The Guardian view on Labour’s leadership race: words aplenty, arguments scarce | Editorial
Aspiration, opportunity and empowerment. Britain's half-forgotten pre-crisis political buzzwords are back with a vengeance in the Labour leadership contest. Tony Blair himself was too good a communicator to rely much on such abstractions, but his favoured thinktanks never stopped pamphleteering on "enabling", "contestable" and "consumer-orientated" policies. And those who hope to lead Labour now seem to be agreed on one thing: that the path back to power will be paved with talk about aspiration.
Even in New Labour's heyday such chatter was rarely heard beyond the shadow of Big Ben, and yet the likes of Liz Kendall and Andy Burnham can be forgiven a little linguistic nostalgia. Although there are multiple and contradictory lessons to absorb and reconcile after Ed Miliband's drubbing, including how to deal with angry northern deserters to Ukip and dispossessed Scottish Nationalists, the single most urgent requirement in altering the dismal electoral arithmetic in 2020 is more familiar: persuading Middle Englanders who sided with the Conservatives this time that they would do better next time to take a chance on change. Through the frenzy of jargon, you can pick out a justified howl of mourning for the lost days when Labour was seen as helping people get ahead.
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