Daily View: What Labour must do next
听
Anticipating the results of the Labour leadership contest, commentators describe what they think the next Labour leader needs to do first.
[subscription required] that the important moment isn鈥檛 the result of the leadership battle on Saturday afternoon but the new leader鈥檚 conference speech on Tuesday, which he thinks should include an apology to the nation:
鈥淸T]he new leader needs to be artful in conceding just enough. He needs to show that he understands why Labour lost and make his declarations about change specific and not vapid. He needs to begin the long process of defining what the Labour Party is for.
听
鈥淭he indispensable condition of that is candour over the responsibility the previous Government bears for the mess that the public finances are in. Without a coded admission of this kind, it is hard to care what comes next.鈥
of what he thinks should be said in Tuesday鈥檚 speech including an openness to future coalitions:
鈥淎nd so, while we must strive to win every vote, we also need to recognise that there are signs this hung parliament may be the shape of things to come. I want the Cameron-Clegg coalition out. Yet when that moment comes we must be better prepared to be a party of coalition than we were this time. I want us to be a party that others can do business with. I want us to win next year's Scotland and Wales elections outright, but I hope my colleagues there will be open to coalition talks, ruling nothing out, if we fall short. The same applies even more to the next general election.鈥
that although Ed Balls is looking likely to come fifth in the race for leader, he will emerge as the most important element of the Labour party in the next five years as the shadow chancellor and real opposition to the coalition:
鈥淭he essential point is that Balls has piled into George Osborne and Danny Alexander's economic strategy. Balls insists that the Coalition has got the timing and nature of its cuts hopelessly wrong. He supports this thesis with an impressive array of economic reasoning and historical examples.
听
鈥淚rrespective of the strengths and weaknesses of his argument, he has handed Labour a lethal political weapon, one that could potentially destroy the Coalition. Remember that only one story really matters over the next four and a half years: the economy.鈥
The that that leadership battle has diminished rather than enhanced the reputations of all five candidates:
鈥淣one of them - and especially the two Miliband Brothers considered to be front runners - have looked remotely in touch with the concerns of ordinary people. None of them have come close to accepting any responsibility for the toxic fiscal legacy of the Labour administration of which they were all a part. All of them with stupefying dishonesty continue to insist that a Labour government wouldn鈥檛 have needed to implement drastic spending cuts.鈥
[registration required] that, with the exception of Andy Burnham, none of the candidates have attempted to reconnect with southern voters and lay out what the winner would need to do for this to happen:
鈥淚f Labour wants to be trusted to govern for the whole country, it also needs to wrestle back the initiative on tax. The party must understand that 鈥榮queezed鈥 middle England cannot afford an enlarged post-recession public sector. It must look seriously at replacing two regressive taxes that hit younger families - council tax and stamp duty - with a progressive approach to taxing land and property. The link between what you pay in tax and what you get in public services must be made more explicit too: we should consider, for example, hypothecating health expenditure through an NHS insurance fund.鈥
Links in full
鈥
鈥
鈥
鈥
鈥
