Does Labour need its new leader in place NOW?
Is the 15 week campaign really a good idea?
Yesterday George Osborne announced massive changes in the way that the country financial institutions are regulated overturning much that Mr. Brown had put in place in his first few weeks as chancellor in 1997.
Today we saw Danny Alexander making his big statement on which of Labour’s pet programmes of the pre-election period are going to be axed.
Next week Osborne will take centre stage again for his first budget which could set the direction for the next few years.
Elsewhere the coalition government is over-turning some of Labour’s flag-ship schemes and yet the reaction from the official opposition is a mixture of muted, incoherent and without direction.
That’s not surprising given that it is leaderless – but I do think that the coalition is having a very soft time during these critical few weeks.
Was it necessary, I wonder, to have stretched the leadership campaign over such a long period? If they had acted quickly then maybe a new leader could have taken over the reins this week. As it is we will have to wait until the end of September.
I think that the party will look back at this period and see the prolonged campaign as a huge mistake.