Camden Labour Leadership Hustings

There was a very strong turnout in Camden Town Hall tonight to hear a joint Labour Leadership and London Mayoral hustings. I was only able to stay for the leadership bit but thought it was rather interesting.

Almost the first thing that happened was the mere mention of Oona King provoked a stirring boo from the crowd as she'd pulled out at the last minute, something that a fellow attendee told me "She'd been making a habit of round London."

That doesn't seem very wise as, with a room full of Labour members, losing a dozen votes at a stroke (if you discount all the Ken supporters) is just a bit silly and arrogant.

We then heard that Andy Burnham had pulled out at last minute too which left just Diane Abbott as the only candidate present. The other pretenders to the throne were represented by substitutes of varying quality. David Miliband pulled in Charlie Faulkner, which I think counts as a big hitter and taking the hustings seriously, but the other candidates had more modest substitutes.

Ed Miliband even had a spokesperson who said *three times* that he'd already voted Diane 1 Ed 2. My partner thought this was a tactic and about winning second preferences, personally I thought it was just a poor, poor choice of advocate.

Anyway, as to content it was all a bit of a disappointment. Abbott was strong on name checking all the bugbears of the left: ID cards, the war, ten pence tax, detention of children, bankers are evil, housing et al. As she said in her closing statement "On all those big issues I called them right and every other candidate got them wrong."

Faulkner/David Miliband essentially put up a defence of the Labour government's record and made a clear pitch as the continuity candidate. Balls' speaker was very strong on the economy and robust in her advocacy of more investment, not less, as well as surprisingly supporting the Robin Hood Tax.

It was left to Diane though to say that Labour "should not roll over and die in the face of Tory assaults" and accept the idea that cuts are inevitable, nor that *these* cuts are inevitable. She said "we will not cut our way out of the recession, we have to grow our way out of it." I agree.

Compare that to Faulkner who said a) he opposed all the Tory cuts he'd heard about b) cuts were inevitable and c) if only it was Labour doing the cutting! Both morally reprehensible *and* logically inconsistent, good work Charlie.

The excitement of the evening came with a sharp question on youth justice and the failure of the criminal justice system when it came to young people. "Andy" and Diane made good cases for economic and social justice reducing crime although it was only Diane who got a round of applause for her very clear "Prison - does - not - work".

Again Faulkner defended the record of the government and was duly rewarded by a slanging match from the floor. Frankly it was good to see some passion and good to see a room full of Labour members uncomfortable with Labour's record.

All in all it was clearly Diane's (and Ken's) audience, and not just because she was the only candidate present, but because the audience liked what she had to say. When she finished with a rousing speech about whether she "looked like a Labour leader" I can't have been the only person to have been surprised at the vociferous applause she received.

Sadly she's hardly got any MPs backing her so she can't win, after all what would a leadership contest be if it wasn't stacked massively against individual members having a proper say? I'll give her this though - she was much stronger than I'd expected and I would not be surprised if she did well in the membership part of the ballot.

If you want to know what happened in the Mayoral half check out Richard Osley's tweeting.