My colleague Paul Routledge offers some wise advice for Labour members and trade unionists when it comes to voting for the leadership.
“Think which of the candidates the Tories would most like to see in the job – and then vote for someone else.”
It will be interesting to see if the Unite union takes this on board when its executive meets today to decide who to endorse for the leadership.
The smart money is on them backing Rebecca Long-Bailey, giving her lacklustre campaign a much needed boost, but there is talk they may also recommend that second preference votes go to Lisa Nandy.
If you talk to Conservative MPs almost all of them will tell you that Nandy is the candidate they most fear and Long-Bailey and Emily Thornberry top their list of preferred winners.
(Image: Ian Vogler/Daily Mirror)
The unions have a vested interested in backing the candidate best placed to beat the Tories.
It is thought that a third of trade union members voted Conservative in December’s general election.
There is an almost endless list of reasons why Labour lost last month from its poor messaging, the contortions over Brexit, and the unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn.
But at the heart of the party’s malaise are two fundamental factors: Labour has a male problem and a generational problem.
Polling shows the party received the support of just one in four older voters in working class communities.
Among older men, fewer than one in five voted for Jeremy Corbyn.
Labour went into the election with a decent package of policies for older voters, including retaining the triple lock, maintaining free TV licences for the over 75s and a promise to help the millions of Waspi women.
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
The party found out the hard way that voters are canny enough to realise when something is too good to be true.
There is no value in offering the world if you are not trusted to deliver on those promises.
And the more you offer the more likely that you undermine your credibility for economic competence.
Labour may want to learn from the Conservatives.
The policy with the most cut through at the election was Boris Johnson’s promise to build 40 new hospitals.
This was a misleading pledge, probably deliberately so, but it hit the Goldilocks spot by being modest enough to be plausible and ambitious enough to impress voters.
Today’s agenda:
6pm – Unite announces who it is backing for the Labour leadership.
The House of Commons is not sitting.
Saturday – Labour leadership hustings in Leeds from 11.30.
What I am reading:
