Are the leadership candidates being asked the right questions?

Yesterday’s Times leader (I would provide the link, but it’s inconveniently placed behind the Times’ paywall) sets out an interesting problem for the five Labour leadership candidates.  Despite months spent answering questions, the paper’s view is that it counts for nothing as they aren’t being asked the right questions. After over fifty hustings across the country that is quite a disappointing prognosis.

Is the plethora of husting events producing better questioning of the candidates? If the Party had to do it over again then I think there would be a serious rethink of the hustings calendar. Regional and local Labour parties, socialist societies, unions and other groups forming part of the all important ‘Labour family’ eagerly grabbed their own personal opportunity to quiz the candidates. (Sympathies go out to the campaigns’ diary secretaries!) But the result has been near identical Q&A sessions being asked up and down the country.

My colleague David Chaplin had a point in suggesting that hustings could have been better orgainsed around distinct policy lines. The likely bun fight between areas wanting to hust the candidates on particular policy areas would have been an issue, but it would have helpfully broadened out the questioning and focused on policy.

A good idea has been to encourage like minded groups to come together to do joint hustings (like the joint Young Fabians/LCID/SERA/Co-Op Youth hustings on Labour in the World). Similarly we’ve been organising webchats with individual leadership candidates, to give Young Fabians across the country a chance to put their all-important question direct to each candidate, no matter what the topic (you can join with the the first is tomorrow with Ed Miliband at 12.30pm here).

Still, we need to focus on the right questions being asked. Everyone will have their view; my three all important questions which the next leader of the Labour Party needs perfect answers for are:

1)    What will be your immediate priorities be post this long leadership contest: The Coalition have managed to grab a 100 days of government free from any meaningful opposition. What will you spend your first 100 days focusing on?

2)    How will you unify the party and more importantly the Shadow Cabinet: Alistair Campbell’s diaries continually point to disunity at the top of the Party threatening to hamper a return to power – how will you stop this happening again?

3)    How are you going to attract the broadest support amongst the voting public: Both the left and the right of the Party argue that Labour lost the support of respective left/right sections of the public. How are you going to deal with that situation?

You can join our lunchtime webchat with Ed Miliband tomorrow , 12.30pm, here. You can also submit a question in advance by emailing me at vrampulla@youngfabians.org.uk.