With plans for a Cabinet coup on Friday now being openly discussed in the media, what should those who genuinely have the real interests of Labour at heart be using the opportunity to achieve?   It’s being mooted that the Cabinet, using the ‘permanent unavailability’ rule in Labour’s Rule Book, would elect a temporary successor, to be endorsed by Conference in September, in order to engage in any negotiations that may take place with other parties.   Inevitably, given the media we have, as in the leader debates it’s portrayed as purely a personality contest, as though policies were irrelevant and ideology was consensual.   They’re not, and it isn’t.

The criteria for any future choice of Labour leader are surely clear.   The job description should be as follows:

• Recognition that the market fundamentalism that has so disfigured the reign of New Labour as well as Mrs. Thatcher’s is now over, and that the roles of the markets and of the State should be much more evenly balanced.
• Acceptance that in financial markets that means much stronger macro-prudential powers for the Bank of England to target asset bubbles as well as inflation, the break-up of banks to separate their retail from their casino arms, stronger government intervention to direct bank lending into domestic investment rather than international speculation, and and tighter regulation of hedge funds and private equity.
• Readiness to prioritise UK manufacturing industry, the lifeblood of the economy, in determining exchange rate policy, public sector procurement, and fiscal incentives.
• Commitment to a massive house-building programme when there are 1.8 million households languishing on Council waiting lists, house-building is currently at its lowest ebb for 80 years, and construction of desperately needed social housing is the best way to create jobs for the 2.5 million unemployed.
• Determination to curtail drastically the growth of obscene levels of inequality, with policies ranging from a big increase in the minimum wage at the bottom through to progressive income tax at the top, ending higher-rate tax reliefs, terminating non-dom tax privileges, and a general anti-tax avoidance measure to catch tax cheats and block the use of tax havens.

These objectives should be the test for any future contending leadership candidates.   Without these objectives there will be no change, no recovery, no renewal.

Bookmark to: