Thread: A lesson the next Labour leader must learn is that whatever it is it is not going to blow over. Our opponents in the Conservative party, the press and even the PLP will keep flinging whatever mud they can until it sticks and sometimes persistence is enough
In the run up to 2017 the leadership team ducked many issues just to survive until the end of the day. There are lots of conversations about long standing myths we need to start, that they avoided. I think this strategy was vindicated by the 2017 result.
One of the lessons I'm learning in my job is that if you don't deal with something properly it will come back to bite you in the ass later. After 2017 the leadership team had the space to go on the offensive but they never pushed the advantage and it cost us.
We continued to accept the childish myth that a government needs to be run like a household and that taxes are the source of income. This came back to bite us when despite nonsensically costing our policies we began to pull "expensive" policies out of thin air during the election
On foreign policy we ducked talking about Jeremy 's absolutely incredible record on international conflicts. For many of us the very reason we loved him. This let opponents cherry pick quotes and clips to cast him as a villain instead of a fighter for international human rights.
On the EU we ducked an honest conversation on what sort of relationship a socialist administration should have with trading partners and what our immigration policy should look like. We never really knew what we wanted. That led to the mess we saw.
On antisemitism Jeremy ducked talking about his past and explaining his associations while campaigning for Palestinian rights and peace which brought him into contact with some very antisemitic characters. This should have been a chance to talk about the plight of Palestinians.
On the PLP the leadership failed to address internal discipline. To avoid a few weeks ludicrous headlines about purges and Stalin he allowed his PLP to run riot across tv sofas for years. They constantly undermined him and confused our message. No wonder we weren't trusted.
On internal democracy the leadership failed to get behind allowing local Labour parties or affiliated unions to nominate leadership candidates and leaving in place what is effectively a PLP veto.
And on open candidate selections the leadership failed to challenge the power and accountability of Labour MPs by getting behind the campaign to allow members to decide who their candidate will be for each and every election.
All of these measures could changed the national debate and we'd have seen a much more confident, coherent and united Labour party going into the 2019 elections.
