Slumbering Labour needs a wake-up call

The public is saying what no one in the Labour Party dares to admit.

Just take a look at the commentary that has come out of Lord Ashcroft’s detailed research. The Conservative pollster has a sample of 10,000 voters and no fewer than 18 focus groups in which people’s concerns are laid bare.

My God, it makes grim reading for Corbynistas and all the facilitators of their disastrous regime over the past few years.

Labour is seen as ‘mostly for students, the unemployed and middle-class radicals’. It seems to ‘disdain…mainstream views’ and ‘disapprove of success’. The manifesto published at the end of last year? Pie in the sky. The party can’t be trusted on finance. It’s too left-wing. No priorities. No understanding of aspiration or prosperity.

The report is particularly heartbreaking for those of us who warned consistently of the folly of pursuing a hard-left agenda with veteran losers like Corbyn and McDonnell.

You’d think that after the catastrophic defeat on 12^th December last year, the gloves would be off. That people campaigning for the leadership would be telling a few home truths to the radical membership.

Incredibly, the party is in absolute denial.

Keir Starmer publishes a list of policy pledges which are straight out of the Corbyn playbook. He champions greater trade union rights, nationalisation and some peculiar act of Parliament to restrict military intervention abroad.

Some people say he doesn’t believe any of it. That come April, he’ll pivot and turn on the hard left, playing them for suckers.

Maybe. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Far more likely that he’ll plod along trying to accommodate the leftists, misfits, cranks and trolls who flooded into the party to venerate the sage of the allotment.

Every time he wants to nudge the party in the right kind of direction, he’ll be reminded of the debt he owes to the members who lent him their votes. And the promises he made during the campaign to honour the legacy and 'radicalism' of the 2015-19 period.

Starmer – the supposedly razor-sharp lawyer – has created many hostages to fortune. He’s given far more to the left than he ever needed to, given that he was the front runner from the start.

To be honest, it’s hard to see much difference between the policies he’s advocating and those proposed by the continuity Corbyn candidates.

Richard Burgon – one of the worst advertisement for a Cambridge education since the university received its charter from Henry III – introduces a ‘peace pledge’. A few days later, Starmer is talking about ‘illegal wars’.

Becky Long-Bailey challenges the candidates to back more nationalisation of the type rejected by the electorate two months ago. Sir Keir is only too happy to oblige!

The options now are looking pretty limited for Labour.

Is Thornberry a comic or tragic figure? I’m not entirely sure, but I do know her campaign has crashed and burned.

I’ll head to my CLP nomination meeting tomorrow, having rejoined the Labour Party just in time to participate. If I get the chance to make a speech, it will be for Lisa Nandy.

God knows, she doesn’t always hit the right note. But she’s undoubtedly bright and has an inquisitive disposition. She strikes me as someone who would always question and agonise rather than go with the crowd. And I think she understands something of the enormity of the problems facing Labour.

My pick for deputy is Dr Rosena Allin-Khan. The MP for Tooting has impressed me with her online presence and shrewd use of video. She is a good communicator and someone who represents the best of modern London. An excellent partner for Lisa in the battle that lies ahead.

Of course, it seems highly unlikely that my personal choices for the leadership team are going to prevail in the contest. Far more likely that it's a straightforward battle between Starmer and Long-Bailey. At least the preferential voting system allows me the opportunity to express a preference without compromise.

It is time – to paraphrase The Internationale in a way that I’m sure Richard Burgon would appreciate – for the Labour Party to arise from its slumbers. At the moment, it is sleepwalking towards a lame-duck leader – the #keirtaker – who appears defeated before he even assumes office. And a high price will be paid.

After more than 30 years, I leave Labour at 11.46am tomorrow.

Barring some kind of minor miracle - on a par perhaps with CETI announcing first contact with the Vulcans or the Great British Bake Off returning to the BBC – Jeremy Corbyn will be re-elected on Saturday as Leader of the Labour Party. The announcement is due at around 11.45 am. So after three decades or so of membership, my association with the party will end at 11.46. Yes, that’s all folks. I’m afraid I really do mean it this time. Party card in the shredder. Standing order cancelled. It’s goodnight from me. And it’s goodnight Vienna from Labour. I threatened to quit when the Jezster was first elected, but people persuaded me to stay on in the hope that the situation could be rescued. I wanted to go when Angela Eagle was unceremoniously dumped in favour of Owen Smith, but was told I couldn’t desert at such a critical moment and should rally behind the PLP’s chosen challenger. Stay and fight, my friends say. But over what? The burnt-out shell o

Time for Red Ken to head into the sunset

Voice for 2012: Oona best represents modern Londoners Pin there, done that: Livingstone's campaign is a throwback to the 1980s Ken Livingstone may have lost his grip on power, but he hasn’t lost his chutzpah. The former London mayor was full of chirpy bluster a week ago in Southall, west London, when I popped over to listen to him debate with his rival for the current Labour nomination, Oona King. The contrast between two candidates couldn’t be more striking. Oona is chic, whereas Ken is pure cheek. She talks passionately about the threat posed by gang warfare which currently divides kids in her East London neighbourhood, while he waxes nostalgically about his working-class childhood in post-war council housing. It’s clear that Livingstone has been cryogenically preserved and then defrosted. The only question is when exactly the wily old geezer was put in the freezer. The mid-1980s would be a fair bet, which is when I remember him on a stage in Jubilee Gardens on the south bank

The friends, the facilitators and the failures. They now owe us all an apology.

I keep hearing Corbyn’s tenure referred to as an experiment. But how many experiments continue for four years, despite a toxic chemical haze billowing out of the mad inventor’s lab? The hard-left project should have been stopped in its tracks countless times. As far back as 2015, Joe Haines – Harold Wilson’s Press Secretary – suggested that the Parliamentary Labour Party should make a unilateral declaration of independence. They could have appointed their own leader in Parliament and bypassed the socialist relic the members had chosen to elect. Instead, they prevaricated. They agonised. They muttered to each other in corridor recesses at Westminster. The frightened bunnies were at first bemused and disoriented, allowing Corbyn and his cabal to consolidate their position. And subsequently, they were frightened. Mainly frightened of the swollen membership of three-quid flotsam and jetsam who had invaded their constituencies pledging allegiance to the sage of the allotments

Sea Change

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