Anthony Painter

I’ve made a number of points in my LabourList column today:

1. Politics changed yesterday in ways that we can only begin to imagine.

2. The chances of another election soon have diminished considerably.

3. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition could genuinely represent a new politics.

4. Labour should eschew oppositionalism- it will just look irrelevantly like the old politics.

5. Labour has a great deal to face up to: starting with the acknowledgement that it lost last Thursday.

6. Its task ahead is far more complex than first appears and no-one has the right answers. Nobody is even asking the right questions.

7. Labour needs to engage in open, pluralistic, and respectful dialogue about both where we are and where it is heading.

8. The leadership election must not be rushed. As Sunder Katwala has argued, Conference should be a hustings not a leadership election.

And……

9. There should be a Deputy Leadership Contest too…..

“The party conference should be a hustings conference, not an election conference as the Conservatives did so successfully in 2005. And there should be a Deputy Leadership contest too. This is not just about the leadership, it’s about party renewal too – so a Deputy Leadership contest becomes necessary. And yes, there absolutely should be a female candidate in both the leadership and deputy leadership races, and Harriet Harman – with her record on equalities and increasing the diversity of our MPs in Parliament – should stand as a strong candidate in both.”

There, I’ve said it.

And just as a final treat, here is the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition agreement.