Labour leadership hopefuls: L-R (in picture) Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, and Jeremy Corbyn.

FOLLOWING Ed Milliband’s resignation after the General Election, The Labour Party has been doing a serious amount of soul-searching. Numerous reasons have been given for the party’s poor performance, even though they gained seats in England and only lost one in Wales.

The most common reason given from inside the party is a variation on the theme that under Ed Milliband, the party veered too sharply to the left. There have been numerous ways of expressing this, from Chuka Umunna claiming that the party needed to be more ‘business friendly,’ to acting leader Harriet Harman and candidate Liz Kendall refusing to vote against the Conservatives’ welfare bill because British people have real concerns about benefit spending.

This contrasted sharply with the experiences of many canvassers who felt abandoned by the parliamentary Labour party, which made constituency candidates something of a hard sell in places. Across the country, the emergence of UKIP as, if not a credible political force, then certainly one strong enough to influence the outcome of any seat, was largely at the expense of what Labour would have considered core voters in 1997. Anti-austerity parties to the left also benefitted from Labour’s perceived lack of opposition to Conservative policies.

The election of a new Labour leader was meant to be the fairest and most transparent to date in a party that has traditionallyprideditselfonadherenceto democratic principles. Jeremy Corbyn, described ad nauseum in the press as an ‘Old Labour dinosaur,’ and a ‘veteran left-winger’ was only put on the ballot after 35 MPs, many of whom had no intention of voting for him, decided that all facets of the party should be represented. That these MPs were subsequently described as ‘morons’ by one of Tony Blair’s former advisors shows the extent to which the left-wing of the party is viewed as an embarrassment nowadays.

A strong showing ofpopular support for Mr Corbyn has led to outcry in the national press. A YouGov poll recently put him on CHECK %, leading to claims that the poll was inaccurate, and leading people to predict a schism in the Labour party similar to that which occurred when Michael Foot was made leader – something Mr Corbyn has blamed for the landslide defeat in 1983. The Daily Mirror, the only remaining left-wing tabloid, has suggested implementing an ABC (anyone but Corbyn) strategy, while on the other end of the scale Toby Young has suggested that those on the political Right join the Labour Party and vote for Mr Corbyn as a way of bringing down the Labour Party.

Mr Corbyn is certainly different to any leadership contender since the early nineties, if not before. Having said that, John Smith was considered to be on the centre-right of the party then, which shows how much the political landscape has shifted. The public spending cuts that Ed Balls claimed he would not alter if Labour were elected would have had an old One Nation Tory like Ted Heath spinning in his grave. Mr Corbyn has claimed that the role of leader should be more about facilitating debate rather than developing policies. He is known to favour the abolition of student fees, scrapping Trident, and the renationalisation of the rail industry.

There has been uproar in the Labour party about this. Apparently Labour should not be a party of protest but a party of government. It appears that from an opposition perspective, this means agreeing with most of what the party in power proposes, on the basis that they were voted in and are therefore what the electorate want. It may be facile to suggest that this makes the concept of an opposition moot, but certainly the parameters of debate will be narrowed.

Interestingly, a journalist for the Independent checked out the YouGov poll results for Mr Corbyn’s policies, and found that the public were heavily in favour, with 60% in favour of nationalising trains, for example. It appears that the claims that the Labour party has already suffered a split between the grass-roots supporters and the metropolitan ‘elite’ may have some basis in fact. A point which appears to be overlooked is that ‘three-time-winner’ Tony Blair still had the support of Labour’s core vote, until it began melting away over the New Labour years. Without this support, and without any way of either working with the SNP or encouraging Scottish voters back into the fold, the ‘swing seats’ targeted in ’97 will be increasingly irrelevant.

Andy Burnham, the politician many party insiders would like to see get the nod, is nominally on the left of centre, in the same way Yvette Cooper is slightly to the right. Mr Burnham is the only candidate to say that he would serve in a Corbyn shadow cabinet. Liz Kendall, considered one of the Blairite faction’s big hopes, has performed poorly, and is fourth-placed by some margin. A spoof facebook page – Liz Kendall for Conservative Leader – had nearly as many ‘likes’ as her own page before it was deleted. A problem appears to be the unwillingness of the other three candidates to commit on issues, for fear of jeopardising their shot at the top job.

Whoever emerges as Labour leader in the coming months will be in an unenviable position. They will have to reconcile those on the political Left and Right, and attempt to appeal to disillusioned Labour voters, as well as trying to take votes from the Conservatives and UKIP and, in all probability, having to work with the SNP and possibly Plaid Cymru in Wales, both parties with a broadly left-of-centre manifesto. It is far too early to tell what sort of a party will emerge at the other end, the outcome of a leadership battle fought across such a wide spectrum, and the ensuing rise in the number of party members, many of whom are looking for a credible alternative to the Tory-lite policies of the last two decades, will mean the party will indeed be living in interesting times.