There’s been a brilliant article on CapX recently looking ahead at the prospects of the potential Labour leadership contenders. The author, Joseph Dinnage, lists Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and Wes Streeting as potential challengers to Starmer from the Left of Labour. Mr Dinnage claims that these socialists would further run Britain into the ground to such an extent that in 2029 the British public will be calling loudly for a right wing fiscally conservative government.
Mr Dinnage may have a good point about the dangers posed to Britain by this triumvirate of socialist trash and his piece (linked below) is well worth reading. However it’s possible that things might not work out the way that Mr Dinnage suggests. Whilst all three of Labour’s suggested leaders (and there are others that I’m not going to go into here such as Shabana Mahmood) there are reasons why some candidates in this potential contest are more equal than others. Not that they might all be awful, that's a distinct possibility, but some are more able to fight for the leadership than others Whilst all of the candidates have a chance at being Labour leader and therefore Prime Minister, some are more sturdy in their position than others also some might be more savvy policy-wise than the current Prime Ministerial incumbent.
In my view the weakest candidate in terms of solidity of electoral position is Wes Streeting. His East London constituency is one of those where Labour are facing a challenge from religious sectarians of various sorts. These sectarians put up a good fight last time in Streeting’s constituency and reduced Streeting’s majority to 528 from over 5000 and helped to turn the seat from one that was usually a straight fight between the Tories and Labour into one of the most perilous marginals in the country. Does the country want as PM someone who could quite easily be unseated by a bunch of sectarians and who will need to votes and support of said sectarians to hold on to the slim chance of keeping his seat? Wes Streeting’s seat is now so marginal that it feels uncomfortable to have a potential PM who will need to pander to sectarians in order to keep his now very marginal seat. Also with regards to Wes Streeting there are character issues based on stuff he put out on social media years and years ago that will of course be dredged up by reporters should he aim for the Labour leadership. Streeting also suffers from that terrible political disease of being bland and uninspiring and in my view he’s not the sort of person who would make voters think ‘ooh I like that Mr Streeting I’ll vote for his party’. He’s no Boris Johnson or Tony Blair or any other sort of large personality that grabs the voters attention.
Another candidate who some might think would be good but probably would not is Ed Miliband. He might be popular with some elements on the Labour Left but Miliband is too personally identified with the disastrous energy policies that Britain has implemented. If Miliband became Labour leader and Prime Minister then it could presage a total economic disaster. The sort of policies that a Miliband premiership might bring could further advance the sort of deindustrialisation that is hurting Britain and hurting Britons. Unlike Streeting Miliband does have a relatively healthy majority in his Doncaster South constituency but that could be lowered if there was a healthy electoral challenge in 2029 from either the Tories or Reform. Another factor that is not in Miliband’s favour when it comes to his leadership potential is that he’s already a proven vote loser. He lost a General Election whilst Labour Leader and so much of his election campaign was little more than a collection of cringeworthy memes such as the ‘Ed Stone’ ‘litho-list’ of promises and Miliband’s seeming inability to eat a bacon sandwich with any sort of grace or talent. Should Miliband become Labour Leader he’s going to be starting out on the back foot and may end up staying there. The memes will come back to haunt him and so will the appallingly bad energy policy that he has championed whilst in government.
This brings us to the third of the current likely front runners and that’s Angela Rayner. At first glance Rayner might not look that good a prospect bearing in mind her still unresolved issues with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) but this issue might not be fatal and there are good reasons why. Rayner is quite popular with the soft Left of Labour and not too hated at the moment by the far Left of the party. She can be personable and most of all she is identified with the socialist wing and not the Blairite wing of the party this means she could garner quite a lot of support from Labour members who are often to the Left of many in the Parliamentary party. Angela Rayner could step forward as the candidate untainted by associations with Mandelson or Campbell or Blair or any of the other Labour types whose political culture is little more than a case of the ends justify the means and political amorality. ‘Have a clean break with Angela’ might not be the worst way to run a campaign to lead the Labour Party? It would work unless of course that some more greater scandal with Angela Rayner’s name on it erupts. If this doesn’t happen and if Angela Rayner can use her war chest and the shadow campaign staff that has been alleged she has built up to distance her self from the current party disaster zone, she could put herself out there as an alternative to the current embattled leadership they she could take the top job. It’s quite possible that Angela Rayner could make herself look so good in comparison to the competition for leadership that Labour members decide to overlook the issues that Angela Rayner has had with HMRC.
There’s not many in the Labour Party who have come out with any sort of glory following the Mandelson revelations. The backbenchers who have gone into full toady mode and have praised the PM just look foolish. Those who thought ‘third times a charm’ when they made Mandelson Ambassador to the USA knowing that Mandelson might have been a security risk because he may have been compromised are only the tip of the iceberg here. There’s probably a whole lot more unethical stuff and stuff that wasn’t beneficial to either Britain or Britons that could come out about the Blair and Brown years. A can of rather pungent worms might be opening especially if those who know where the political bodies are buried start speaking up in order to metaphorically hang others along with themselves.
The only people who seem to have coming not smelling of vileness following the Mandelson revelations are some in the Blue Labour camp as Lord Maurice Glasman warned the government in writing not to appoint Mandelson as Ambassador to the USA. These more ethical elements in Labour could see that Mandelson was a liability and likely to bring untold scandal to both Britain and to the Labour party and they were correct. If Starmer had listened to Blue Labour and others when they counselled him not to give Mandelson such a high profile post then Labour would only be dealing with the ‘ordinary’ problems that they have to deal with and in some cases they’ve created or exacerbated.
The Mandelson revelations have wounded Labour so badly that like the Tories after the furore over the Poll Tax during Thatcher’s last administration, they are going to need a new leader. Whichever candidate makes the most convincing case for a hard reset of the party and a distancing from the political operators of the Blair and Brown years, might be the one to take the prize. Labour are tainted and they are going to need someone who can at least do a half decent impression of having clean hands and in my view that candidate could very well be Angela Rayner.
Link to CapX article
https://capx.co/dont-like-keir-starmer-just-see-what-comes-next