The European Union

As a law student, I encountered many cases in the English courts that were badly reasoned and others that had unjust outcomes. But I rarely encountered cases I thought were just plain wrong. Then, in my very last year at university I discovered the case of Costa v ENEL. In Costa v ENEL, the European Court of Justice decided that European law prevailed over any national law. This is in spite of the national law in question being passed after the European law. The decision of the Court was a complete subversion of democracy. Naturally, countries have to keep to their international obligations. The Treaty of Rome created a very clear mechanism for member states to challenge other member states for any violations of the Treaty. But that means nothing for the validity within the country in question of the law passed by that country's democratically elected parliament.

The Court justified itself on this basis:

"As opposed to other international treaties, the Treaty instituting the E.E.C. has created its own order which was integrated with the national order of the member-States the moment the Treaty came into force; as such, it is binding upon them. In fact, by creating a Community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality and its own capacity in law, apart from having international standing and more particularly, real powers resulting from a limitation of competence or a transfer of powers from the States to the Community, the member-States, albeit within limited spheres, have restricted their sovereign rights and created a body of law applicable both to their nationals and to themselves. The reception, within the laws of each member-State, of provisions having a Community source, and more particularly of the terms and of the spirit of the Treaty, has as a corollary the impossibility, for the member-State, to give preference to a unilateral and subsequent measure against a legal order accepted by them on a basis of reciprocity.

It follows from all these observations that the law stemming from the treaty, an independent source of law, could not, because of its special and original nature, be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed, without being deprived of its character as community law and without the legal basis of the community itself being called into question."

None of this was written into the Treaty which the democratically elected governments of the member states had signed. The Italian government was certainly surprised to find it had abdicated its rights to make its own laws.

The Treaty of Rome was a treaty like any other, binding in international law and not in national law. The Treaty of Rome was not special and original: it was further reaching than other treaties, but not dramatically so. While, as the Court had done earlier in Van Gend en Loos, it was possible to argue that certain provisions had "direct effect" in national law, it was a significant stretch to argue that those provisions could contradict law created later by a national parliament.

All international organisations are of unlimited duration, have their own institutions and their own capacity in law, not just the EU. A country can transfer powers without transferring sovereignty. Indeed, the right to sign a Treaty is part of the definition of sovereignty. Agreeing to rules does not stop you breaking those rules. Breaking the rules doesn't mean you can get away with breaking them, of course. Breaking them certainly doesn't mean you can deny the legal basis of those rules. But that doesn't mean you don't have the power to break them. 

To add insult to injury, in the case of Simmenthal II, national courts were told they had to set aside any national law that conflicted with European law. Judges that all their careers had understood their job was to apply British or Italian or Belgian law were now told they had to ignore it. 

If the European Court of Justice had not appropriated to itself, without any foundation in the Treaty, the right to overrule the democratically determined laws of the member states, the history of the EU would be very different. The UK might not be suffering a referendum that has empowered racists and endangered our economy. 

By claiming the power to overrule national law, the European Court of Justice had also opened the door for its terribly reasoning judgements in other areas of law to dominate member states; in particular in over-interpreting the rights of workers to move around the EU to stop any residual powers of member states to stop them. Who would have thought that 27 judges who had exercised free movement of labour (plus one Luxembourger) would approve of free movement of labour?

I appreciate it is moderately niche to dislike the EU because of the terrible reasoning of the Court. But I'm a law person, and it's sort of fundamental to my being. And the arrogance of the Court matches the arrogance of all of the institutions; the idea that the answer to any problem is more Europe. In the case of the Parliament, that being on a list a minority of people put a cross next to, often in protest votes, means that you are democratically accountable and the voice of the people.

The EU does not need to be undemocratic. As all laws have to pass the Council, which is made up of the democratically elected ministers of each Member State, including the UK, the idea that there is some "EU law" overruling UK law is nonsense; in the overwhelming majority of cases, EU law is UK law. But that is not at all how the institutions conceptualise EU law. To them it is a separate, "higher" body of law. 

Democracy exists when people decide that a certain number of their neighbours are permitted to have power over them. The question "who is my neighbour" is central to this. Democracy does not exist without the nation-state. Unless we feel a sense of "us", there is no consent to power, just imposition. If EU law is to be supreme, either EU law is law created by "us" (of course, in collaboration with others who call themselves "us") or it is not democratic. 

If I were starting the EU from scratch I would keep the product standards, workers' rights and all the rest; without them you don't have a genuine single market as countries compete on "non-market" factor. But I would heavily restrict the free movement of labour that has so damaged trust in the EU to countries that have reached a certain level of wealth (perhaps two thirds of the EU average). I would abolish the Commission and probably the Parliament, and keep only the Council. I would explicitly remove the powers the Court has claimed for itself.

I am not anti-European. I have studied and worked in other EU states and I have felt the benefits of interacting with people from all over Europe and the world. But students have been doing years abroad across the world for ages, and I could have got my job, and therefore the right to work, without the "free movement" as over-interpreted by the Court. I believe, too, in European solidarity. I follow the politics of other European countries avidly and I believe in supporting social democrats across Europe. I have friends from across Europe. There is such a thing as the "European social model", which I believe in fully, and "European culture", which, in its non-imperialistic guise, is pretty good.

I know that the EU will never carry out the reforms I would want if I were king of the Universe. So I am a Eurosceptic and I disagree with fundamental principles of the EU. 

But I'm voting for the UK to stay in the EU.

The choice on offer is not between my ideal EU and the current EU. It is between the current EU and nothing.

Sure, a deal will be struck. But the EU will continue, and we will be part of nothing.

Nothing means trade barriers, either technical or financial, between the UK and its biggest trading partners. Nothing means restrictions on our rights to work and study and retire in other European countries. Nothing means a Tory bonfire of workers' rights, not (just) because the Tories are ideologically committed to it, but because it will be the only way we can compete outside the EU. Nothing means xenophobia and racism winning. Nothing means Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. Nothing means a void where solidarity should be. Nothing means my friends being unwelcome in my country, and maybe having to leave.

The day after a vote to leave, the stock market will crash. The pound will crash, putting up prices and putting pressure on business profits. The week after, the first signs of recession will emerge. Projects will be cancelled, jobs will be lost. It's not Project Fear, it's common sense. When you put up barriers to trade, trade dies. Not all of it, not everywhere. But recessions are on an aggregate basis; and in any event, they create a vicious spiral until they are stopped. Job losses in one industry create losses in another and so on.

Debate can legitimately rage about the long term economic prospects of the UK after Brexit. It seems clear to me at least that an economy with fewer barriers will do better in the long term than one with more barriers. But you never know. However, it is quite frankly irrelevant. People will lose their jobs or lose their pay by the end of next week if we vote to leave. Prices will have gone up. More people will have found it more difficult to pay for everything next month as compared to last month. 

There can be nothing, not even the European Court of Justice, that can justify such self-harm. While having reservations about the principle of free movement of people, I have absolutely no problems having a Lithuanian or Romanian neighbour, because I am not racist. I certainly won't risk my job so that he can lose his.

I wish the EU was capable of genuine democratic reform. It isn't. I have and I will argue about the legal illiteracy of the ECJ. But that isn't enough to engage in the economic illiteracy of leaving the EU, even for a stubborn law nerd.

Against factions

I joined the Labour Party at the start of 2009. I joined because I agree with the aims and values of the Labour Party as expressed in clause IV of the Party Constitution. I joined because I wanted to end poverty and inequality scarring our country. I wanted to help build a society where hard work was rewarded. And I wanted to support a government that was making the right choices on the economy.

I have never been a member of another party, not the Green Party or the Socialist Workers Party or (God forbid) the Liberal Democrats. There's a reason for that. The Labour Party doesn't exist for me to fulfil my fantasies. It's not a pose that I strike or an identity I can swap like other people swap T-shirts.

It's the way I can play my part in improving people's lives.

You don't improve people's lives by joining a society or a group, or setting up a committee. You improve people's lives by joining together in a political party with others who share your principles, and winning government and putting those principles into action. If you don't think those other people share your principles, you don't have to be in the same party.

I've never joined Progress, Compass, or the LRC. There's a reason for that. They have central committees and policies and conferences. They look smell and sound like political parties. And I only want to be a member of one political party: the Labour Party. If these people want to form a political party, they have that right. They don't have the right to create the organisational structures of political parties and pretend to be Labour people.

I am a member of the Fabian Society, largely because of its reputation for neutrality and intelligent, open political discussion.  

But quite frankly, if you oppose academies, you have no place in Progress. If you support Trident, you're going to find the LRC a bit hostile. 

That's not how it ought to be.

I'd rather discuss across the Party spectrum about how we put our values into practice than have my views dictated by the limits of factionalism.

Because my views are complicated. And not just me. Most people in the country have a combination of right wing and left wing views. You can support higher taxes and lower immigration at the same time. The point of political parties is to put this complexity and diversity into some kind of framework, but it's not to get rid of it completely. 

It's a cliche to say the Labour Party is a broad church. But all political parties are broad churches. If they're not, then they're just sects. A party which thinks about everything the same way is dead. Because if we can't allow Labour people to challenge us, how will we ever allow the British people to challenge us? 

That's why I hate factions, and that's why I'm so concerned about people creating organisations based on whether they're on the 'Labour left' or the 'Labour right'. Sure, your best friends in the Labour party might all be one shade of red, but that doesn't mean you have to shut yourself away somewhere where you never hear an opposing view.

There's a reason why we have structures within the Labour Party where members can debate the best way forward. It means that we don't have groupthink, it means that we can debate openly. Members should be working within those structures rather than creating their own.

Obviously there will always be the need for groups focussing on particular policy areas, Young Labour, university Labour Clubs and the rest. But those aren't based on where you stand on an imaginary political spectrum.

I hate the phrase 'the Labour left'. We're all on the left. Our interpretation of that might differ. But we're in the party because we share common goals. Otherwise, we wouldn't be in the party.

No member of the Labour Party is an enemy of mine. Unless, that is, they make me an enemy of them. But I will always relish a victory over the Tories so much more than a victory over one of my own.

Can everyone in the Party say the same? That their goal is not to get one over on their comrades? Not to push people away from the Party? Not to get rid of people that don't completely agree.

I'm afraid the answer is no. And I'll be more afraid the more organisations like Momentum rise up. The more forums we have to talk only to ourselves and not be challenged. The more people see themselves as on the Labour left or Labour right than just Labour.

So, to everyone in the Labour Party, let's stick together. Let's debate together. Let's fight together. Let's win together. United but not uniform.

Let's get a beer together and raise a toast to Jeremy Corbyn. 

And Tony Blair. 

What now?

Yesterday I went to the Labour leadership announcement. I applied to go after the Jeremy Corbyn surge had become apparent because I thought it would be nice to mark the final and total defeat of Blairism in the Labour Party, and that it would be fun to indulge the little piece of me that still stands by naive leftism. 

It wasn't fun.

The overwhelming emotion I felt as I watched the results being read out was despair. And fear. Not fear for myself. I'm not one of the many party staffers about to lose their jobs. I'm not one of a whole generation of politicians whose careers are about to be brutally cut short. I have no interest in working in politics for the foreseeable future. I have a legal career to build.

If everything goes well in that (touch wood), I will be also be financially secure enough not to have to worry about permanent Tory government. I'll probably be more or less better off, in fact. I felt fear for the bottom 25% of our society most of all. I felt the most fear for the homeless people I saw by Victoria station walking away from the conference centre. The Tories don't care about them, or the people who can't afford a decent life even after working a full week. They don't need to care in order to stay in power. 

This isn't because they're bad people. It's because in a large number of cases they don't know that world at all, or because they think poverty is inevitable. They don't believe that the way the world is isn't the way it has to be, or they do believe that the state can't and shouldn't do much to change it. 

The 11.3 million people who voted for them are even less likely to be bad people. They're just not willing to sacrifice their own economic prospects for others. They put their own family above others. They want a strong NHS, and a caring society, and less inequality, but not, and never, at the expense of the British economy. I think they were factually wrong about Ed Miliband's Labour being dangerous for the economy. But if you genuinely thought that he would have made more people unemployed or more businesses go bust, I can't call you a bad person for voting for the party best placed to stop him.

If Jeremy Corbyn remains leader in 2020, more people will have concerns about Labour's economic competence. More people will vote Tory. They may do so more in sadness than joy, but by their own logic they will be perfectly reasonable to do so. The Labour Party will lose seats, not just fail to gain them, making it harder to win in 2025 and even 2030. Maybe Scotland will then go independent, making it harder to win in 2035 too.

And all the while the Tories will shrink the state, leaving people to starve (literally). They'll fragment our NHS. They'll get rid of the Human Rights Act. They'll end trade unionism in this country. They'll abandon all hope of stopping climate change. They'll let middle class parents set up schools for their kids, while other kids get their schools starved of resources. They'll leave poor areas to get poorer and rich areas to get richer, while letting local politicians take the blame. And at the end of it, the worst thing, they'll ensure that the principle that the state has a responsibility to the poorest people in our country has no place in Britain. Promising the contents of the landslide winning 1997 manifesto will be described as impossibly left wing. If Corbynites thought Tony Blair was too right wing, I have no idea how they'll describe the Labour manifesto needed to win in 2035.

That all flashed before my eyes during Jeremy Corbyn's acceptance speech. My head went in my hands a number of times. But there's no point wallowing in despair. Yesterday wasn't the end of the Labour Party. It was just the beginning of the end. Damage has been done but it's not yet fatal. We have to find a way to stop it from going all the way.

I think it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to convince the thousands of people who voted for Jeremy to understand the looming catastrophe. Even when it happens, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who will blame the right wing media, disloyal MPs or even Jeremy himself. Faith and irrational hope are impossible to kill.

But there has to be a way of reconciling that hope with reality. And there are some reasons to be hopeful among the gloom. Although a members-only ballot would obviously have had the same result on second preferences, the case remains that 50.4% of Labour Party members who voted did not have Corbyn as a first preference. That's an awful lot of people who are at the very least sceptical of Corbyn's ability to lead. That includes incredibly hardworking and talented long term activists who will not be walking away. And they will be watching and waiting and organising and hoping. The sensible wing of the party will not go away and shut up. 

However, no Labour Party member is an enemy of mine (unless they're anti-Semitic or sexist or whatever). Some accounts of what the left of the party did in the 70s and 80s are truly terrifying, and I hope the more excitable of Corbyn's supporters move forward in a civilised, pleasant and open way. Factionalism might be fun, but it only ends up in people who should be friends falling out. If I think a friend of mine has made a horrible mistake, that doesn't have to mean we stop being friends.

Corbyn has some great and intelligent people on his team. They're realists (except for that little thing), they're hard-working and they're tough-minded. As long as they turn their fire on the Tories and not Labour members, they could be a formidable force for opposition. A lot of them understand the huge mountain to climb even if, unlike me, they have faith that it can be overcome.

So how do we move forward, together, in unity? Art the grassroots level, we carry on much as we did before. For example, nothing is going to stop me getting out on the doorsteps to try to get Sadiq Khan elected as Mayor of London, and I hope we have a lot more volunteers to help with that cause than we did four years ago. Many of us across the party will unite to stop the economic disaster of Brexit. There are other elections in London in 2018 and 2019, and if it comes to it and I'm available, I'll gladly volunteer to be shouted at and abused by voters in marginal seats in 2020 to try and elect more Labour MPs and have a Labour government. I disagree with Corbyn on quite a bit, but I agree with him so much more than I agree with George Osborne, who I'll do my best to stop.

Obviously the new leaders of the Labour Party have to decide their own political strategy. But this is how I'd go forward: I'd take the advice of Lynton Crosby, who won the Tories their surprise victory. Crosby said 'get the barnacles off the boat': the way to win in politics is sticking to a single clear message and repeating it over and over. Ed Miliband had about 10 different message during his time as leader, confusing people, pissing people off on the right and on the left. 

Corbyn is a man of principle, but that doesn't mean he has to keep shouting about every last one of them. Although the delivery wasn't great, his acceptance speech was better than I expected, because it had some clear messages. I think Corbyn should lead on a single idea that he stated in his speech: poverty isn't inevitable. He isn't going to pitch to the middle ground, but he can appeal to their better instincts. He can use his position to highlight the horrific effects Tory policy is having on the poorest and most vulnerable. He can call them our on their bullshit without any reservations. It probably won't work, because middle class voters will see the same old Labour Party talking on typical left wing issues and they'll zone out. But maybe, just maybe, it will get through to some of them and muddy Osborne's attempt to present the Tories as cuddly.

But looking at Corbyn's campaign and his acceptance speech, there are a hell of a lot of barnacles to get off the boat. Obviously the Trade Union Bill is disastrous, and we'll oppose it in Parliament as we should, but we really don't need a name check for the Bakers' Union. "Social cleansing" is fairly offensive to people who went through actual cleansing in genocides all over the world. A positive message on refugees does not have to mean promoting immigration as an unequivocal good. Phrases like 'we are one world' and 'it doesn't have to be unfair' are fine, but they are no substitute for demonstrating you actually have ideas outside being nice to people.

Full throated opposition to austerity is necessary, but promoting the idea of printing or borrowing loads of money is an unnecessary barnacle. If you must, stick to the old answer of taxing the rich more. Have strong policy on climate change but no need to bring it centre stage. Same goes for nationalising the railways and energy companies. It's fine to have it there as policy, don't make people think you just want to nationalise everything that moves. Oppose Trident in Parliament, but don't cause a huge split in the PLP. Promise to abolish tuition fees, but don't make it the core of your offer to young people.

Corbyn probably cares most about foreign policy, but it can't be what he focusses on as leader. In particular, he can't give any impression that his foreign policy boils down to being anti-America and pro-Putin. No socialist should back the homophobic and imperialist occupant of the Kremlin. He does have to publicly and quickly distance himself from some of his stranger associations. Hamas are murderers, not friends.

Just say this: the Tory economic policy is wrong, destructive, unnecessary, hurts the poor and worsens inequality. Say it again and again. Provide evidence. Tell stories. Hammer it into people's brains until they get bored of it. 

Although many talented people are leaving the frontbench, Corbyn has a huge opportunity to start from scratch. He can appoint people on the basis of their talent and communication skills, without needing to take into account their service to him. Too many people in the last Shadow Cabinet were terrible communicators and I hope they go too.

As for the future? The next election is a long way away. The priority has to provide a strong opposition to this government. I think Corbyn can help to restore faith in politics and faith in the Labour Party for some of the disillusioned. But he has to know he can't take this through to a general election. To be blunt, he has too much history. He's said too much. He's stood on too many platforms with unsavoury people. The left of the party should take their opportunity to mould the party as they want, but then they have to accept the changes they've made and not fall to hubris. They need to find a more saleable candidate on their side for 2020, if they're going to have the slightest chance of winning. They're trying the impossible - to move the centre ground from opposition - and they need to prevent irrelevant issues from holding them back.

As for everyone else in the Labour Party, they need to rediscover the virtues of speaking plainly, directly, positively, and inspiringly. I can think of a few people who might be able to. People should serve in the Shadow Cabinet while fully realising that it opens them up to Tory attacks in the future. So it's up to them. 

It was a terrible realisation this morning to realise no party in Britain really represents me any more. I want a party which is cautious and sensible in economic and foreign policy, which understands the need for important reforms without taking too many risks, but which doesn't accept people going hungry in one of the richest countries in the world. A party which focuses on economic equality above fringe issues (which rules out the Lib Dems by the way). A party which wants to govern and understands that to govern is to make choices, to govern is not easy, and that to govern means not being able to achieve everything you want, but that it's worth it to deliver on your priorities (again ruling out the Lib Dems).

The left of the party might think that was the case before Corbyn, but they had the Green Party, the Charles Kennedy Lib Dems, TUSC, and a million other little groups to join. No one made them join the Labour Party. I have nowhere else to go than the Labour Party: long term opposition might be terrible but it's better than permanent opposition. I have lived to see the Labour Party achieve great things in government, and I'm lucky to be young enough that I'll probably see a Labour government achieve great things again. 

I only hope Jeremy Corbyn lives long enough to see another Labour government. I trust that he does want one and that he's self aware enough to know that after he's achieved what he wants as leader, the only way to achieve that is for him to stand down. I don't hold out much hope that Corbyn's supporters will get it soon. But the terrifying thing is that for all of us, for the whole country, the only person who can save the Labour Party now is Jeremy Corbyn.

Things the Labour right don't get

There are some people who can't understand why Jeremy Corbyn is inspiring thousands of people, especially young people who grew up under an elected and electable Labour government. They say that we've seen what happens when you follow the Blair playbook (you win) and what happens when you don't (you don't). As such, they can't understand why anyone would think someone so far left of Blair should be elected leader. The even bigger thing they can't understand is why anyone would think Corbyn is electable. So this is an attempt to explain some things.

As it happens, I don't think Jeremy Corbyn, if elected Labour leader, will win a general election. I put his probability of winning at less than 1%. I want the Labour Party to win elections, because for everything it does that I don't like, there will be many more things it does that I like. The reverse is the case for the Tory Party, which is why I'm not a Tory. (It is possible to support some things the Tories do without being a Tory, by the way.) I put Andy Burnham's chance of winning an election (by which I mean becoming Prime Minister) at 25%, Yvette Cooper's chances at 33% and Liz Kendall's chances at 40%. Obviously, anything could happen in five years, but that basically explains the order I'll be voting in.

Why won't Jeremy Corbyn win? He has past and current associations too easily attacked by the press, he has deeply unpopular positions on defence, immigration and welfare, he can be painted as economically incompetent on the deficit, he actually does want to raise taxes on the middle class, who vote, he doesn't look like a world leader, he's too old and has never held a position of authority.

Not only will he not gain seats like mine in Finchley that we need for a majority, I have yet to hear an explanation of how we keep seats like Westminster North, Hampstead and Kilburn, Birmingham Edgbaston and Gedling under Jeremy. We'll pile up even more votes in seats we already hold and lose overall. In addition, although the SNP is much more than an anti-austerity vote, why would Scots vote for an English anti-austerity party when they can keep their Scottish one?

If you genuinely think Jeremy has the best chance of winning an election, vote for him. But if there's any doubt, the risk is so high that please, please don't.

But there are enough people lecturing Corbyn supporters out there. And they should face up to some things.

New Labour failed. It wasn't just the war in Iraq and his dubious employment after becoming PM that made the generation now backing Corbyn hate Blair, as disasterous as those things are. It's because he entered office in 1997 as the tribune of hope and in the end failed by 2007 to make Britain a more equal place, especially in terms of opportunity. It remains the case after 13 years of Labour - Labour! - government that where you are born determines where you'll end up. The problem of stagnant wages didn't start with austerity or recession, but in 2004. The productivity problem our country has has its roots in the New Labour government.

It's insufficient to say that 10 or 13 years is too little to fundamentally change the country. By 1990, Thatcher had utterly transformed Britain's economy and political culture. It's ridiculous too  to blame the recession for failure. I met too many people in the 2010 campaign who looked at their lives and saw only poverty after 13 years of Labour government, not just the last 2. The Tories were right about Broken Britain, even if their solutions are terribly misguided. In 2010, there were too many people rotting away on council estates or seaside towns. There were too many middle class people, too, whose wages were going nowhere and whose cost of living was going up.

You can point to higher spending if you want, but people going to A & E for 4 hours still feels like a long time. You can celebrate Blair for making this country more socially liberal, when the whole world has. It was easy for Cameron to embrace gay rights, but we didn't shift Tory policy a jot on the economy. If people are still going hungry on your difficult to enforce minimum wage, what's the point? To be sure, I'd rather live in 2010 than 1997, but that's not much of an accolade.

People don't vote for people who were in power and don't make their lives any better. We were caught in the worst of both worlds: poor people didn't see us helping them and middle class people saw us helping only the poor. The defenders of Blair also have to account for his ultra liberal policies on immigration and his Euromania, which saw our traditional core vote abandon us to the Tories in 2005 and 2010 and to UKIP in 2015.

Then there are the obvious issues the left have with the New Labour era. PFI has left us with huge debts. While the academy program saw some success, it also saw creationists and Islamists set up schools. I'm not vehemently anti tuition fees, but they did seem like a strange priority for a Labour government. And yes, I struggle to trust the judgment of someone who thought events leading to hundreds of thousands dead and the continuing destabilisation of the Middle East were a good idea. And the worst thing is these were emphatically vote losers rather than vote winners. Blair went into Iraq knowing it would drive Labour members and voters away. He didn't put power over principle in that case.

There were huge advantages in having a Labour government in terms of just having people who care about less popular issues of social justice taking them up and gaining success. But it should be easy to understand why people like me, who were 5 in 1997 and 18 in 2010, see Blair with more than a little bit of scepticism, or even downright hatred. Our formative political experiences were anti-Labour, on Iraq, on tuition fees, on civil liberties.

People like me grew up in an unjust country despite a Labour government. The fact that things have got worse under a Tory government isn't a consolation or an argument against that. This Tory government is so bad, so economically, socially and morally illiterate that I want it gone at all costs. But can you blame people for arguing that there's not much point in getting a government just a little bit less bad than this one? Incidentally, it's worth pointing out to the right of the party that "you're all the same" feeds into the lack of economic competence narrative. If I'm choosing between two identical parties, I'd rather choose the one with a leader who can eat sandwiches and a team who have actually managed the economy for five years than an untested weirdo. There has to be some added value in order for people to switch.

I don't want to trash the last Labour government because it did great things and, in particular, managed the economy well, before and during the recession. But people on the right of the party have to understand that the mistakes that were made weren't clerical errors. They cost the party support on all sides, and it will be a long time before those people are won back.

Ed Miliband wasn't seen as left wing by people on the left. He signed up to austerity, he had mugs saying "controls on immigration." People on the left were as unexcited by him as anybody else. The fundamental problem with Ed was that people didn't see him as competent in general, and economically competent in particular. I heard many complaints on the doorstep about Labour being too timid: not as many as complaining about welfare or immigration or the economy, which is ultimately why I've taken the position I have, but enough.

The next Labour leader has an impossible task. It's not just winning back votes from the Tories and UKIP, it's holding onto those people who were attracted to the party under Ed, or who voted Labour as the best of a bad bunch. It's not entirely unreasonable to see Jeremy Corbyn as being able to do that. I think it's unlikely to work, but the people who lost 8% of the voting public between 1997 and 2005 (let's please have the argument about whose votes they were in the first place, why Labour won in 1997 and all that jazz, I dare you) have to look hard at themselves, really hard, and understand that it's them, and not just the left, that are responsible for Labour's current predicament in Scotland, Wales, and across England.

Why I'm supporting Liz Kendall

This isn't easy to write: I've changed my mind. I'm voting for Liz Kendall for Labour leader and probably putting Jeremy Corbyn last.

On 7th May, the Labour party lost. We lost in Scotland. We lost in England. We lost in too many parts of Wales. We lost in the Midlands. We lost in the South. We lost in outer London. We lost in the suburbs. We lost in the small towns. We lost in some of the big towns too. We came third to the Tories and UKIP in seats we once held with huge majorities. We lost old people. We lost middle earners. We didn't win enough young people. We lost 8 seats to the Tories, which should never have happened after 5 years in opposition. We lost.

There are reasons to believe things aren't as bad as some of the doom mongers in the Labour party think. After all the Tories are only 6.6% ahead in the popular vote. They have a majority of 12. And, despite our unconvincing bluster against it in this election, we can still do a deal with the SNP if the time comes. 

But we lost. And on the night of 7th May, I realised we have to do whatever it takes to win again. For the people who have to pay the bedroom tax, who are working three jobs to feed their kids, who are struggling on unpaid internships, who are spending more and more on rent. For the people who are going to be deliberately plunged into poverty by the Budget. The 7th May radicalised me. 

Of course, a Labour government has to fight for those people, and importantly, since Tony Blair did this too little, it has to shout about it so that people value the achievements of a Labour government and don't dismiss us as having done nothing for them. We also have to realise that it's what we did in government, including under Tony Blair, that has left us in the mess we're in, in addition to complacent Labour parties up and down the country.

But there can be no no-go areas for the Labour party. There can be nothing we are not willing to change in order to win back people who didn't vote for us. We have to realise that the people who vote are not the same as the people on the electoral register. They are older and richer. There is no point in chasing after people who don't vote: if they come out and vote for us, great, but inspiring non-voters is a non-starter. 

Economic credibility is the first priority, and it has to be on the terms the people of this country set for us. If they want us to admit to pouring buckets of money of the white cliffs of Dover, we have to be prepared to admit to it. The people of this country who think about the Labour party either think about it as a gang of Westminster insiders who love immigrants and benefits claimants and the EU, or, and this is probably the majority opinion, couldn't care at all about the Labour Party. 

I look at the Twitter warriors trying to get the Labour Party to oppose benefits cuts in disbelief. No one cares! The Labour Party has 35% of the seats! It can do nothing about the benefits cuts and can make no one listen about them! Grow up: the only way we can make a difference is by putting pressure on a Labour government, and the only way we can get a Labour government is by getting people who didn't vote for us to give us a hearing.

The problem with the Liz Kendall campaign is a serious one. The only people who seem to have jumped on the Lizwagon are the people who never believed in Ed and willed him to fail. I don't like those people. No one who believed in the policies we believed in and fought for in May likes those people. I agree with Andy Burnham that the 2015 manifesto was fantastic, and I burn with anger at anyone who seeks to disown it. We need to think in terms of 2015+, not just put it all in the dustbin, even though there is a huge amount we can add.

But I struggle to understand how only a tiny number of people saw those results on the 7th, saw the Tories gain Gower (!!!) and were immediately radicalised. I have to believe it isn't just Harriet Harman, someone on the left who has fought for progress and change all of her career, who was shocked by finding out where the British people actually are, not where we wanted them to be, and has resolved to fight to move the party there.

I wanted to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, to help him get to about 20-25% in the first round, to show those Blairites that there are people in the Labour Party who are not prepared to compromise on principles, that fighting the neoliberal consensus matters, that spending billions of pounds on nuclear weapons when kids or their parents are going hungry is ridiculous, that privatising public services is not the way to improve them, that fighting injustice wherever it is found, here or abroad, matters. 

And it does. 

But I see Corbyn's supporters saying things like 'Jeremy will abolish tuition fees' or 'Jeremy will end austerity' or 'Jeremy will repeal anti-union laws' and I think, no. No he won't. Because he won't be elected Prime Minister. Not completely because of his policies admittedly: largely because he'll be 71 in 2020 and he doesn't actually want to be Prime Minister. We have to stop thinking about leadership candidates and their policies as if we're voting on the actual direction of the Labour government elected in 2020. Because unless we elect the right leader, we won't have a Labour government in 2020. Internal fights, passing resolutions and making speeches don't do a damn thing.

I don't agree with everything Liz Kendall has said. Free schools are a disaster. But obviously, as Liz said and as the people of this country want, we won't close schools that are doing well (as long as the corollary of that is that we will close schools that aren't doing well). I disagree on defence but I respect that the British people probably will always feel differently and we really need to reclaim patriotism. I do think she needs to moderate her pro-EU leanings, though a strong line one way or another on the EU question is better than fudge.

But what does Liz Kendall really want and what does she stand for? Early years intervention. A high productivity economy. A stronger role for workers and trade unions in the private sector. Reform of tax reliefs. A welfare state that does things with people, not just to them, and doesn't just throw money at problems without tackling their causes. Devolution of power to the lowest possible level. Under the influence of Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt, it's even possible she'll support electoral reform. 

"A stronger economy and a fairer society" should not have been a Lib Dem slogan at the last election: it will be central to Liz's offer in the next election, because Britain does not have a strong economy and does not have a fair society and we need to fix both, because the Tories are doing nothing to fix the real challenges this country faces. Bringing back fox hunting and starving the BBC of funds don't count.

To be fair, this is an agenda Andy and Yvette can and will get behind for themselves. I was particularly impressed with Andy's speech today on changing Labour's economic policy. Although for various reasons I think Andy is the weakest of the candidates, this was exactly what a Labour leader should be saying. But Andy and Yvette won't focus as intensely on neutralising the negative impressions people have of Labour. They won't be able to demonstrate a clean break from the past. 

This has been demonstrated by the welfare row this week. The British people support restricting child tax credit to the first two children, because they believe people should think about whether they can support having large families before they have them, and they do not believe that the taxpayer should support them to have large families. 

Like too much of Tory policy, this is a total gimmick for electoral reasons and not public policy reasons (incidentally, a good way of opposing the Tories is highlighting the way they are wasting the time of Parliament and the civil service). It will save next to no money and hurt vulnerable people. 

But, if it is popular, the Labour Party has to not oppose it. It's not a choice we would make if we were in government. It's something we will probably seek to reverse or mitigate if we ever get back into government. Unlike with the bedroom tax, we shouldn't make such a reversal a key part of our 2020 election campaign. But, although there can be no doubt it's on the list of different choices we would make, right now, opposing it does nothing for our electoral chances (because no one is listening) and it probably harms them by opposing something the British people support. Liz understands this.

Liz Kendall is Labour through and through. She has been a member since she was old enough to join. She has spent her life working on health policy and is dedicated to the NHS. She wants to rescue trade unions from the hole they've dragged themselves into. In her working life, she has always worked to help vulnerable people. If Liz Kendall was a Tory, she could always have joined the Tory party. You don't dedicate your life to a political cause without believing in it. You don't bump your head at the age of 14 and think that for the rest of your life left means right and red means blue.

She understands Middle England because she was born into it. She understands aspiration because she's lived it. She speaks like an ordinary person because she is an ordinary person from an ordinary background who has achieved great things. She's also clearly a highly intelligent person, and she had a lot of guts to stand and hold her nerve while competitors fell away.

In addition to economic credibility, who our leader is matters. We found that out to our cost in May. Our leader has, above all, to project confidence and strength. And Liz Kendall has both of those in spades. Some people who have worked for and with her say that it was a difficult experience, because she is tough, because she knows what she wants and will stop at nothing to get it. Stubbornness is not always the right thing. But Liz's Shadow Cabinet will not be full of yes men and women - they've learnt the dangers of that after giving in to Ed Miliband time and again - and they will resist Liz and if necessary, depose her. Similarly, Labour Party members will be suspicious of her and hold her feet to the fire. 

But strength will be needed to fight the hard battles that need to be fought to get the Labour Party back in winning position. And the British public will be able to pick up on that strength, a strength that no one saw in Ed Miliband. It is, for that matter, the strength and steel the Scottish people see in Nicola Sturgeon (and the strength that will be needed to call her out on her rubbish).

It helps that unlike Andy and Yvette, who have largely always been followers, Liz has actually been a proper leader as director of two charities. Ed Miliband noticeably struggled with jumping from being a follower to being a leader.

There are risks. Liz is inexperienced. Unlike David Miliband, she has never hobnobbed with world leaders. Her media skills are very underdeveloped, and were the main reason I held back on supporting her. She can come across well, but she can also come across as too intense and not relaxed enough. I can't yet see her standing outside number 10. But, again, people said the same thing about Thatcher. If the message is right, the messenger can be trained. Hopefully.

After all, we said the same thing about Ed, and he shrank in the role rather than developing. But luckily, we won't be making the same mistake twice. If the British people don't take to Liz, she will be out before you know it.

I really hope Liz wins. I hope that Yvette is her Shadow Chancellor and Andy her Shadow Home Secretary. I hope that her team gets their act together and stop antagonising everyone, being mean and petty and small-minded. Think big. Show how Liz Kendall would fight and win a general election. Be serious, and don't try to attract attention with gimmicks. Don't sell Liz as the candidate she isn't.

But I'm terrified they've annoyed too many people already. For every person like me who's been won round by Liz, there must be ten who have been put off by her supporters. Obviously we'd have a chance at winning in 2020 with Andy or Yvette. Except in Scotland, 2015 was just an ordinary election which one party lost and one party won, nothing more than that. 

Nevertheless, I'd ask all Labour members and supporters to think back to 7th May, and be scared. Be scared that you'll feel that way again in 5 years' time. Or 10 years' time. Is it worth taking the risk that you'll feel that way again? That you'll spend even longer seeing a lost generation, a smug gang of rich boys pumping out policies that you hate, no power to improve anyone's lives or make this country a better place? 

For me, Liz is the only glimmer of hope that we don't have to feel this emptiness and rage and sadness again in 5 years. Please think very carefully when you get your ballot paper, and consider voting for her. 

First thoughts on the Labour leadership

I am genuinely undecided on who should be the next leader of the Labour Party, the next deputy leader and Labour's candidate for Mayor of London. I would like to be certain, because I'm not used to being uncertain and because elections are fun and I'd like to be on a side, preferably a winning one.

The first thing to say is where I stand on the Labour Party spectrum: I'm a Brownite. By that, I mean I think the primary focus of the Labour Party yesterday, today and tomorrow should be on the economy. I think we win when we prove that we can make the country more prosperous, like we did with 10 years of continuous growth under Gordon Brown as Chancellor. We have to be pro-business, pro-entrepreneurship and pro-wealth creation, we should seek to keep taxes as low as possible and not put them up for the sake of it. We have to focus on how we create the jobs of the future, and have a proper industrial strategy. 

What we don't have to do is waste hours, days and months going on about public sector 'reform'. I'm not against reform in principle. In particular, we can democratise public services without privatising or fragmenting them. But it's not even that I think increased fragmentation rather than coordination, especially in the NHS, is both inefficient and dangerous, that I oppose making it core to our offer. It's that it's simply not a vote-winner. 

At best, people are ambivalent or don't care about public service reform; at worst, they're actively hostile to change, especially, as we've seen over the past 5 years, in relation to schools. (Outside some pockets). It's true that people believe "what matters is what works", which is why they're not receptive to scaremongering about "NHS privatisation", but, as Andy Burnham says, generally speaking, "what works is the public NHS". Even the Tories have grasped this: they're promising a "7 day NHS" that they'll impose from the centre. No one is complaining about "statism" from the Tories.

So that's where I stand. But I'm trying desperately not to be factional, because that's how we ended up with Ed Miliband. Even in 2010, however, if David Miliband had overpowered me with his brilliance, I would have overlooked him being a "Blairite". I don't care what the leader we elect believes, I care that he or she can and will win. I care what the British people will think of them. Quite frankly, the important question is whether they can eat a bacon sandwich without looking like a buffoon.

For me, this comes down to the "blink test": can you close your eyes and imagine the person on the steps of No 10? That's what will be at the forefront of my mind when deciding which candidate to be completely devoted to. Right now, and I could be wrong, the only candidate that passes the blink test is Yvette Cooper. 

This leadership election is depressingly like the last one. If Yvette Cooper had run last time, she would have been prime minister right now. If the unions and the media had taken Andy Burnham seriously last time, so would he (maybe). (That they were right, or at least more right than various Milibands, last time, does not mean they're right this time) It's a terrible shame that Tristram Hunt, Dan Jarvis and Chuka Umunna have decided not to run. It's an even greater shame that Labour MPs appear to have overlooked Mary Creagh, who actually looks and sounds like a real person and has the advantage of not being part of the spadocracy.

Like David Miliband, the wrong people are supporting Liz Kendall. (By the wrong people, I mean only that they think New Labour was an intellectual project. Many of them are wonderful, dedicated, funny and attractive, often all at once). Unlike David Miliband, Liz Kendall, despite being a complete wonk, knows how to speak non-wonk. She gives straight answers to questions, she's confident, and she's dynamic. She would demonstrate dramatically that Labour had changed and she would drag Labour kicking and screaming into the 21st century. She's a deep thinker with bags of ideas. She would lead an active opposition, rather than a hesitant one, and she would terrify the Tories. As her slogan says, she would be a fresh start, drawing a line under the 1997-2010 government.

But. I have serious doubts. Does she speak and act like a prime minister? Like a leader of the whole country? My gut tells me she looks like a great reform Health Secretary, and not more than that.

Secondly, she says her priority is public service reform. At a time when we should be regaining trust on the economy, this is misguided. As I said above, there's nothing wrong with reform, and I like her focus on early years education. (Having said that, no way to free schools: not just because they're a waste of money, but also because, outside the parents setting them up, they're not especially popular). But we really need to be focusing on the economy. What does Liz Kendall think about company law reform? Or tax reform? Or industrial relations? She has to, and we have to, do better than talking about "aspiration" to regain a hearing on the economy. I hope, if she wins, she puts people who actually worked in the private sector front and centre of the Labour team. 

Does she actually care about inequality of wealth and power in the private sector itself? After all, most people's lives revolve around the private sector. If you spend your entire life thinking about health policy, it's understandable you don't think about the private sector, but it's vital to talking to people in a language they understand.

The same, sadly, goes for Andy Burnham. His moaning about the NHS for four years has not endeared him to me, and has probably coloured what the British people think of him too. I think he has the capacity to talk about business, and aspiration more generally, but he didn't do a particularly good job as shadow education secretary, so I just don't know. He does normal so much better than Ed Miliband. He's the best communicator, and I think a lot of people would relate to him. He would inject passion into the Labour Party. He's most likely not to throw what was a good manifesto in the bin. Unlike Ed Miliband, we could raise him on the doorstep without shrugging and looking at the floor.

And yet. And yet. There's this sense in which he feels like a student politician, happy to complain and less happy to lead. Can he do well in small Midlands towns? He looks too much like he's about to cry a lot, which is hardly getting across the competence message we really need. And all that stuff about the 'heart of Labour' just seems so 50s. Or 30s. Or American.

So Yvette should be the happy medium. She certainly gives off an air of competence, and she's very experienced. She's going to focus on the important things, being pro-business, but also looking at improving family life and gender equality. If she's a little boring, maybe that's what we need. Certainly the team behind her, including Liz and Andy, can inject more excitement and particularly ideas, but for a party so far behind on competence, boring might just do the trick.

But I wonder if she's just too rehearsed, whether she can give as good as she'll get from David Cameron and Boris Johnson. We're going to need massive swings at the next election, maybe we need someone who will give people more of a reason to get out and vote. Right now it feels as if she's been a bit complacent: hoping to get the votes of people who want a female leader without planning for another credible female candidate emerging. She needs to show a bit more oomph.

Right now, though, she's getting my vote, if not my support. But I don't feel comfortable about it. I feel like the race will end up being between Andy and Liz, because, like in 2010, the right and left of the party will get tribal about it. Yvette will end up where her husband was, third. And if there's one thing I really want, it's to back a winner. Oh well.

At the very least, I'll be happy with any of these candidates - all of them would do better than Ed Miliband, even if it remains to be seen whether they'll do well enough.

What I am certain about is that apocalyptic warnings about what will happen if one candidate or another wins are not helpful. Andy Burnham is not going to lurch to the left. He is not a Scouse Ed Miliband. If he's a prettier Ed Miliband, the value of being prettier is not to be discounted. But he's a sensible, experienced person who was involved in New Labour from the beginning and knows how to win. Liz Kendall is not going to privatise the NHS, even if she wanted to, for the very simple reason that Labour MPs are still Labour MPs and wouldn't let her. She's also not going to be a slave to big business. Yvette Cooper can probably learn how to get bloody lively. And after our experiences with Ed and Gordon, we're not going to let an under-performing leader carry on

I'm probably going to vote for candidates that won't do well in the deputy leadership and Mayoral selection as well, though I'm more certain with those.

For the deputy leadership, I'm leaning towards Ben Bradshaw: he's a good personality and communicator and seems to be doing something right in Exeter. Of course, it'll probably boil down to Tom Watson vs Stella Creasy in which case my vote goes to Tom: I used to rate Stella, until I saw her come out with the biggest load of wonkspeak ever on the Sunday Politics last week. Saying nothing in an amiable way is not enough to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Tom Watson is, at least, in every way, a heavyweight. I've never rated Caroline Flint as a communicator as much as some other people have, and Angela Eagle is deeply deeply boring.

I'm supporting David Lammy for Mayor: I'm most certain about that. Since leaving the frontbench, he's consistently been an interesting thinker, especially about social exclusion. He's relatable when he speaks and I think he'd be a good representative for London: there are few doubts about his competence. I think Diane Abbott is massively underestimated, especially in terms of whether she can win: after all, Boris won and Londoners are likely to support a free thinker, especially since they don't think the Mayor has a lot of power. The difference between Diane and Boris is that Diane will actually use the power she has, for the benefit of the poorest Londoners.

Anyway, Tessa Jowell and Sadiq Khan are the frontrunners, because they've been planning it for years,and because they've sewn up support from the establishment of their respective factions, so I'll probably have to decide between them. Sadiq strikes me as exceptionally boring: Tessa has so much more oomph: with her oomph and experience I have no doubt she'll win and do a good job as Mayor, even if I don't think she's as popular among the public as she thinks she is.

I'm sorry to have called people boring. It's nothing personal. I believe most of all that the collective is more important than the individual, so the policy platform that we have and whether we win will be the product of work of so many more people than the leaders we elect. That makes the personal charisma of the candidates even more important. We really shouldn't judge them by their policies, which will be decided by the policy process, but by how they'll sell those policies to the country/city. So if they're boring, that's a problem.

Come what may, it's going to be a long summer. Lots of things will be said by the candidates and their supporters, many enlightening, most idiotic. I'd like to know the views of the candidates on so many things: housing, climate change, Trident, etc. At the same time, I'd like to decide early so I can get stuck in to one campaign or other: I haven't got much else on this summer yet. But what your gut says matters too, and my gut says Yvette for leader, Bradshaw for deputy, Lammy for mayor. Anyone fancy convincing me not to trust my gut?

Why we lost

The Labour Party's gone down to a brutal defeat. Many of us expected that we wouldn't be the largest party; I don't think anyone really believed it could be as bad as this. Lots of people will come up with lots of reasons why it happened: I just needed to vent.

It's way too simplistic to say we were too left wing or too right wing. People just don't think in those terms. We had lots of good policies on lots of subjects. Polls repeatedly showed that the ideas we put in our manifesto had popular backing: freezing energy prices and controlling rent, reversing the millionaire's tax cut, stopping the spread of unpaid internships, getting rid of the bedroom tax.

I will get one "right wing" snark out of the way: the bedroom tax and zero hours contracts affect a tiny number of people compared to the total number of voters. I met a lady, an owner occupier, who said that as someone who wasn't poor and wasn't rich, Labour had nothing to offer her. We never really worked on our offer for people who don't really need government help, and that cost us in the face of Conservative smears.

That doesn't mean that we lost the election because we were too left wing. There's nothing wrong with left wing policies (there's no way we lost Gower because of the mansion tax) as long as you have a proper offer for the middle class as well. 

I think the main reason we lost was because of a failure of communication, a failure to have a coherent narrative and a failure to inspire the right people.

Towards the close of poll last night, a woman asked me why she should vote Labour. I eventually reeled off a list of our policies and I think (I hope) I convinced her to vote Labour. But it took me a while to think of what to say. There was no 'retail offer' that could just trip off the tongue.

I don't think people vote for policies. I think they vote based on their gut feelings and values. Clearly, the driving emotion behind the Conservative vote was fear. We never got that the fear that drove people to vote Tory was perfectly rational. The last time Labour was in office, we did have an economic crash. We did have a massively increased deficit. Can you blame the British people for being afraid that we'd do it again?

The Tories had one message, the economic recovery. The numbers were on their side. I've lost count of the amount of times I had to tell people that an economic recovery that arrives three years too late and still leaves working people with lower wages isn't something that should be rewarded. I've lost count of the amount of times I tried to ask people what the long term economic plan actually comprised.

We failed to come up with a countervailing message of fear, and we failed to have a strong enough message of hope for the majority of people. Of course, if you were disabled or on low pay or benefits, you had and have so much to fear from a Tory victory. But the majority?

We tried to scare people on the NHS. But I think this failed for a number of reasons: many problems in the NHS go back to the Labour government, we failed to explain the damage the Health and Social Care Act had done, and how it related to ordinary patients, while the NHS affects lots of people, many people won't experience it in the same all-encompassing way as they do "the economy", and I think the Tory message that you can't have a good NHS without a good economy got through. It's fine for Labour to say we'll protect the NHS, but we had no way to counter people's scepticism.

If ever in doubt or challenged, Labour politicians reached for the comfort blanket of the NHS. This distracted from the consistent narrative that we needed.

Our narrative was, I think, that Britain doesn't work for working people. That could have worked: after all, many working people are struggling, even though it would have to come up against people's natural cynicism about what government can actually do to raise their wages (past the minimum wage) and improve their working lives. But it wasn't consistently stated, and our policies didn't tie into the narrative. The 'better plan' stuff also failed to tie into the narrative: what opposition party doesn't claim to have a better plan?

An opposition party needs momentum and excitement to overcome the natural instinct to stick to the status quo. Quite frankly, we didn't have it. Every political party needs to answer the question: if you didn't exist, would we need you? We'll always need the Tories, a party which, in the mind of the ordinary voter, exists to keep things ticking along nicely. But the question of why we need Labour needs to be answered again and again. Otherwise you might as well vote Tory - at least they won't mess it up. We didn't give a compelling reason why Britain desperately needed Labour.

Lots of Labour campaigners will disagree that there was no momentum: but the poster campaigns and the huge numbers of volunteers in London especially and probably in other places tricked us into thinking we had it. 

This election is probably going to make us realise that the 'ground game' is a bit of a paper tiger. In the last election, we saved a fair number of seats we thought we were going to lose, but I think Labour people confused the community activism of long standing incumbent MPs like Andrew Smith and Gisela Stuart with an impressive GOTV operation that could work in target seats. 

We didn't win Bermondsey and lose Finchley because one had more volunteers - they both had a formidable number. It was just that one opponent was a Lib Dem and the other was a Tory, and nationally the Tories had a good night and the Lib Dems didn't.

The biggest reason there was little excitement behind a Labour government was that it would be led by Ed Miliband. People like me who supported Ed in the leadership election have to realise that we contributed to a Conservative victory. It hurts worse than anything, but it's true. If our message was that working people are getting a rough deal, the worst possible messenger was someone who sounded like he'd never done a day's work in his life. I have serious doubts about whether David Miliband could have won, but certainly we must have lost some of the tightest seats because people voted on who looked more like a Prime Minister.

I'm sorry to all the people who are going to lead worse lives, maybe even die, over the next five years, as a result of Ed Miliband's inferiority complex and people who wanted to settle scores from the New Labour era.

I'm proud of all the people who contributed to what I felt was a wonderful policy prospectus. It was the work of so many people over the years, and not just Ed. Now we're going to have a leadership election. No leader can undermine the grassroots efforts of Labour Party members to put issues like affordable housing and low pay on the agenda. But we need to choose a leader who looks like a Prime Minister, who is a good communicator, who inspires confidence in people, and has a story which fits the narrative we want to present in five years time. Because not electing that person as leader really will take the issues we care about off the agenda for longer than the next five years, and prolong the suffering of the people our party represents.