#kenwasthen … Labour or London?

It’s interesting that the contest between Oona King and Ken Livingstone has failed to attract significant national media attention, or a huge amount of engagement from Labour Party members. Labour is often accused of being too London-centric, and some of the leadership candidates have certainly gone out of their way to promote their regional roots and focus.

But while we have surely all made up our minds by now about who we are going to vote for as our new leader?! I don’t witness the same level of debate about which Labour candidate we want to challenge Boris Johnson to be the most powerful directly elected politician in the country.

Perhaps this is because Labour supporters don’t think we can beat Boris? Or perhaps its because we are a bit tired of these nomination processes now and if we are going to go to the effort to go to a hustings, its going to be for the Party Leadership and that’s about it?

But while the Leadership contest is about the future of Labour and how we will challenge and hold the new coalition Government to account, the Mayoral nomination race is surely about the future of London, and nothing is more exciting to me at this time than that.

I’ve lived in London all my life, and I think Labour in London has always been weaker than it should be. We have had and still do have, a huge wealth of hard-working London Labour MPs, activists with huge amounts of experience and knowledge, and a structure of local and devolved government which allows for our councils, and our Mayor to have a real impact on the lives of Londoners and make our city a better place to live.

For me, its a shame that Ken has thrown himself back into the race this time. I think if he had said that he wasn’t standing then we would have seen some of his supporters throwing themselves forward, such as David Lammy.

Ken should have recognised that it was time for the next generation to take on the challenge on re-engaging with Londoners, and what a great nomination race it would have been if Lammy and Oona has both been vying for our votes. Labour could have showcased its diversity and talent in London at a time when the Party is desperately looking for experienced and engaging personalities to re-connect with voters.

As we get closer to the nomination of our candidate for Mayor (it will be announced in London on the day before Party Conference) I hope that London members will get more engaged in the debate, and will see that Labour has to re-energise itself in London with a new and vibrant candidate before we have any chance of taking on Boris Johnson in 2012. In my opinion, there is only one candidate who can do that.

What are your views? Email me.

David.

David Chaplin
Chair, Young Fabians
dchaplin@youngfabians.org.uk

Can we stop fighting the Tory Party of the 1980’s?

Every time I hear that clip of John McDonnell saying he would go back in time and assassinate Margaret Thatcher I shudder.

I know many people will say that I’m too young to remember Thatcher and so I wouldn’t understand the way some people in the Labour Party like the ill-judged McDonnell or other long-standing Thatcher opponents such as Ken Livingstone still feel about her and the politics she represented. Perhaps it’s ok if they are allowed to continue to hate her, fight her, and moan about her. Its conversely similar to the way some web-savvy Tories still talk about her.

But the rest of the Party – those who actually want to return to government and win the confidence of voters again – must now stop fighting the Tory party of the 1980’s.

It’s not just the mobile phones which have changed since 1980’s, it’s the politics and also our society which has moved on, and so Labour should too. We’ve got to accept that this new coalition has shaken up our politics and it’s made people think that there is a new centre-ground in British politics which is a natural space for the Conservative Party and their Liberal Democrat colleagues.

But to show where this coalition is failing – and it already is – we need to do more than simply point out the mad right-wingers who still dominate the Tory backbenches. We need to stop arguing that Tories are all toffs with baronets who want to destroy the state and privatise everything in sight. Otherwise people won’t want to listen, we know that because we’ve tried it before and it doesn’t work.

Crewe and Nantwich showed us that, remember the Labour activist dressed-up in a DJ and top-hat? I think that’s a campaign to forget.

What I’d like to see now from all the Leadership candidates is a new and confident message about the modern conservative party under David Cameron which shows how their ideology is driving the desire to cut spending. The contest to be the next Leader of the Labour Party should help us reframe our view of the conservative party and find a way to really hold them to account and challenge them, not fall back to our old arguments about class and Thatcher.

David Chaplin
Chair, Young Fabians

What London Needs, What Labour Needs

You cant be Mayor and say you only care about a certain few in our city like Boris does. You cant be Mayor and ignore the difficulties that young people face in our city. You cant be Mayor unless you are willing to be an ambassador for London. And you cant be Mayor if London doesn’t believe in you.

Who will beat Boris?

Many of us are just getting over the General Election and are only starting to get to grips with long Labour Party Leadership Campaign. So it just typical that another political contest has quickly emerged, one just as interesting as the Leaders’.

Yesterday the Guardian broke the story that Oona King is going to announce her desire to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor today.

Admittedly talk of mayoral candidates and campaigns might seem a little premature since Boris’ term runs till 2012. Back in March the NEC decided that the Mayoral candidate contest would start straight after the General Election. Despite wanting my fair share of the summer sun, I think that the real lesson from the General Election should be that the campaign do better the earlier they start. For me, the battle to win back the Capital cannot start early enough.

So far it has been taken for granted that the last Mayor, Ken Livingstone, will run. In fact some have argued that he’s been running a re-elect Ken campaign ever since he left office. Even so, Ken will have to face up to the many obstacles he currently faces. Like the General Election, this Mayoral candidate contest seems, on two levels, to fit the ‘change vs. experience’ model. The winning candidate will need to convince a Labour Party eager to regain political leadership role in the Capital and then convince Londoners; who seem worryingly ambivalent about the progress (or lack of it) that Boris has actually made since 2008.

In general “change is always a more powerful campaign theme than experience” and if one thing Oona immediately brings to the contest it is that offer of  big change for Labour. The Guardian’s Martin Kettle recently commented in public that what Labour needs now is a woman leader and whilst Diane Abbott many not fit everyone’s first choice for a Labour leader, Oona ticks a lot of boxes.

She has remained intensely popular in the Labour Party (as well as outside it) since she lost out to George Galloway in 2005. She is a personable, likeable and importantly human politician. Many in her shoes would have struggled to stay politically relevant. However anyone who was at Progress’ annual conference this weekend (and if you were did you visit our Young Fabian stand to say hello?) will have caught a sense of the buzz surround Oona as she took part in the conference  sessions on campaigning.

Those campaigning skills will be critical and will be helped, if she does become Labour’s candidate, by the already active supporter base that seems to have emerged around her – I overheard more than a few people talking about setting up grassroot campaigns to encourage her to run for Mayor.

That is not to say Ken is a pushover. His career shows just how much he thrives at being the political under dog. Don’t forget, whilst Labour spurned him as their official candidate he still ran as an independent in 2000 and won. Who is to say a third or fourth candidate might not emerge too. It is early days yet.

If anything this contest needs to be a contest of views, ideas and values rather than just a choice about who ‘looks’ like a winner. With transport costs rising, the aftermath of the Olympics to manage and a Capital struggling to balance cuts with investment needs, every candidate will have show more than their fair share of new ideas.

Moreover whoever wins their place in the contest will have to show serious broad appeal. The last Mayoral Election showed real political division in the Capital between inner and outer London, so an ability to unite the Capital could be all the difference.