It is a great disappointment that Labour MPs have failed to provide leadership and voice on benefit cuts to defend the poorest and marginalised people. To take just one group of the working poor needing social security – families with more than two children on tax credits  (the children of course are the next generation of talent and workers, the full cost for their upbringing already privatised to the families) and to deny them basic levels of income to get by while austerity (job losses, reduced incomes) marches on. 

I expected my local MP and Labour MPs in Compass to stand up and be counted against this government’s onslaught on poor people. It makes one despair that even with evidence of the impact that the budget will have on the poorest people that Labour is unable or unwilling to fight or even give the semblance of resistance. This malaise is thus reflected in the current leadership candidates with the exception of Jeremy Corbyn. Realising yet again that we have leaders without “backbone and heart”[1] to borrow Mary Beth O’Neill’s phrase brings me closer and closer to tearing up, or rather melting, my plastic Labour Party card – held in paper and plastic since the 1970’s.

Surely now is the time to show some backbone and heart. Looking to Greece in recent weeks tells us just how strong a backbone is needed even to make a stand, let alone win. Amongst other things we have seen the limitations of democracy and the real value it has against the might of money and banks. It behoves our Labour politicians to, at the very least, oppose the forces and accompanying values that are willing to sacrifice democracy at the Altar of the money god, read Bankers. 

In a recent leadership blog, John Spence[2] asks the question what is your leadership philosophy and in his argument quotes Walt Disney “when values are clear decisions are easy” and the converse is also true “when values are not clear decisions are difficult”. Perhaps this explains the impact of the hollowing out and floundering of the Labour Party and its tragic mistaking of the political vortex for the centre ground in a neoliberal era. This is truly the road to oblivion. So what are the values that bring people to join or vote for the Labour Party? We could make a good start with defending people’s basic human rights, greater equality to build a good society, safety, justice or basically reflecting Maslow’s hierarchy of need. To build a vision and aspirations for self-actualisation as a society, a collective, a community. This would be as good a start as any and yes this includes entrepreneurship and wealth creation but done decently not built and sustained on unreasonable levels of greed and violence. 

Sue Goss[3] in The Open Tribe tells us that creativity and innovation takes place at the periphery and at the margins and to some extent is propelled through necessity. Our Labour leaders have failed to grasp this. Their unseeing, unfeeling march towards the centre ground means that they are not connected, nor are they minded to listen to people on the margins. This is where the pressure, pain and pleasure of public policies are felt. It is politicians who bother to spend time understanding the impact on the margins that can give us the quality of leadership that will have backbone and heart necessary to develop and sustain a good society.

Whatever you think of Jeremy Corbyn, when he says we don’t want austerity or austerity-lite, it is resonating. Let alone making new mood music for the country, as we would want our Labour MPs to do: most of them appear to be failing to even hear it.  The Labour Party, or my party in denial which is how it feels, still sits in the hearts of working people, trade unions, young people and many others who want a better life and a progressive, inclusive future and they know that it cannot be found in Austerity or Austerity-Lite. More and more people are crying out for an alternative, this is the voice Labour, with others nationally and internationally, needs to amplify. NO TO AUSTERITY-LITE.