Deputy Leadership campaign

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Despite lots of things I have always had great admiration for Peter Hain. He proved himself to be a wonderful organiser and the young Hain helped make apartheid unacceptable. Few politicians have done anything like it, it was quite the opposite of the think-tank, special advisor, where are my cuff-links, career of today's younger MPs. Peter then fought notable court battles and was framed by the South African special branch and got himself acquitted - all before he started his Labour party career. And he has written a lot as well, Political Trials in Britain published by Penguins in 1984 was a serious contribution to civil rights literature.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The Compass group is claiming some credit for the outcome of the Labour Deputy Leader contest. Their account shows how an independent organisation decided to back one of the candidates, John Cruddas, and ensure him grass roots support. The result: he came first in the first round, and when he came third in the penultimate round, his second preferences swung it for Harriet. Does that make sense? In plain English his supporters gave her as their second choice so that she overtook Alan Johnson when Cruddas was eliminated. I think that Compass are if anything understating their influence. Almost certainly their campaign drew Labour members into voting who would otherwise have abstained. Without Cruddas and Compass, Labour would today have a duller, two-bloke leadership. And a less democratic one. The media has overwhelmingly taunted the contest as revealing Labour’s Dave Spart tendency. But the winner and the man who helped her win were the two most articulate supporters amongst the six candidates of the kind of democratic approach Trots despise. At least, if they meant their answers to OurKingdom’s candidate questionnaire. Here, to remind you, is what the two said about a written constitution:

Jon Bright (London, OK): Sometimes politicians produce statements so blandly hypocritical that one wonders if they have actually deceived themselves. Current International Development Secretary Hilary Benn may not think that the public are idiots but what are we to think of him judging by his self-aggrandising call for a treaty to 'control' the movement of small arms. In the current search for British values is he suggesting that one of them is two-faced perfidy?

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): My feeling that there is something very odd about the deputy leadership campaign is reinforced by David Clark's article in today's Guardian. He calls for his fellow Labour members to support Jon Cruddas. Clark, who worked with Robin Cook, is very able and internationally minded. But apart from using the frightful Blairspeak of whether the candidates "get it" (which I've posted about before) Clark's prose seems stuck in the past, churning fudge about re-engagement. Even if you just want to look inwards and choose the deputy on the issue of how the party relates to its members, you still need to look outwards to how politics relates to the public. Brown has committed himself to addressing this, it is the only hard commitment he has made, namely to a new constitutional reform bill now, it seems, to be dynamised by immediate announcements when he becomes Prime Minister. But the issues raised by this and how the candidates respond figures not at all in Clark's sleepy vision. Wake up Dave!

Michael Calderbank (London, Electoral Reform Society): I am encouraged to see that the contest for Labour's deputy leadership is provoking a more concrete debate on constitutional reform. In particular, I welcome the fact that a clear majority of the candidates have positively advocated a wholly or substantially elected second chamber. However, in addition to its composition, the importance of ensuring that the members of this new body take their places under a fair and more representative voting system needs to be emphasised. Members of a second chamber must be elected by a voting system that distributes seats broadly in proportion to the votes cast.

Jon Bright (London, OK): In parallel to OurKingdom's below question and answer session, the Power Inquiry have asked the six candidates for the deputy leadership of the Labour party questions on the state of democracy in Britain, focusing in particular on what can be done to increase participation. You can read their responses here (opens with Alan Johnson's answers).

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): An important, perhaps even historic, shift has taken place. The Labour Party has by tradition been deeply conservative, despite the radical potential of its egalitarian desires. Its impulse to preserve has been most strongly expressed in its loyalty to British institutions and, most of all, to our royal, unwritten constitution. Blair and Mandelson, for all their edgy modernism, loved the core idea behind royalism, namely a monopoly on power and patronage that has as few rules as possible and is exercised by divine right. Now, a sea change seems to have taken place. Annoyed by the failure of both Labour Party members and the media to ask the six deputy leader candidates their views on power and liberty in Britain, we decided to ask them ourselves. They have answered in their own voices, and you can feel their personalities in their replies. A lot of ground is covered: ID cards, the English question, local power and decentralisation, the Human Rights Act. Their answers, even when evasive or nervous, have been thought about. A quiet, below the table-top consideration of these issues amy be underway. This is most obvious in their answers to the question of whether we should now have a written constitution. It is almost a consensus that we should! This is enough to make one suspect that the aim could be to conserve top-down rule rather than replace it. But this is a battle to be had - and welcomed. The full answers are published here in openDemocracy along with an introduction. Your comments and responses will be published and linked to this post in OurKingdom, and we will sort them by their theme. Please let the candidates know what you think, we will make sure they are sent your views.

Anonymous: The six Labour party Deputy Leadership candidates had a hustings in Parliament today. All of them stressed the need for the party to rebuild, reconnect, renew and so on. None of them mentioned a codified constitution as a way of doing so. There were some tangential references to issues which could be described as all-British and constitutional. Peter Hain seems to favour the Deputy Leadership job continuing to be coupled with that of Deputy Prime Minister; Jon Cruddas and Hazel Blears do not. Harriet Harman showed the most interest in civil liberties. She said that when the government planned new counter-terrorist measures it has to make its case properly; and announce its intentions to Parliament first, not the media. When pressed on human rights - be they civil and political or economic and social - all made supportive noises, opposing Guantanamo Bay and generally agreeing with the more rigorous pursuit of equality. But on the evidence of this meeting an overhaul of the way the UK is governed is not a lead item on the agenda of the would-be Labour deputy leaders. Perhaps Blears's point about anti-discrimination measures - that they must be justified in practical terms or run the risk of appearing too "abstract" - exemplifies a broader attitude within the party. On this showing it will be up to supporters of constitutional reform, both within Labour and beyond it, to persuade not just these candidates but also their colleagues, that any revamp of the government requires rather more energy behind the general commitments made by Gordon Brown than we are seeing at the moment.

ePolitix: Hilary Benn has called the deputy leadership campaign a chance for the Labour party to debate what it wants to stand for, and argues that "overcoming the gap between rich and poor" is the greatest task faced by our nation, reports ePolitix. Listen to the full interview below:

[audio http://www.dods.co.uk/audio/HilaryBenninterview2200507.mp3]

Jon Bright (London, OK): With Gordon Brown securing the leadership of the Labour party unopposed, the deputy leadership campaign has become the only outlet for those who wished to see a proper contest over the direction of the Labour party. In these pages, Anthony Barnett called it a "treason of democracy" that none of the deputy leaders were asked about constitutional reform at their recent hustings. Not quite true. They were asked "is the time now right for electoral reform", and answered in the following ways, as can be seen from the full transcript provided by the Fabian Society: