Harriet Harman - More In Sorrow

Anyone, everyone who has campaigned for a properly accountable press, and genuinely independent press regulation, has a lot of time for acting Labour leader Harriet Harman. When she stood up at the Hacked Off lobby event back in February and committed herself to doing the right thing for victims of press misbehaviour, it was not the first time she had thus spoken. Her commitment was as genuine and it was unwavering.

So, for those who were dismayed to see Young Dave and his jolly good chaps walk back into Downing Street after May’s General Election, to hear that Ms Harman was not opposing the latest tax credit cuts was yet more dismaying. It was reported by the Staggers’ political editor George Eaton that she has confirmed that Labour will not oppose the Tories’ two-child limit on tax credits. She set out her reasoning.

“We won't oppose the welfare bill, we won't oppose the household benefit cap, I mean, for example, what they've brought forward in relation to restricting benefits and tax credits for people with three or more children. What we've got to do is listen to what people round the country said to us and recognise that we didn't get elected”. There is, I would contend, a logical fallacy in there somewhere.

Any thought that losing an election means that the losing party must make itself more like the winning one is not one that stands serious analysis: Labour under first John Smith, and then Tony Blair, did not look at the 1992 defeat to John Major’s Tories and declare that it would do less opposing, and try and be more like their opponents. It is no surprise that three of the party’s leadership contenders have rejected Ms Harman’s analysis.

Eaton suggests initially - although he corrects this in an update - that she also favoured Liz Kendall in the leadership contest. This is what she told the BBC’s Sunday Politics: “think not who you like and who makes you feel comfortable - think who actually will be able to reach out to the public … so that we can have a better result next time than we did last time. The point is not to have somebody who we can feel comfortable with, the point is to have somebody who can command the confidence of the country”.

The Labour Party was, for over a decade, comfortable with Tony Blair: I’d suggest that this is not an either/or choice. Nor should it be: if the grass roots don’t have confidence in their leader, it doesn’t matter how commanding their oratory, they ain’t going to get elected if the party’s footsoldiers can’t be arsed to turn out and support them.

Perhaps Ms Harman has been sold short by Eaton, but, given the brevity of the correction at the end of his article, it seems not. Tens of thousands of families are going to be worse off as a result of last week’s Budget: are Labour to simply abandon them? With signs now coming from the Tories that public sector workers will not receive their enhanced minimum wage, some may find themselves in a yet worse situation.

What, one has to ask, is the point of Labour if not to stand up for the less well-off?