We now know which four candidates will be on the ballot paper to be Labour’s next leader. I am quite clear that Yvette Cooper is the best choice to take on the three critical tasks facing our party: building a broad platform for victory in 2020, opposing the Tory government over the next five years, and appealing to voters as a Prime Minister in waiting.
Crucially, Yvette is the leadership candidate that I think is best placed to help us win back Rossendale and Darwen, the ‘key seat’ where I stood and lost as Labour’s candidate when voters decided that Labour and our leader were not up to the job of running the country.
As we decide who should run our party, we need the person who can make an honest appraisal of our defeat and pick the right issues on which to campaign over the next five years. I was struck by Yvette’s words this morning when she said, “It’s clear that we cannot run a narrow strategy ever again”. This is spot on.
It felt all too often at the election like we only wanted to talk about our core issues: the NHS and the scourge of low paid work. While critically important, it was unsurprising and did relatively little to persuade the electorate to put their faith in us. If you earned more than the minimum wage, didn’t have children or were self-employed, what did we actually have to offer? We didn’t even try to talk to pensioners and lost that age group by two to one compared to the Tories.
And where were our big ideas? All too often on the doorstep, I felt like I was rummaging around in my Mary Poppins’ bag of retail policies rather than telling people about our defining goals.
By contrast, Yvette said this morning “Just as Labour championed the white heat of technology in the 1960s, so today we need to champion the white flashing constellations of the networked world.” She has suggested that as a country we should raise the amount we spend on research and development to among the highest in the world to ensure that the jobs of the future come to the UK rather than ending up in regions with a better record of innovation like Germany, Korea and Scandinavia. This is the kind of bold ambition that we need.
Finally, we need a leader who looks like a Prime Minister in waiting. Yvette came to Whitworth in Rossendale during the election to talk about community policing and to join us on the doorstep. She was sheer class. Whether with Labour members, local residents, shopkeepers or the local neighbourhood watch, she was approachable but also had the air of a real leader. It was clear that someone with real political weight had been to town.
The next five years is going to be extremely hard work. We need someone with the right ideas, experience, and relationship with the public. Yvette Cooper has all those attributes and I’ll be supporting her for leader.
Will Straw was the Labour candidate for Rossendale and Darwen
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