Labour Won’t Win Election With ‘Tory Sleaze’ Attacks Alone, Peter Mandelson Warns

Attacking “Tory sleaze” will not win the next election for Labour alone and Keir Starmer needs to go on the attack against Boris Johnson, Lord Mandelson has said.

The party grandee told HuffPost UK’s Commons People podcast that while Labour’s local election attacks around “cronyism” and the lobbying scandal will “loosen and crumble” Tory support, it will not be enough to win nationally in 2024.

Starmer must also present a “credible and attractive alternative”, as well as showing Labour is strong enough to “tear [the Tories] inside out, strip them down, lay them bare, and see what they stand for and what they are not doing for this country”.

Mandelson told Commons People: “One thing is clear to me – it’s that Tory sleaze is not going to win the next election for Labour.

“It will loosen and crumble a lot of support for the Tories and people will reach the conclusion that they are out for themselves and that they suit themselves and they fill the pockets of their own cronies and supporters, that’s true.

“But that doesn’t mean to say that Labour’s just got to sit back and wait for the election to fall into their laps.

“That’s not how you win elections. 

“So fine, make the point, but you’ve got to present a credible and attractive alternative if you want people to vote for you.” 

Speaking from Hartlepool where he is campaigning for Labour ahead of the crunch May 6 by-election, Mandelson said the party had a “real fight” in the seat, where it was “completely outgunned” by the combined Tory and Brexit Party vote in 2019.

Johnson is also benefitting from a “vaccine bounce” in the polls, while voters in Hartlepool felt Labour had “lost its way over the last decade” because it was nationally “rubbish” and “fell into bad hands” locally, and that the party took the town for granted.

“Then along came Brexit which loosened the cement even more, and frankly Corbyn then was the final hammer blow for Labour in this town, and then we had the disastrous results in the election in 2019,” he said. 

GLYN KIRK via Getty Images

Labour grandee Lord Peter Mandelson 

But now, he said, they feel “Labour is coming home, that there is a new broom, and they feel it nationally with Keir Starmer and I’m glad to say they feel it locally”.

“Increasingly, people are seeing Labour as a credible alternative, they do see Keir Starmer as a man of principles and of integrity.

“But they want to know a lot more about him and what he believes in and what the policies of the Labour Party will be at the next election before they are prepared to transfer their allegiance to him and the Labour Party.

Pointing out that Labour’s leadership has been “hermetically sealed” from the public due to Covid, he said that now the party has to make its case “with greater intensity, and more speed and more focus than we’ve been doing at any time in the last year”.

Asked if Starmer needs to freshen up the shadow cabinet, Mandelson said: “He’ll know what to do when the time comes and I’m not going to start giving him advice or lessons about how he should do his job.

“All I know is this – that people want Labour to make the weather.

“They want Labour to make the news.

“They want the Tories properly taken apart.

“If you fall short, if it’s a bit weak, if it’s a bit flabby, if it appears not to know how to use the media well, if it’s not doing its opposition research well and honing its attacks and creating the ammunition, and [having] people strong enough to fire that ammunition in the Tory direction, then people are going to say well, are Labour strong enough?”

Mandelson went on: “You don’t win elections by going through the motions, you don’t win elections by saying nice things about yourself.

“You’ve got to go for your opponents as well, tear them inside out, strip them down, lay them bare, and see what they stand for and what they are not doing for this country.

“And then people will look to you, and when they do look to you, you better have a credible, affordable set of modern policies for people to vote for.

“And that’s what Labour’s got to create over the next year or so.”

He added: “I want my party to win, I’m fed up of losing, I’m fed up to my back teeth of losing, I want to see my party winning again, and that’s why I’m here and that’s why I work for it.”

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Northern Independence Party Manifesto Plan Includes Referendum On Ditching The Queen

Jonathan BradyPA

Reigning Queens screenprint by Andy Warhol

Legalisation of cannabis and referendums on ditching the Queen and scrapping the pound are among the manifesto plans of the newly formed Northern Independence Party that is fighting the Hartlepool by-election.

The draft programme of the NIP, which is a “democratic socialist” party that wants to repeat the SNP’s success in replacing Labour, calls for the public to be given a say over the currency and the monarchy alongside a raft of proposals to create a country of “Northumbria”.

The new state – which would include the north-west, north-east, Yorkshire and Humber, and Cheshire – would accept Brexit for now.

But the draft manifesto adds: “If however the people of a free North want to rejoin the EU at some point in the distant future, then that is a decision for the people.”

The NIP hopes to capitalise on discontent with Keir Starmer’s leadership by backing Thelma Walker, a former Labour MP and strong Jeremy Corbyn supporter, as a candidate in the Hartlepool by-election on May 6.

A draft “mini manifesto” for the local elections, which has been sent to members of the party for consultation but is not yet public, has been passed to HuffPost UK. A final version is expected to be ratified next week.

The mini-manifesto includes a wide range of policies including giving NHS nurses a 15% pay rise and all council workers a “real living wage” of £9.50 an hour.

Among the eclectic proposals are “an increase in the penalties for sheep worrying” to protect farmers, a lowering of the state pension age and council-run e-bike rental schemes.

Referendums of “the people of the free North” would be central to the new state, with the removal of the Queen as head of state and the creation of a new currency among the options.

“Many people in the North love the royal family, and it is not for us as a party to decide this,” the manifesto states.

“If enough people in a free North want to keep the Queen as head of state, as she is in many commonwealth countries, then she will be asked to be. If the majority of people want to be a republic, then we will be.”

Northern Independence Party

Northern Independence Party logo

It takes a similar view on whether to keep sterling. “We don’t know what the relationship between the pound, the euro, and other currencies will look like when we gain independence.

“There are important factors to consider on all sides – while introducing a new currency has costs, and would be disruptive, it could also make it easier to invest in rebuilding our hollowed-out industries, and make our exports more competitive on international markets.”

On drugs, the NIP states: “We believe that cannabis should be legalised, as it has across much of the US and Canada, and will favour harm reduction approaches to other illegal drugs.”

The manifesto also calls for privatised energy and water companies to be brought under public control locally, for more pilots of a universal basic income system and for stronger trans rights, including the legalisation to protect trans teenagers’ access to puberty blockers.

It proposes public libraries should be brought back under council or community ownership, and vows to “support local independent newspapers and journalism by writing for them, taking out adverts, and providing grants to new organisations”.

The NIP recognises that while independence is its ultimate goal, its candidates will in the short term have to “fight the system from within” by backing policies at council and Westminster level that would shift the UK in a more socialist direction.

Since its launch last year, the party has tried to use humour in its online media presence to boost its profile, recently defending the use of a whippet on its logo as a satire on perceptions of the north.

The NIP’s membership has soared since Walker was announced as its candidate for Hartlepool earlier this week, going up from 300 to 1300.

NIP co-funder Philip Proudfoot told HuffPost UK: ”A new state, in order to have buy-in and legitimacy would require lots of referendums, that direct democracy element is foundational to the project.

“If it comes to questions like ‘do you keep the monarchy?’, there’s an ongoing debate within an NIP whether we just put it in as a policy, and then if people vote for us that’s what they’re getting – or whether or not it would be a referendum to be decided.”

Proudfoot said that the party was made up of “ordinary people” ranging from farmers – who want tougher penalties to protect their sheep –  to mental health nurses, from teachers to the unemployed worried about Universal Credit.

Members are being asked for feedback on the draft manifesto ahead of a special meeting expected next week. “We’re trying to be hyper, hyper democratic,” Proudfoot said.

Referring to the cannabis policy, he added: “Our main target is of course, young, socially liberal, left-wing people living in our towns and cities in the north. What do they want? Legalisation of cannabis. It’s pretty standard now across the world, isn’t it?

“The people of Hartlepool do deserve to have a left-wing candidate. In terms of what will be our national policies, it’s kind of inspired by 2017 Labour, because that’s when the Labour party increased its vote share in the north.”

Here is a copy of the draft mini-manifesto – known as a “minifesto” – in full:

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