The Guardian view on Labour’s leadership choice: don’t rush it

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/17/guardian-view-labour-leadership-choice

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One of the consistent tributes paid to Ed Miliband – both before and after his resignation as Labour leader – was that he had kept his party united. Defeat in 2010 did not trigger the traditional round of Labour bloodletting and, at the time, that seemed a remarkable achievement. In retrospect it looks like a necessary argument postponed. There were debates the party needed to have after 2010 – starting with the question of how Labour’s economic record in office should be defended – but which it pushed to the back of its mind. There’ll be no avoiding them now.

Over the weekend, Labour lost its second leader in as many weeks: Jim Murphy resigned his post at the top of the Scottish party. His parting words signalled possible acrimony to come, as he accused Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite trade union, of plotting against him. Mr McCluskey had blamed Mr Murphy not only for losing Scotland but for creating the spectre of an SNP-backed Labour administration, a prospect that scared many voters into the arms of the Tories. Never mind that Labour’s decline in Scotland long predated Mr Murphy and was all but irreversible, in Mr McCluskey’s view, Mr Murphy had kept Mr Miliband out of Downing Street.

Meanwhile, the shape of the contest to succeed Mr Miliband is becoming clearer. After Friday’s withdrawal of Chuka Umunna from the leadership contest, the former director of public prosecutions and newly elected MP Keir Starmer ruled himself out too. The brief effort to draft Sir Keir was an act of fantasy politics – but also a sign, perhaps, of unhappiness with the field on offer and of a slightly desperate longing for an untainted saviour.

Those who are ruling themselves out – a list that includes the retired army major Dan Jarvis – have cited wholly plausible personal reasons. But it’s also likely that they have assessed the scale of the challenge confronting Labour. In the immediate aftermath of 7 May, the popular comparison was with the shock Tory win of 1992. In that analogy, Labour would be looking for a successor who could lead them to power within five years. In the subsequent days, 7 May has come more closely to resemble 1987 or even 1983 – a disaster from which it may take many hard years to recover. In which case, the role now on offer is not that of Tony Blair – but Neil Kinnock. Umunna and the others could be forgiven for finding that prospect less appetising.

If Labour picks a leader destined to lose, then the leadership is an empty prize

Today’s task is harder than that which confronted Labour in the 1980s. The party faces war on three fronts, each requiring a response different to, and possibly at odds with, the other two. For while Labour was wiped out by the SNP in Scotland, it lost to the Tories in the Midlands and south-east, and is threatened by Ukip in many of the towns of northern England. It might be tempting to shift to a full-blooded, anti-austerity, anti-cuts message to take on Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland, but how would that play down south? What kind of approach would speak to those in work and ambitious in, say, Nuneaton or Swindon, and still resonate with those feeling left behind in the north-east?

It is, then, not obvious what Labour has to do to win back power. What it should not do is rather clearer. As Andy Burnham pointed out on Sunday, neither Mr McCluskey nor Peter Mandelson hold all the answers. The former should have learned the lesson of his strong backing of Mr Miliband in 2010: deciding that the leadership should always go to the most plausible leftwinger on the ballot is foolish if that person cannot win a general election. The leadership of the party is not an end in itself, worth securing for this or that faction; it is a means to the end of winning power. If Labour picks a leader destined to lose, then the leadership is an empty prize.

What is needed now is time, space and a cool head. Labour has to face squarely the challenge confronting it. Jon Cruddas is right to speak of a crisis “epic in its scale”, perhaps the gravest in the party’s history. That will not be addressed by steamrollering the party by, for example, gathering so many signatures that one choice seems inevitable and all dissent futile. Labour needs to understand the multiple questions facing it, devise a remedy and only then light on the person who might administer that medicine. At present, it risks getting it all the wrong way around.