The Labour leadership election is throwing up few surprises. David and Ed Miliband have already tossed their hats into the ring with Ed Balls preparing to lob in his topper too. This is not a great choice for the party.
For me, Ed Miliband is the strongest choice of the options available. As climate change secretary, he was a serious and positive voice at the Copenhagen debacle. He wasn't afraid to criticise China's stance and to suggest reforms for the future. Ed Miliband has proven himself on the international stage in a way his brother (a former foreign secretary) ironically didn't quite manage.
What concerns me about David is that he argues that Labour needs to reshape itself to the demands of the electorate. In an article in The Observer, he insists the party needs to slough off its New Labour skin and search for the policies that will make it electable. This is an approach that directly comes from New Labour and saw the party embrace ID cards and gave the police rights to hold suspects for longer and longer periods without charge.
What we need from the candidates is a sensible vision for rebuilding the party. They must tell the membership how they will identify the ways to protect the worst off in Britain in the future. For the middle classes, they must tell us how they will find ways to protect the UK's economic prosperity in the longer term as the economic benefit from the baby boomer generation becomes a growing cost. Labour needs to consider how and to what extent government should play a role in education and health. These are desperately difficult areas for the party but now is the time to address them - to find the ideas and to communicate them. And they must tell us how they will ensure Britain's place in the world. The UK's global confidence is one of its greatest assets and we must continue to lead - not least to have our say on climate change, nuclear proliferation, economic stability, and battling disease and disadvantage in the developing world.
Sadly, at its earliest stages the debate appears to be focusing on immigration. This agenda is the wrong one. It will be one of the issues of this Parliament - trotting along hand in hand as it always does with economic uncertainty. But the Labour leadership needs a longer term vision and they need to set the agenda. For the time being they must stop trying to shape policies according to what they think will play well with the Daily Express, Mail, Sun, or Telegraph. They need to display leadership.
In an interview with The Guardian, Ed Balls appears again to have fallen into this trap. But it's the end of the article which is interesting. It appears that Ed Balls and his wife Yvette Cooper have agreed (while queueing at Costa Coffee) that she should give way her leadership ambitions in favour of his.
According to the Independent's Johann Hari, that is the wrong choice. He asks "do we still live in a 1950s Britain where brilliant women step aside for their less impressive husbands?"
In the interests of the party and a proper contest, she should stand.
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This is very interesting and I think sadly true, that there is a great deal of (societal) pressure on women - even if they are very good - to step aside to let their husbands shine. This is, I expect, because of a donkeys-years tradition of women never being allowed to be people in their own right. Now they are, and it will take some getting used to. Didn't the same thing happen with Tony and Cherie Blair? - they struck a deal so that whoever first won a seat in the Commons would pursue a political career while the other would continue working as a lawyer. Cherie lost and he won so she never tried again. I say: time for Ivette Cooper to change the trend! Brilliant women for PMs!! Another point: if two brothers can rival one another, why can't husband and wife?
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