Tonight’s Newsnight hustings are a chance to move on from PR and Iraq

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

As the rapid-fire hustings schedule continues, tonight brings perhaps the sternest test yet for the candidates: the Newsnight debate.

The television audience at home will dwarf the total number of people who have attended and watched streaming web footage of the debates so far.

It’s certainly important for the candidates, but it’s also crucial for the party as we seek to move on from our election defeat. Simply put, the candidates need to talk about the real “doorstep” issues that Labour activists face each week when speaking to voters. We need to stop these hustings being dominated by discussion of Iraq and PR.

Of course, the questions in these early debates have been defined by their audiences. It would be fair to say that the average New Statesman subscriber, Fabian member and LabourList reader will be more likely than most to care passionately about voting reform. However, these are not the day to day concerns of Labour voters, nor are they issues upon which the next election can be won.

Only when we begin to tackle the big issues this country faces – housing, youth unemployment, care for the elderly and wealth inequality, will we begin to engage with the electorate again, and reach out to the voter who says “you’re all the same”, or “what’s the point of voting Labour?”

These topics have all been touched upon in the early debates but haven’t taken hold in the same way that, for example, voting reform has. At times it appears the candidates pass over discussion of housing or of a living wage because they are all in agreement. In which case, why weren’t we dealing with these issues in government – if we seek post-election catharsis, we should be asking why we left so much undone, as well as (or instead of) why we invaded Iraq, how much we regret it, and what kind of voting system we should put in place to ensure nothing so egregious ever happens again.

Labour in government was at its best when it was standing up for those who had been ignored by the Tories, tackling issues that were often ignored by the mainstream. The list of acheivements that Gordon Brown reeled off at conference last year – the minimum wage, civil partnerships, devolution, tackling third world debt – this is the kind of forward offer we need to make to the electorate.