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Well it’s a new year. Time for a new start for the Labour Party? Sort of. Next week the ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) will set out the rules for the leadership contest that is

set to take place over the next three months.

At the moment it’s all about the horse race. Who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s running? Those either declared or discussed include Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy, Clive Lewis, Ian

Lavery and Jess Phillips. These represent the whole of the party from the moderate to Corbynite wings and everything in between.

The Labour Party is rarely happier than when it is having a big internal fight. Candidates from across the party will find their most active and fiercest critics and supporters out

scrutinising their every move, word and nuance (not that there will be much of that). Tiny variations will be blown into huge and defining differences. People will be called a Tory who have

been Labour members for years just because they aren’t in the proper faction. People will be called a Trot for the same reasons.

The vacuum at the top of the Labour Party is sucking everything into it — and it’s already not pretty. It seems clear that Corbyn doesn’t particularly want to remain (despite what anyone

signing a somewhat sycophantic petition thinks) but is being held in place by his faction’s desire to control the process. This isn’t helped by the fact that Labour currently has no deputy

leader and is electing that position too.

Corbyn has lost his authority, but can’t leave his job for the allotment while he is expected to oversee the process of replacing him. This leaves a sense of drift where there should be

urgency. Labour needs to do a lot of hard work to get into anything like good enough shape to come back from its defeat. It is not clear that the party as a whole has worked that out yet.

Recent members’ polling shocked some by showing a clear lead for the more moderate Keir Starmer. While he is talking up his Corbynite credentials in a bid to win the membership, he is not

seen as a true believer. He has been loyal to the leadership, which counts for a lot among party members who would elect Corbyn a third time if they could. He has served in the shadow

cabinet throughout and his role as Shadow Brexit Secretary saw him pull the Labour Party to a more remain-supporting position, culminating in the promise of a second referendum.

Those Corbyn supporters who don’t want to see their man’s unpopularity as the principle reason for electoral disaster blame Starmer for forcing the leadership’s hand. Starmer’s main

attraction may well be that he is seen as a safe pair of hands. Someone who can do the work that Neil Kinnock did in the 1980s to start to make the party electable again.

The left has largely — but not wholly — swung behind Rebecca Long-Bailey. She is John McDonnell’s protégé and has long been talked up as a successor.  However, she has struggled out of the

gate with a Guardian article that was widely seen as empty and cliché ridden. There are concerns that her semi-official joint ticket with Angela Raynor puts the better performer in the

lesser position — that doesn’t look good for either of them. That Clive Lewis has also thrown his hat into the right risks further complicating the splits among the Corbynite wing of the

party.

Meanwhile, Unite seems to be on manoeuvres. It too has concerns about Long-Bailey and is punting a potential Ian Lavery candidacy. This is part of the ongoing saga of splits between John

McDonnell, on the one hand, and Corbyn’s right-hand woman Karie Murphy and her staunch ally, Len McCluskey. They were hoping to run Laura Pidcock but she lost her seat. Even so, it doesn’t

seem very feasible that Lavery, the chair of the party that went down to such a devastating electoral defeat, should be in position to then lead it.

The problem with leadership contests is that they quickly devolve into the worst kind of beauty contest. It’s very rarely a battle of ideas alone. People are looking not just for policy

perspectives, but for a combination of inspiration and electability. The problem is that few of us agree what those things really mean. We know it when we see it — but we all see different

things.

That’s why these contests get ugly — the need to emphasise the small differences between candidates who agree on most things and work well together most of the time.

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