Cruddas talks to Prospect about housing, immigration, jobs

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

In reconnecting with Labour’s lost millions of voters – written about today by Liam Byrne and by John Denham – the Labour Party leadership discussion will need focus in part on the sense of disconnection from the traditional core vote, as well as looking at how the party will consolidate its strength in many inner city areas around the country. A new coalition will need to be built – something Anthony Painter has written about extensively.

Jon Cruddas is already beginning to talk a lot about that disconnection from the working class, and in an interview published on the Prospect website today, he goes into further detail – on housing, jobs, wages and immigration – and seeks to put those issues into the wider context of the party’s successes and failures in government:

“There’s no harm in acknowledging that there’s a need for a base camp of values that your institutions seek to instill and nurture. That’s why the word covenant is an interesting one because it’s more than a contract, there is a history to it that goes beyond rights, entitlements, it also captures a sense of obligation and duty as well, which Blair harnessed, early Blair was brilliant at it, when he used Macmurray-and talked about rights and responsibilities, tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime… but the focus groups destroyed that because he lost that ethic, the richness, the texture of the language. Because his coalition was splintering he sought to dig even deeper into that middle ground rather than build something broader, wider, deeper. Now that’s not a criticism of Blair, Blair was a genius. It’s just to acknowledge that to me, actually it’s a sense of loss about what he could have been.”

Two days ago, Cruddas was still apparently weighing his options as to whether he would run for the leadership. Now, I hear, he may be planning to get into the race.

Read Prospect’s interview with Jon Cruddas here.