In my view the London Mayoral selection race is generating a higher quality and more interesting debate than the national debate about why Labour lost and the future leadership. As national candidates take their turn to fall into every Tory media trap – apologise for this, repudiate that, disown the other, slag off Miliband – the Londoners have launched a number of fascinating policy debates, often accompanied by detailed papers or speeches.
London Labour Housing Group is planning to hold a Housing Hustings to give all the candidates the opportunity to set out their stalls and answer questions on London’s housing crisis from interested Party members and supporters. Details will be published soon, but if you are interested in attending, please just drop me a line at [email protected] or watch this space.
Over the next few weeks – and with apologies to readers outside London – Red Brick will look in some detail at the positions of each of the candidates. And our pages are open to any of the candidates who would like to contribute in their own words, as some have done in the past.
At the time of writing, it looks like Diane Abbott, Tessa Jowell, Sadiq Khan, David Lammy, Gareth Thomas and Christian Wolmar will achieve sufficient nominations to make the shortlist, with Jowell and Khan running ahead of the others in numbers. Together they are capable of making sure that this is a policy-led contest. And putting housing at the heart of the debate.
This looks likely to be something of a Twitter contest – and the candidates can all be followed:
- @wolmarforlondon
- @GarethThomasMP
- @DavidLammy
- @SadiqKhan
- @TessaJowell
- @HackneyAbbott