Labour must unveil a future Prime Minister rather than merely another Opposition leader when the party reveals the winner of its Masked Singer competition.
The public as well as members need to see behind the contenders’ political masks a compelling politician they want to put into Downing Street.
Iraq and riches deprive Tony Blair of a fair hearing yet the hat-trick victor is on the money arguing Labour’s task is to win power, not make itself feel better.
Triumphing from the Left is doable when red policies such as the £10 minimum wage, higher NHS spending, rail renationalisation and imposing fairer taxes on the highest earners are popular.
So throwing out last month’s manifesto bathwater with the baby would be a mistake.
(Image: PA)
Jeremy Corbyn, tantalisingly close in 2017, was Labour’s biggest problem in 2019, a greater liability than confused Brexit cowardice.
Four straight defeats is a crisis for a political party.
Since Labour was born in 1900, only six leaders have become Prime Ministers: Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. During those 120 years it has been in Government for only 33, a little over a quarter of the period.
What was achieved in that time is little short of miraculous from a Labour and trade union movement which is the most progressive, sustained force for radical change our country has ever enjoyed.
The NHS, much of what survives of the welfare state, employment protection, legal abortions, gay and race rights stand as monuments to the superiority of democratic socialism over the bloodied fangs of Tory capitalism.
Yet until Labour persuades the general public it, not lying incompetent Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, should be in Government, the party’s leaders will be carrying placards outside Downing Street instead of watching from behind No10’s iron gates as their faces appear on posters carried by Tory protesters.
The only question Labour’s electorate should consider is who is most likely to win 2024 or 2025’s general election.
Any others are factional indulgence.
