CORBYN Sir Keir Starmer
The shadow Brexit secretary and former director of public prosecutions is the bookies’ favourite to win the leadership.
But his campaign has seen him play up his left-wing credentials, highlighting his work as a lawyer supporting trade unions and poll tax protesters.
He has been the MP for Holborn and St Pancras since 2015 and was instrumental in getting the party to back a second Brexit referendum.
However, he has refused to rule out campaigning for Britain to return to the European Union in the long term.
His policy pledges include raising income tax for the top 5% of earners, campaigning for EU freedom of movement to continue and to push for “common ownership” of public services such as mail, rail and energy.
Lisa Nandy
The only candidate in the final run-off not to be in the shadow cabinet, the Wigan MP comes from political stock; with her maternal grandfather having been a Liberal MP, while her father, Dipak Nandy, is a Marxist racial equalities campaigner.
Before her election in 2010, Ms Nandy worked for the youth homelessness charity Centrepoint and The Children’s
Society.
The former shadow climate change minister has been critical of the handling of the anti-Semitism crisis that has blighted the party in recent years.
Having founded the Centre For Towns think-tank, the 40-year-old has also been outspoken about the need to win back Labour’s former industrial heartlands.
She has pledged stronger powers and more money for town halls and argued for better bus services.
Rebecca Long-Bailey
The shadow business secretary is highly rated by the outgoing Labour leadership, leading to claims that she would be the “continuity candidate” keeping the Corbynite flame alive.
Out of the three remaining candidates, she has called most firmly for Labour to stick with the party’s left-wing direction, especially when it comes to nationalising public industries.
The Salford and Eccles MP pitched the concept of “aspirational socialism” to members, and said the party needed to better explain how Labour’s left-wing policies could help workers and families to get on in life.
WHEN Jeremy Corbyn signalled the start of the Labour leadership contest with his resignation in December, the challenges facing his successor seemed clear enough.
The party had gone down to its worst general election defeat since 1935 after years of faction fighting, accusations of institutional anti-Semitism and bitter divisions over Brexit.
Seats which had been Labour for generations turned blue as the party’s hitherto impregnable “red wall”, running through the North of England, the English Midlands and Wales, crumbled.
Then the task had been somehow to emerge from the wreckage and rebuild a credible position that would at least give them some sort of fighting chance of wresting power from Boris Johnson and the Conservatives at the next election.
Since then, of course, all that has changed with the emergence of the coronavirus, causing havoc around the planet, turning upside down all conventional expectations of what might lie ahead.
In this frightening new world the Labour leadership contest, which was already struggling to ignite interest in a weary public, worn down by endless wrangling over Brexit, has been in danger of looking like an irrelevant sideshow.
So the first challenge for the new leader may well be to establish a clear voice on the one overwhelming issue of the day.
At a time of national emergency, he or she will have to decide how far they need to stand with the government, while at the same time ensuring ministers are properly held to account.
Striking the right tone and balance will be crucial in establishing their credentials with voters.
But that does not mean the other issues facing the party will have gone away.
First and foremost will be the need to reconnect with voters in their traditional heartlands who turned to the Conservatives at the election.
While Labour activists were overwhelmingly pro-Remain, they found themselves out of step with many working-class voters who rallied to Boris Johnson’s call to “get Brexit done”.
At the same time there was profound suspicion of Mr Corbyn’s left-wing policy agenda and past links with Irish republicans and organisations like Hamas.