Hunt’s Labour’s lost – but the V&A will gain from luring this leader

Little more than 18 months ago I sat at the back of the main hall in Congress House in London. Tristram Hunt was one of a panel of then still serving shadow cabinet ministers who were publicly digesting Labour’s heavy general defeat just days earlier.

Activists began to try to get over their election blues by considering the make up of the field put before them to replace Ed Miliband, who had stepped down within hours of the result. Was Labour ready for a leader called Tristram? Members and journalists pondered the same question and so did the man himself.

The conclusion might not have been an emphatic “yes” but his reception at the Progress conference was still warm. Hunt was – and still is – high-profile, articulate, good on television and knowledgeable about many areas ranging from Britain’s economic problems to our party’s own long struggle to preserve and raise the rights of working men and women.

If Labour had already had a leader called Clement – perhaps our best ever – then it could certainly have a leadership candidate called Tristram. Hunt was a good-humoured presence on stage on May 16 as he sat on what was quickly dubbed a beauty parade: the other panellists were Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Mary Creagh and Liz Kendall.

All of the group – bar Hunt – had declared their intention to run while the historian smiled, set out his analysis and promised an announcement in the coming days. When the news came, however, it was that he would not be a candidate and was instead throwing his weight behind Liz Kendall. He was joined in the nearly-but-not-quite category by Mary Creagh, then the shadow international development secretary, who did not make it on to the ballot paper.

Nobody at that stage foresaw the wave of Corbymania that was to follow. Now Hunt is gone completely, to take up an attractive position as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

It is easy to see why. He had a highly successful career before entering parliament in 2010 and this was too good an opportunity to turn down. As he put in a heartfelt resignation letter to Labour members in his Stoke-on-Trent Central constituency, the role will bring together his “lifetime passions of education, historical scholarship, meshing past with present, and public engagement”.

But his resignation is also a reflection of the state of the Labour Party and his views of its prospects under Jeremy Corbyn. We have struggled in the mid-twenties in the opinion polls in recent months and Hunt has been a notable, if generally calm, critic of both the leader and his direction. Corbyn can point to his enormous mandate but it is clear Hunt simply saw no prospect of Labour making progress under the current regime and decided that his chances of making a significant contribution to public life and learning were elsewhere.

It is hardly a surprise. After the Jamie Reed’s announcement that he would stand down to take up a job at Sellafield, Westminster was awash with speculation of who might be next to go. Hunt’s name was mentioned and, now it has been confirmed, he seems to be departing more in sorrow than in anger.

Corbyn did the right thing and issued a tribute but the scale of it – just 33 words thanking him and wishing him well – indicates the relative froideur existing between the two men.

Supporters of Corbyn should not rush to celebrate his departure, however. Hunt’s exit is Labour’s loss and the V&A’s gain. The heavyweight academic with the boyish appearance will have a major influence on the arts and heritage in Britain, something he has achieved before, not least in helping to ensure the Wedgwood collection of arts, ceramics, letters and photographs was saved for the nation in 2014.

Nor should Hunt be dismissed as a disgruntled Blairite. Yes, he supported David Miliband in the 2010 leadership election but he was an enthusiastic member of Ed M’s shadow cabinet as the younger brother took the party in direction different to the one imagined by the former foreign secretary.

Hunt quite rightly said today he did not want to “rock the boat” but he would not be going if he backed the leader wholeheartedly. “I will always be Labour”, he wrote. His view of Corbyn is clear – now the man who swept aside Hunt and all those assembled on that day in 2015 must help deliver another by-election victory and prove that he can pull Labour back towards the spell in government of which Hunt dreamed.