Choices, choices . .

Decision time approaches. Who to vote for to be the next Labour Leader? It remains the probability that I will vote for Rebecca Long-Bailey, despite some serious reservations. For example, of the three candidates for leadership, hers is the campaign I have not heard from. Emails came from the other two, and a leaflet from Keir Starmer. But despite receiving perhaps upwards of £400,000 worth of donations of money and in kind, I have received nothing directly from Long-Bailey. As a former party organiser, this suggests to me a not very well organised campaign. Perhaps with Jon Lansman of Momentum organising it and me not being in ‘Momentum’ perhaps I am not deserving of a communication?
 
Of course the big question hanging over this contest is who members might think is the most electable? In which case, they would choose Starmer, a) because ‘he’s a man and looks the part’ and b) because he is a centrist establishment type (with membership of the Trilateral Commission to boot).  I reject this proposition. Who exactly today knows what will be the winning characteristics in five years’ time? Who knows what the issues will be? Who will be best placed to address those issues—one of which is climate change, steadily creeping up the agenda? I guess some members are worried that Long-Bailey is the Corbyn continuity candidate, and his is a project closely associated with failure. But I don’t think that argument holds. To my knowledge the intense level of smears thrown at Corbyn will not stick on Long-Bailey. Nor will the next election be a surrogate referendum on Brexit. And Long-Bailey will have plenty of time to carve out her own agenda. There is also the strong possibility Johnson will fail on several fronts, one of the most testing of which will be meeting the expectations of voters in the so-called ‘red wall’ seats. How many times have many of these former mining and industrial areas been promised the earth, only to find that politicians do not work miracles (at least in the lifetime of a single parliament)? It’s not inevitable that these voters will flock back to Labour. I think it’s even less inevitable that they would flock back to a centrist, post-Blairite Labour. I suspect many of them voted for Johnson because they thought he was sufficiently radical to ‘make Britain great again’ with presumed knock-on effects for their run-down estates.
 
Notably, Tony Blair hasn’t publicly backed either of the centrist leadership candidates, but he has backed Ian Murray, Scotland’s only Labour MP for deputy leader. As for my vote for the Deputy, that will go to the person who is most likely to give unstinting support to the leader—we don’t need another Tom Watson type.