Lessons from 07: Hustings

By Joe Caluori / @croslandite

The phoney war is now over, and last nights’ New Statesman hustings provided a fascinating glimpse into how the leadership election will unfold over the coming months. Given we are electing our leader using the same system used to elect our deputy leader in 2007, it may be informative to pause and see what lessons can be drawn from the 2007 deputy leadership election. For me, the Progress candidates debate at Logan Hall on 16th May 2007 marked the true start of the Deputy Leadership election, and I believe last night’s hustings will come to be seen in much the same way.

For at least four of the five candidates on the platform last night, speaking alongside fellow senior Labour figures in a competitive environment was an almost totally alien experience – but as in the Progress debate in thee years ago, a polite reluctance to take on recent colleagues was overtaken by the candidates’ genuine shock and surprise at each other’s key lines and arguments, a surprise which led to some of the most honest and open exchanges of the campaign.

Make no mistake, as in 2007, the hustings will be the crucible in which this election is won and lost. Yes, the media provide the window through which most people will view the contest, but the interpersonal and political dynamics between the candidates that will frame the choice we face will be negotiated and refined through what goes on between them when they are stood in a row before their electorate. In the age of social media and well established sites such as LabourList and others, what happens in those auditoriums will echo with even greater resonance than in before.

As in the Deputy Leadership election the candidates face a gruelling schedule of hustings. In 2007 as the hustings progressed the candidates had honed their lines – and crucially their rejoinders to each others key messages – to the point that the order they were called in to answer questions often became the critical factor for who came out best in many policy areas. Gaming out how to pre-empt your opponents best lines if you are called before them is crucial – as is preparing new curve balls to throw the other candidates off balance.

It’s true that by the latter stages of the Deputy Leadership campaign only a noble minority of the audience at hustings had yet to decide who to cast their first preference for, and the media had long since lost interest in hustings.

However, many members and trade unionists were still undecided on how to deploy their second and third preferences, with many taking cues on which candidates to transfer their votes to from their chosen candidate, a factor that turned out to be decisive in the final reckoning. John Cruddas’ decision to declare his second preference for Harriet on Newsnight and then repeat that decision in hustings undoubtedly pushed Harriet over the line in what was an incredibly tight election. Nothing I have seen so far leads me to believe that this election will be any less close than that contest.

Of course in many ways this election is very different to 2007. We are electing a leader not a deputy; we are in opposition, not in government. But the language of the candidates, the machinations of the nomination process and the tone of the early hustings present some eerie symmetries, and the campaign teams of the respective leadership candidates would do well to reflect on what happened in that race and what lessons they can learn from the result.

Joe Caluori is a Councillor in the London Borough of Islington and was Harriet Harman’s policy adviser in the 2007 Deputy Leadership election.