Let’s not rush this, it needs to be a primary

Leading the Labour Party after this defeat will be the ‘thirteenth labour of Hercules’, as one activist put it on twitter. For we need a leader who can rebuild trust and emotional bonds with millions of very diverse voters, who have rejected Labour for lots of different reasons.

Our job is to select someone with the personal qualities best suited to that task. But with a field of little-known candidates, it will take time and the glare of public scrutiny for people to decide who that person is. So let’s not rush this.

A long campaign will help, not hinder, in the party’s recovery.

But the delay should not be used for introspection. Instead the party must start the work of reaching out and reconnecting. Labour has the vehicle to do this, with the new leadership election rules. Today they are an empty vessel, because the party has hardly begun the process of registering union members and supporters. But with time and energy this summer, Labour can use the rules to create a mass-participation leadership primary.

If Labour can stage a true primary, with over a million voters, it would be the first step in its reconnection with the British public. The trade unions will obviously want to sign-up as many of their members as they can. But the party should also breathe life into the idea of registered supporters, by recruiting tens of thousands of Labour sympathisers to vote.

After the pink bus, we know that Harriet Harman can drum up the attention which the recruitment drive will need. With no skin in the game herself, it would be her parting service to the party.

So Harman should preside over a summer roadshow of visits, street-stalls and media events (supported by as much online activity and advertising as the party’s parlous finances will allow). And on top of that, every party activist should be asked to return to the doorstep at least once in June to re-contact people who’ve voted Labour in the past.

The point would be to stimulate interest and participation in the leadership primary, but also to start the slow process of proving that Labour can change. There would be no Voter ID scripts, just three questions that would prove the party wants to listen and reconnect: How do you want your community to change? How do you want Labour to change? And would you like a vote to choose our leader?

Offering Labour supporters a primary vote would be a gateway to stronger local and national relationships, which could then be cultivated for years. And the questions would be used both to kick-start an ethos of local organising and campaigning and to inform a hard-hitting national analysis to which each leadership candidate would be invited to respond.

So a pause before Labour choses it’s new leader is not just a necessary evil. It can be the means to a mass-participation primary and the first step on Labour’s long road to recovery.

Andrew Harrop is General Secretary of the Fabian Society