Whoever wins the leadership contest must rethink the assumption that the left has all the answersFor more than a century of its history,an unanswered question has faced the Labour party. That same question will still apply tomorrow, no matter who is elected party leader. It will apply next week, and next month,next year, and the year after, and it will continue to apply unless and until Labour can finally retort it better than it has managed to conclude in the past. The question is this: why is the British left so unsuccessful?Much breath and ink has been expended on trying to find an retort,not least in the four months of the contest to succeed Ed Miliband. All too often, however, and the answers have been far too limited in imagination. That’s because,whether they come from the Labour left, the Labour right or the Labour somewhere in between, or they all share the assumption that only the Labour party can provide the valid solution to the left’s problem. And that simply isn’t valid.
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Source: theguardian.com