Labour party

There seems to be a checklist for Labour leadership hopefuls which all of them are very keen to tick off. When launching a campaign, a candidate must say that their party has just suffered a terrible defeat from which a number of profound lessons must be learned. These lessons all seem to be rather similar, and have led the candidates to say the following things: ‘We didn’t speak enough to aspirational voters’ Mary Creagh: ‘People felt that Labour didn't understand their aspiration to earn money and provide a better life for their family.’ Chuka Umunna (when he was standing): ‘We need to… focus on what is the new agenda that is going to get a Labour government elected in 2020.

As far as endorsements go, Andy Burnham is winning the Labour leadership contest hands down. He has managed to recruit Dan Jarvis - someone who has gained huge respect and admiration despite the fact no-one knows very much about him - as his latest backer. Jarvis tells the Mirror that Burnham ‘has the strength, experience and character needed to bring our party together and restore Labour’s connection with the British people’. Now, firstly this is a bit of a clue as to where Jarvis’s own politics lie: he’s a little more left wing than someone people who are caught up in his compelling back story may have noted.

Andy Burnham may be the trade unions’ favourite candidate for Labour leader but he is already distancing himself from some of Ed Miliband’s worst populist nonsense. This is what he said in today’s Observer: 'We have got to get away from things that look like symbolism. I am going to put the mansion tax in that category. I am not saying it was necessarily completely the wrong thing to do, but in its name I think it spoke to something that the public don’t particularly like, which is the politics of envy.' In a 1911 article entitled An Unenvious People, The Spectator paid tribute to the nature of Englishmen. The festivities of the Coronation would have set an edge upon envy in England if anything could.

Jim Murphy is quitting Scottish Labour. After only narrowly surviving a vote of no confidence from the party's executive this morning, Murphy announced that after a ‘terrible election defeat’, he will still tender his resignation in a month’s time. As well as acknowledging Scottish Labour’s terrible performance in the general election, Murphy opened both barrels at Len McCluskey and Unite the Union, who he blames for some of the party's troubles in Scotland: ‘I know in the past few days, I’ve been at the centre of a campaign by the London leadership of Unite the Union and they’re blaming myself for myself and the Scottish Labour party for the defeat of the UK Labour party in the general election.

With Chuka Umunna out, the choice for Labour party members is simple. If they want to win the next election they will choose Liz Kendall as their next leader. There is a very simple test for suitability for the job: their reply to the question ‘did the last Labour government spend too much money?’ Kendall is the only one who has passed. On yesterday’s Newsnight she was straightforward: yes, Labour did spend too much. Yvette Cooper, by contrast, said on Radio 4 this morning: 'I think there were things that we were spending wrongly on, there were issues that we would have been spending money, too much money on – for example there were things that went wrong with the NHS computer system, with all sorts of things like that – but the deficit at the time was 0.