New: The Socialist Campaign Group of MPs has released a list of asks for the next Labour leader - A Manifesto to Save Labour. Proposals include:
- Equalising Capital Gains Tax and introducing a 2 percent levy on assets worth more than £10 million
- The scrapping of plans for PFI-style schemes to fund new NHS health centres or other public services.
- An emergency package of measures to protect living standards
- An Employment Rights Act 2.0 to ensure the complete delivery of the New Deal for Working People
- A large-scale council house building programme
- Scrapping plans to double the time migrant workers already in our country need to secure settlement
& Restoring Labour Party democracy (among other things)
https://t.co/wCK34rPfhZ
I'm not running for office. But if I were, these are some of the lessons I'd take away from what happened in NY yesterday.
1. Authenticity is measurable. Voters can smell a focus group from a mile away.
2. Endorsements from the current Democratic leadership now read like warnings. The establishment wing of the party is no longer a sword. It's a question mark.
3. Conviction beats caution. The candidates who said hard things about rent, about who pays for what, about Gaza, they won. The triangulators lost.
4. Cost of living is everything. Everything else is wallpaper.
5. The middle is not a strategy. It's an empty room. Voters reached past the establishment to grab someone who actually believes something.
6. Don't fear the base. Court it. The Democrats who ran from their own voters lost. The ones who ran toward them won.
7. If you want to lead a party you have to be willing to fight inside it. Mamdani didn't ask permission. He took the field.
The lesson under the lessons: the country is tired of being managed. People want to be led.
Am not the only MP who'll be making the most of last appearances this week of some of the most dreadful Ministerial appointments Starmer made. Relatives of established Labour 'royalty', those with zero work experience outside the Party, and those with zero backbench experience...