Labour needs more Shabanas, not Angela Rayners

Angela Rayner’s response to the Green victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election was to say that Labour should be “braver”. Shabana Mahmood’s response was to do just that. The home secretary will next week press ahead with replacing permanent asylum with temporary status, defying those in her party to explain how tacking towards the Greens’ “open borders” policy would reflect Labour values. She wants to copy Denmark’s Social Democrats, who deliberately sacrificed the support of what her team call “bourgeois” liberals to deliver the “firm but fair” immigration controls demanded by the majority.

That is what leadership looks like. Courageous, charismatic and can-do. Mahmood’s response to the conventional wisdom that Labour is under pressure to move to the left after losing to the Greens is: “What do you mean by ‘left’?” Instead of Rayner’s attention-seeking waffle about “a Labour agenda that puts people first”, Mahmood proposes a Labour agenda that puts people first. She is not the only one. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is reported to be keeping the young people’s minimum wage below the 21+ rate because she realises the danger of pricing young people out of jobs. Again, there is nothing left-wing about Green Party fantasy economics that would pay a “living wage” to everyone and put people out of work.

The idea that Labour should respond to defeat in the by-election by legalising heroin and leaving Nato is absurd — as silly as the idea that these Green policies are “left-wing”. Pointing out the contradictions in Green Party policy is not only straightforward, it is a moral responsibility. But it is also important to understand the ideological incoherence of the Greens, which makes nonsense of the simple-minded demand for a lurch to the left.

Crucially, assumptions about what is left and right are often confounded. For example, a YouGov poll last month asked what Europe should do if Donald Trump seized Greenland militarily. Most people opted for diplomacy or economic sanctions. Supposedly pacifist-inclined Green voters were the most likely (26 per cent) to support “military retaliation in an attempt to retake Greenland by force”. The only Labour people who think that the response to the setback in Gorton and Denton should be for the government to lurch to the “left” are those who wanted the government to do so in the first place. Indeed, various Labour MPs who are members of the Corbynite Socialist Campaign Group have been quoted demanding a return to the kind of politics Keir Starmer spent four years getting away from in opposition.

But when I spoke to MPs from other parts of the Labour Party yesterday, their reaction, interestingly, was to note that the populist Green message doesn’t fit neatly on a left-right scale. Dan Carden, the former Corbynite who is now leader of the “Blue Labour” caucus — a faction that promotes blue-collar and culturally conservative values, particularly on immigration, crime, equality, diversity and community spirit — told me: “I don’t think it’s about the Greens or Reform, it’s about answering the question, ‘what is Labour for and who is it for?’ Will it act on rents, on bills and stop the exploitation of working-class communities? Will it act to give people hope, pride and dignity?”

In an echo of the fiery speech delivered by Hannah Spencer when she was declared the new Green MP in the early hours of Friday, Carden said: “Too many people are living miserable lives.” That is coming from a part of the party often considered to be on the right. Mahmood, for instance, also describes herself as “Blue Labour”.

Liam Byrne, the chair of the business and trade committee, and definitely no Corbynite, told me Labour should “pick some fights with bad actors — start with Fujitsu (the company which built the IT system at the heart of the Post Office Horizon scandal), move on to energy companies, a bank or two and maybe a couple of food retailers. In other words ‘stand up for the little guy’”. Or: fight Green populism with Labour populism.

As Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times wrote a few weeks ago, “You have to have access to a special plane of consciousness to believe that Labour is unpopular because it is not left-wing enough.” It is therefore not a left-right problem; it is a problem of preparedness, the Tory inheritance, competence, judgement and above all leadership. And the problem of leadership is compounded by rules that put the choice of a new leader, and therefore new prime minister, in the hands of Labour members who are unrepresentative of the nation they seek to serve.