Chuka Umunna: Has he won a Labour Leadership by throwing his compatriots to wolves and watching how they feed?

As I covered in my previous entry, "Blue" or "One Nation" Labour is the direct descendant of the centrist policies of Tony Blair and New Labour. You can be as socialist and as red as you like, but just as Ed Milliband did after his appointment as leader; and as Andy Burnham did at the beginning of his leadership campaign, it is hard to fight against the tide of the centre-right Parliamentary Labour Party. Similarly I covered why it is this Blairite-MAX that resulted in Labour's defeat at the last election.
The strongest leadership contender in the Labour party however is not on the ticket.

Not anymore at least.

Chuka Umunna is widely regarded as one of the brightest young politicians of the current era. He is the epitome of Blue Labour. Born in London and the son of a Nigerian businessman and English/Irish, solicitor he went on to study Law at Manchester and Nottingham before returning to practice law at a firm in London.

Three days after he announced his candidacy, he withdrew it stating he had been "uncomfortable" with "the added level of scrutiny that came with being a leadership candidate." Lets be clear about Chuka, he leaves a life far removed from that of a former Yorkshire coal miner. There are not many MP's who were former DJ's and who have admitted smoking marijuana whilst. He has a key to a secret entrance to a gentleman's club with £4000 cognac, is personal friends with Tinie Tempah who has played at said club and he has a bar at the club named after him.

A working class lad he might not be but smart and intelligent he is. He know's his stuff and despite his withdrawing from the contest this time round, I believe he is playing his cards close to his chest. This contest was the first operating under the new election rules for Labour and was distinctly unknown territory. The fallout from the last election was difficult to measure and what the party activists wanted wasn't entirely clear, mostly due to the rhetoric of the Parliamentary Labour Party. A smart, sensible and intelligent man would hold back. Gauge which way the winds were blowing and let his competitors throw themselves to the wolves and watch how they feed.

Furthermore, the rest of the field were all shadow cabinet colleagues bar the now favourite Jeremy Corbyn. As we have seen: Andy Burnham; Yvette Cooper; and Liz Kendal; all have suffered from being unable to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. The teams behind Burnham, Kendall and Cooper have done well. They have all been very boring and run of the mill. No gaffe's to speak of. Not upset or offended anyone and called an old lady a bigot. But the trouble is that all in all what these three have done is say..... nothing. They are all cut from the same cloth essentially. All they can say is "Don't vote for Jeremy". None of them truely have a belief in their own suitability, and none of them really thinks any of the others can win.

None of the current shadow cabinet minister candidates were willing to withdraw and what we have seen is a split of the centrist vote. This is far from a difficult outcome to predict. Ed Milliband who was seen as a distinct socialist when compared to his brother still managed to poll half the votes from Party members and exceptionally strong votes from the unions. It is not difficult to see how a lone left-wing candidate could perform strongly when half the centrist vote would end up being split amoungst three people.

Chuka is about as pro-business and Blue Labour as it gets. His capitalist ideals cannot be questioned and that will serve him well in the run up to an election. If he judges the situation well though and uses his law-educated noggin, he will learn how to woo the left. He already believes that we should get rid of trident which will play well to those in Scotland and those that have migrated to the Greens. He needs to bring some of those socialist ideals into play.

Although some may balk at this suggestion, TfL is a pristine example of how a public organisation should run. High cost but with constant reinvestment. The Victoria once it has finish the latest of upgrades will have operate a service with a train every 100 seconds, the most regular service in Europe. Similarly when National Express controversially handed back its contract for the East Coast mainline to the Government. The state owned railway had a turnover for the year to April rose 4.2% to £693.8 million, generating £208.7 million profit for the taxpayer.

Some of Jeremy Corbyn's ideas are a little far-fetched I grant you. Reopening coal mines is both financially unsound and lacks serious consideration for the environmental impacts. As a technologically advanced country we have the ability to push for technologies that allow us to utilise renewable resources. Creating a nationalised renewable energy company would be a far wiser move economically and politically. But fundamentally the ideas Jeremy puts forward are popular with the electorate and it will prove useful to take some of the less extreme ideas and utilise them to bring the unions and the left with him

Chuka Umunna has in recent days played his opening gambit in his, writing privately to Labour MP's and close supporters saying the party needs to "look beyond recent Labour policy prescriptions" and that "we have failed to do sufficient political and intellectual mobilisation in this regard". Delivering hope is what is needed by the party. It's what Tony Blair brought and its what David Cameron brought. Hope means not standing still, moving forward and not just blindly to the right. The center of the party can be strong again and electable, but it needs someone to lead it.

Chuka Umunna may be and have deliberately placed himself, as that person.

Why are people voting for Jeremy Corbyn?

Many people have given an opinion that if elected, Jeremy Corbyn will be the end of the Labour Party and that he is completely unelectable. This rhetoric has risen exponentially in recent days from the center-right of the party with the like of Alasdair Campbell, Chuka Umunna and ultimately with Tony Blair being the most vocal opponents of Jeremy Corbyn. It is argued that Mr Corbyn will bring the end of the Blairite era and a full return to socialism-proper.

Much of this mud-flinging is flawed. He won’t bring an end to the United Kingdom as an economic powerhouse, it won’t be the end to capitalism, it wont be the end of the Labour party and it doesn’t have to be the case that this is the end of the “Left” being in power. As bold as it might be to say, Jeremy Corbyn could be the one person to bring all corners of the United Kingdom together.

It has been put forward that the Overton Window of politics shifted towards the right post Thatcher and that Tony Blair killed the left of the Labour party. Margaret Thatcher is ironically the most quoted individual during this leadership debate, with her stating that New Labour was her greatest achievement. As supportive of market forces and business as Tony Blair was, keep in mind this is a man who introduced the Human Rights Act, removed the majority of hereditary peers from the House of Lords, raised taxes, introduced a minimum wage and increased child benefit by 72% in 8 years. You cannot claim that this man was inherently Tory or right wing.

The biggest flaw by the Parliamentary Labour Party in the last 5 years post Blair/Brown was to allow the conversation to be dictated by the Conservative Party. They fell into the trap that meant they continued on their drift towards the right, even Ed Milliband who was famously called Red Ed when made leader became blue labour or to use that most Tory of labels, “One Nation Labour”. They reinforced the idea that economic competence was inextricably linked to austerity. By attempting to distance themselves from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, they actually pushed themselves further to the right. The Paliamentary Labour Party may have followed suit with a new breed of young “Blairites”, but they failed to bring their electorate with them.

Labour lost ground to UKIP in the north and the SNP in Scotland. UKIP are often wrongly framed as a right-wing party but it’s more appropriate to describe them as nationalist. This is not one and the same. In 2010 Labour lost the middle class because of tax-heavy policies. Labour regained much of its Tory votes in the north but those working class protest votes that left Labour in 2010 to the Lib Dems didn’t come back in 2015 and instead went to UKIP. It’s also clear that the SNP decimated Labour due to their abandonment of the left. Interestingly the Conservative party whilst in government learnt a few tricks from their Liberal Democrat partners. They took up the “One Nation Conservative” banner coined by Disraeli. He devised it to appeal to working class men as a solution to worsening divisions in society. In the Liberal Democrat heartlands and following their betrayal in power, it worked with the Conservative moping up most of the South West.

This brings us to the Labour Party in the post-election hangover and effectively leaderless and rendered totally neutered by there constants attempts to be better than the Tories at their own game. It is all about business and not about social fairness. We started the leadership contest with two sub-par center right, one sub-par center-left and a quiet innocuous and rebellious hard-left candidate let in to throw a bone to the activists. Very quickly Andy Burnham shifted his position from the left and jumped right in with Blue Labour. This meant you had a three person echo chamber and just the one dissenting voice. One voice that was different and a voice that wasn’t about personal attacks, but about giving an alternative. What the PLP has soon realised, is that the Labour Party doesn’t consist of little Tony Blair’s. That the left of the party is very much real and one that doesn’t like being either labeled as stupid or wrong.

Then came the deciding factor came. The Labour Party failed to contest the deep cuts to the welfare system. This was the final straw in the abandonment of the left and sealed what seems to be a now inevitable victory. The surge from the left supporting Corbyn doesn’t consist of angry coal miners from the Socialist or Trade Union parties, rampant vegan feminists from the Greens or Tories trying to undermine the process. It consists of run of the mill Labour supporters and voters, the working class and middle class. Jeremy Corbyn speaks to what has been missing for the last five years.

I don’t see him becoming Prime Minister, but he will remind the Parliamentary Labour Party that for them to be successful, the left must not be forgotten about. I will be voting for Jeremy with the Labour’s best interests in mind. Labour cannot win by trying to do what the Tories do best, but by doing what Labour does best. Ensuring fairness and social equality for all.

When that becomes the priority of a leader-in-waiting then the centrist position will be a tenable one to hold.