Apparently Labour are holding a leadership contest?

Scanning the headlines over the last week or so one may have come across more news of BP’s time in the hot seat; more cuts announced by the coalition government; or maybe you have heard that Sri Lanka’s King of Spin, Muttiah Muralitharan, reached 800 test wickets on the final day of his international career. The contest for Labour leadership, however, you may not have heard a thing about. Do not worry, you have not missed out.

Throughout this year’s general election, the main fighting ground was the economy and how each party would, if elected, address the deficit. The Conservatives called for cuts to be made immediately to address the largest deficit this country has ever had; the Liberal Democrats too saw the issue of the deficit and detailed their plan of dealing with it, although admittedly in a much less severe manner than the Tories. Labour, however, argued the need for more spending in order to secure the economic growth needed to move Britain out of the recession. In addition to this, Brown informed us that the deficit would be halved by 2014 – despite mentioning any credible way of achieving this. Needless to say, business leaders across the country ‘slammed’ their manifesto for its poor handling of the economic issues that faced this country, describing said manifesto as ‘meaningless’.

It is perhaps for this reason that the candidates for Labour leadership are less than inspiring. In order for the party to provide serious opposition to the coalition government, and make a firm challenge at the next general election, they must find a strong position on the issues that face the British people they represented for thirteen years and coin a convincing solution to what is, for the most part, their mess. Any candidate in this years Labour leadership contest must be honest about the debt, be honest about reigning in spending and be ruthless when tackling the question of what went wrong? There has, however, been no mention of the much needed ‘real change’ within the party as went on in the Conservative party following the 2005 general election. Iain Dale comments ‘none of the candidates have tried to think the unthinkable… most of them still act as if they are in government and as if the deficit hardly exists, and if it does, it is not their fault.’ When contrasted with the leadership contest held within the Tories, where new ideas were debated and a party showed its desire to ‘learn from the past and move on’, it shows Labour to have an arrogance which has no place in politics, particularly at this time.