Posts Tagged ‘deputy leadership election’

If Labour wants to win in the south, it needs Ben Bradshaw on the ticket

15/06/2015, 10:18:29 PM

by Frazer Loveman

If you take the electoral map of Britain and draw a line south of Birmingham, the picture for Labour is very bleak in the south of England. Outside of a neat pocket of red in London, there is an overwhelming sea of blue with only the occasional red spot in the other southern cities.

Obviously, the rural south has never been a Labour stronghold- even in the boom years of Blair the map is overwhelmingly blue once you get south of the midlands- but should Labour ever want to get back into power they will have to make headway in places such as Basingstoke and Plymouth which have now been overrun in the tide of Tory blue.

At PMQs last Wednesday, David Cameron was asked a question by Dr. Alan Whitehead, MP for Southampton Test. The question itself was regarding care for the elderly and Cameron largely ignored it to make the jibe that Dr. Whitehead was a rare thing “a Labour MP in the south of England”.

It met with much delight on the government benches, and to be honest I’d normally dismiss that sort of thing out of hand when watching PMQs, but this time it particularly struck me as I actually voted for Dr. Whitehead. It is becoming apparent that for the Labour Party to ever see electoral success again it will need to shift out of what Tony Blair called its electoral “comfort zone.”

Now, it seems to be taboo to even mention Blair in the Labour party any more, despite the fact that he was the most successful leader in the party’s history. Ed Miliband seemed to go to great lengths in order to distance himself from the New Labour years as if Blair was some sort of electoral Banquo’s ghost who would haunt him and the Labour party at every turn.

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Picking the right shadow chancellor is more important than the deputy leadership race

12/06/2015, 11:03:31 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Being deputy leader of the Labour party is a bit like being president of a golf club. The role is largely honorary, conferring on its incumbent a level of artificial seniority, safely removed from the actual running of things. At least with the golf club, you might get a few free rounds. The reward for being deputy leader of the Labour party is the graveyard slot on Thursday morning at the party conference.

Historically, it’s been used to bring balance to the leadership, so, in essence, the post-holder represents the losing wing of the party. So it was with Denis Healey and, later, with John Prescott. Occasionally, a bone is thrown to show the party’s progressive tendencies. So working-class Ted Short replaced snooty Roy Jenkins and Margaret Beckett became the first woman deputy leader (and interim leader following John Smith’s death).

The only interesting pitch in recent years, from someone hoping to become the rear portion of this particular pantomime horse, came from Jon Cruddas when he went for the job back in 2007. He promised to forego a frontbench role and instead concentrate on the unglamorous task of developing the party’s organisation. Most other contenders are happy to inherit this pitcher of warm spit on the basis that an upturned bucket offers the chance to step-up.

But it doesn’t. Labour’s next shadow chancellor is an altogether more important appointment for the future of the party. Whatever analysis is eventually settled on to explain the party’s dire election defeat, routinely finding itself 20 points behind David Cameron and George Osborne on questions of economic credibility and who voters trust to manage their money was surely a huge part of it.

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