by David Ward

So here we are again choosing a new leader. And once again all the different factions of the party are getting ready to fight like cats in a sack about it. I have no doubt it will fall on deaf ears, but my appeal to the party is to put the burning anger with each other to one side for a moment and think about the next election and choose someone right for that task.

Back in 2015 I wished on these pages we would stop re-fighting the 2010 election and recognise that the EU referendum would finish Cameron’s career, change the conversation, and put in place someone such as Johnson.

In 2015 and to a lesser extent in 2017 Corbyn captured the moment with an anti austerity message. It turned out that wasn’t what was needed in 2019. But in 2024 it will be nearly a decade since Corbyn won the leadership, with a government who have been investing in public services and infrastructure outside London.

We need to take Johnson at his word about trying to improve lives in former Labour heartlands. He means it, even if he might not achieve it.

We have already tried in 2019 to out-spend Johnson and it didn’t work. The astronomic figures weren’t seen as credible. The policies were too scattergun with no sense of priority. Too many of them seemed have come straight out of a think tank seminar. Such things are all well and good, but  Local Transformation Funds or a National Energy Agency don’t correlate to people’s everyday lives. The job of the skilled politician is to make ideas sound less Wonk and more Wakefield.

By 2024 with some Conservative investment no doubt making at least some kind of difference, the out-spending approach will be even harder.

It’s good that the Government are proposing to invest in public services, and Corbyn deserves some credit for changing the conversation on that. The task will be to call out the Government when they don’t deliver on their promises. Trust is key. Exposing when you can’t trust the Tories to deliver, and convincing people they can trust us to focus to deliver on improving their daily lives.

The focus has to be on what matters to people’s lives at a granular level. From the size of school classes to the jobs in industries like fishing (and towns that rely on them) which Johnson will need to sell out to get a quick deal with the EU.

Because it will be hard to simply out spend the Conservatives I expect there will be a temptation to open up a new front against Johnson’s culturally conservative agenda. That is a topic for another day. But what we do know is that Labour isn’t going to win a majority unless it can speak persuasively to young metropolitan ‘liberal’ voters in cities, more socially conservative traditional voters in heartland seats, and to Labour/Conservative swing voters in former marginal seats in Corby or Northampton.

It’s not an impossible task – we’ve done it before. But anyone who seems to be all about any one of these groups and not the others, is probably the wrong choice.

That’s why it’s not about whether someone is ‘Corbynite’, ‘Soft left’, ‘Blue Labour’ or ‘Centrist’. Just as Jesse Jackson said at the Wattstax Music Festival in 1972 “Today on the programme you will hear gospel, and rhythm and blues. All these are just labels. We know that music is music.” We must know that Labour is Labour and what matters is appealing to a majority of the electorate.

Lastly, is a bit of charisma too much to ask from the next leader? If we’re honest, a lot of our big names come across as either pious or perpetually sad about everything. The kind of people you might avoid at the work Christmas party. There’s a reason Boris is able to glide past problems and scandals, or just hide from them in a fridge, and it’s the same reason someone was once called Teflon Tony. I’ll be looking for someone who’s able to tell a joke properly. Someone with a bit of the magic touch. Or at least isn’t completely devoid of it.

David Ward is a Labour member in South London

Tags: Boris Johnson, david ward, general election 2019, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leadership election 2020

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