Choice would be a fine thing

By Will Porter

I’m not a big fan of choice; I’d rather a restaurant that does two great dishes than one with an endless menu of reheated pre-prep meals. Choice is too often a byword for mediocrity and confusion; a dozen phone operators each with a dozen price plans, all of them with the sole intention of picking your pockets.

I was one of the 13,000 new members who signed up in anticipation of a fresh start for the Labour Party, but as the Miliband brothers started the race the choices began to feel stale. Balls and Burnham‘s entry did little to help a race that was rapidly feeling like a New Labour rehab clinic.

John McDonnell and Diane Abbott may have gone some way to widen the debate but their contribution is dependent on them gathering the required thirty-three nominations.

What remains even more disturbing is the race to the right of party. Candidates talk of unifying the party but the party they seek to unify is one of two camps; Blair and Brown. Members from the centre-left to the furthest left of the party are to be ignored once again.

Talk is of immigration rather than social housing, benefits cheats rather than corporate tax evasion. We’re unlikely to hear the words Social Democracy let alone the dreaded S-word, whisper it, socialism, this election.

Instead it will ring hollow with the word ‘progressive’. The term will be used as a piece of political slight of hand, implying to many on the left a move away from the neo-liberalism of Labour’s last incarnation.

Yet the same adjective can equally mean Academies and PFI. Without candidates from the left of the party to expose this dog whistle language the debate will be as superficial as an Orange mobile advert.

The Parliamentary Labour Party has the power now to create real choice. David Miliband’s tweet of “the more the merrier” can be realised if he and other leading candidates refuse further support having reached the threshold of 33 nominations.

With this and PLP members nominating fringe candidates, whether they support them or not, Labour can go some way towards bridging the gap between themselves and their grassroots.

Disagreement in this race can be a healthy test for forthcoming battles. A strong leadership race can lead to a strong leader, one who has won the right rather than inherited the privilege to lead. The future’s bright, the future’s..?