“Labour is camped out in Middle England, drinking Liebfraumilch in a Holiday Inn in Watford”: Cruddas talks to the Fabians

From @LabourList

UPDATE: Hopi Sen also has a brilliant interview with Jon Cruddas, in which he talks about the language of priorities.

Jon Cruddas has given a fascinating interview to Mary Riddell for the summer edition of the Fabian Review in which he speaks about the Labour leadership, the challenges confronting Labour and the fight against the BNP.

Below are a few choice nuggets but it’s well worth clicking here to read the whole interview.

On why he helped save the PM last month:
“I can’t see how it’s any remedy to our problems to throw one bloke under a train and put another bloke in through a coronation. That’s just symptomatic of our problems. Our significant problems can’t just be traded off in some game of top trumps.”

On Gordon Brown:
“He has to be so radical and populist. The jury’s out, at best. I don’t know the guy, but his default setting is cautious.”

On his own leadership prospects:
“I literally am not interested. A lot of blokes in and around Cabinet could do it. Harriet Harman has shown real steel. There’s the Miliband lads, James Purnell and younger people. I’m not ambitious – that’s my problem. Tony Blair, Nick Clegg and David Cameron are physiologically interchangeable. They are merging into the same person – constructing a politician that fits the rubric.”

On the response to economic recession:
“In the transition [Gordon Brown] has been brilliant. The real question now is to design a new system, not just economically but socially and politically. This is epochal; there’s no comfort zone you can go back to.”

On Labour:
“I am gloomy about the sheer fatigue and intellectual exhaustion. [New Labour was good for the good times] but totally ill-equipped when the music stopped. It was assumed that people would always vote Labour – that they had nowhere else to go. We borrowed the techniques of Tesco: this is the consequence.”

On the BNP:
“The BNP is selling to voters the dream of being the Labour party their grandparents voted for, while Labour is now camped out on a different part of the landscape called Middle England, drinking Liebfraumilch in a Holiday Inn in Watford.”

On Liberalism in the Labour Party:
“I’m not a liberal; liberalism has very dangerous conclusions philosophically. It’s very individualised. Labour should be looking at the future with reference to its own past – Toynbee, Tawney, Hobhouse.”

To hear Jon Cruddas talking to Rachael Jolley of the Fabians about the rise of the far right and the future of the Labour Party, visit the Fabian website.