More men have walked on the moon than been Labour Prime Minister

It’s not too much of an overstatement to say that the Labour Party is facing an existential crisis. Last week they lost their fourth election in a row and suffered their worst electoral defeat since 1935. Their ‘Red Wall’ of seats in the Midlands, the North and Wales has crumbled. They are all but non-existent in Scotland, the country of their founder, Keir Hardie, and their first and most recent prime ministers. As suicide notes go, 1983 was not that long after all.

While Corbyn is remaining in place as caretaker leader until next Spring, several prominent MPs have announced their candidacy for the leadership, including Keir Starmer, Clive Lewis, Emily Thornberry and Rebecca Long-Bailey, with Angela Rayner her running mate. But as the party grandee Pat McFadden put it this week, what’s important is not just who replaces Corbyn but what.

With that in mind, here are some rough sketches on the qualities and values that the new Labour leadership should embrace:

Brexit 
It’s quite simple. Labour’s leadership needs to accept that Brexit is happening, no ifs, no buts, no second referendums, no “neutrality”. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t continue to scrutinise and even oppose aspects of Brexit-related legislation, but simply blocking every deal that comes before Parliament is no longer an option. With the majority of people voting to “Get Brexit Done” in the recent election, and, given the unpopularity of the Lib Dems’ “Stop Brexit” campaign, they must swallow their pride and vote for Boris’s Brexit deal. After all, Attlee and his colleagues served in Winston Churchill’s government. 

Blue Labour 
If they want to govern, not only do Labour need to win over Conservative voters, but they also need to win back their traditional voters who often hold small-c conservative values (faith, family, flag), who respect the military and who are instinctively fiscally conservative. After all, it is the poorest in society who have to live within their means. The Blue Labour think tank has been making this argument since Gordon Brown’s defeat in 2010, and Labour’s new leadership would do well to follow its output in the coming years.

A winning team 
The New Labour project was a winning team. The leadership was a careful balance of Old (John Prescott) and New (Tony Blair), Scotland (Gordon Brown), Wales (Rhodri Morgan) and London (Ken Livingstone). And behind the scenes there was Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Damian McBride and Jonathan Powell. Boris has Dominic Cummings, Isaac Levido, the most diverse cabinet in British history and his new “Babies”. And while Labour evidently have a competent digital team, they need to replace their current cult of no personality with a team that is competent and has far-reaching appeal.

Reform not revolution 
Radicals have always had an uphill struggle in Britain, the country that spurned the French Revolution, fascism and communism. Clement Attlee knew it. Harold Wilson knew it. Tony Blair knew it. Politicians that deviate too far from the mixed economy model, whether it be Thatcher at the end of her tenure or Labour under Corbyn, get punished. Labour’s task in the coming years is to formulate an agenda that taps into the public’s discontent exposed by Brexit and come up with policies that are radical and practical. It will take time, but it will be more popular than a free-for-all shopping list. 

Charismatic leadership 
More men have walked on the moon than been a Labour Prime Minister. When it happens, it’s special — think Attlee in ‘45 and Blair in ‘97. But it doesn’t happen often. Labour must bear this in mind when selecting their new new leader, especially when facing a charismatic opponent like Boris Johnson. It really doesn’t matter if their new leader is northern or male or female. What matters is that they feel prime ministerial. The Long-Bailey/Rayner partnership has been hailed as a dream ticket because of their backstories, but their backstories won’t matter a jot if they don’t look, sound and feel like leaders. 

Man (or woman) of the people
According to Marxist-Leninist theory, the proletariat should be led by an educated vanguard that knows best. This is intellectual snobbery that clearly doesn’t wash in Labour’s heartlands, for, if the recent election demonstrated anything, it is that those in Britain’s most deprived areas do not appreciate being both ignored by and preached to by champagne socialists from Islington. That does not mean that Labour’s next leader has to be one of the proletariat — Attlee, Wilson and Blair weren’t — but they will need the popular touch. Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn did not have this.

Get-up-and-go
By 2024 — the time of the next election — Labour will have been out of power for fourteen years. They need a leader with fire in their belly who can go toe-to-toe with Andrew Neil, remember when the Queen’s Speech is and who don’t mistake the Glastonbury crowd for the wider electorate. It goes without saying that they might want to choose a younger leader next time around. 

To be sure, Labour can take courage from the fact that Boris is not exactly a popular leader himself. He was lent support in the recent election by frustrated voters who felt they had little choice. If Labour gets on board with Brexit and gets its choice of new leader right, they might well be back in the game. Then again, they must never forget that they have no divine right to exist: the Whigs and Liberals came and went before them, and the Brexit/Reform Party is waiting in the wings today.