Daily catch-up: Labour’s defeat was so heavy that everyone accepts the next leader must be a Blairite
Liz Kendall made a surprisingly accomplished entry to the Labour leadership race yesterday
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Your support makes all the difference.1. Ed Miliband seemed to suggest in his resignation speech that Labour lost because he wasn’t very good at selling what was essentially the right message. That analysis never stood a chance.
While there are some parts of the party suffering from cognitive dissonance – Neal Lawson of Compass was so baffled by the result that he called for an independent inquiry into what to do about it – the majority know what went wrong. They know that one reason Labour lost was that you have to be pretty special to be prime minister and Miliband wasn’t.
But they also know that the party has to win votes from what Lawson called “the wrong people”. It has to appeal across the centre ground to millions of people who voted Conservative last week. They know the next leader has to be a Blairite, even if no one wants to use that label.
Liz Kendall (above) made a sparkling start in her interview with Andrew Neil yesterday. I especially liked the bit (5 mins 45 secs in) where she paused in the middle of one of her answers to ask Neil why he would always do well despite a recession. Baffled and charmed, he said, “Because I’m pretty well paid and I live in London?” No, because you have a good education, skills and contacts, she said.
Chuka Umunna is perhaps the most exciting candidate, but suffers from having helped run Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign. If he was so wrong then why should he be right now?
Tristram Hunt seems most prime ministerial, but has been a big disappointment in his schools brief and is an erratic centrist. (Kendall, on the other hand, has been a consistent moderniser in her health brief, which required some skill as No 2 to Andy “Better 1945” Burnham.)
No wonder the odds on Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham have fallen. One of the big questions of the leadership campaign is whether Cooper can reinvent herself as a centrist.
2. Labour doesn’t stand a chance in 2020 unless it understands the scale of David Cameron’s stunning victory. My column for The Independent on Sunday.
3. Here is my guide to the finer points of the election result, including why the Speaker should be counted in the Conservative total and the shares of the Great Britain vote.
4. In other business, Guy Keleny’s Errors & Omissions column in The Independent on Saturday was outstandingly dry.
5. My Top 10 in The New Review, the Independent on Sunday magazine, is Unbuilt Buildings.
6. And finally, thanks to Moose Allain for this:
“People say you’re a lazy man, Moose.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”
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