My good mate Piloti asked me what I thought of the "Labour leadership debacle". Piloti is a Tory however this isn't a view that is restricted to the right. Polly Toynbee wrote in the Guardian "Will the contest seize the imagination of the voters? Not a chance with a format that sucks all oxygen out of debate."
However I beg to differ. I am not a member of the Labour party so have little interest in its internal workings however I was at the last election a Labour voter, although it was a late decision made when it became pretty clear to me, though not apparently many leftish journalists, that Nick Clegg was moving towards the Tories.
The leadership election has given the prospective candidates plenty of airtime in the media: on Question Time, the various news broadcasts and This Week. This has been at a time when the Coalition have been reluctant to commit anyone of any influence to a grilling especially when it involves a head to head with a member of the Labour Party.
The Coalition sent former LibDem MP Susan Kramer into bat with Ed Milliband on Newsnight. It was thankfully over quickly and Ed was decent enough not to drive it home. There then followed Ed Balls against Vince Cable on Question Time. Balls performance was so impressive that Andrew Rawnsley described him as a "killer" in his Observer column. Cable was pretty unconvincing and Balls remorselessly drove his points home.
After an awkward appearance on This Week, Andy Burnham followed with a few rounds with Francis Maude on Question Time. It was like putting England in a World Cup match against er ... Germany. Burnham not only saw off Maude, he was angry and passionate so much so that David Dimbleby remarked "you are clearly very passionate about this - why didn't we see this in the election"?
So as Mark Twain might have said, news of Labour's demise are greatly exaggerated. Only the underated ITV political editor Tom Bradby noted on election night that Labour "were still strong" and the Leadership contest shows they will have a front bench of heavyweights no matter who is leader.
In Balls, Burnham and Ed Milliband Labour have a formidable front row. Put Alan Johnson and Yvette Cooper in the second row (ok the rugby analogy starts to fall down) and Labour look even stronger.
David Cameron and most of his front bench are lightweights. Their only conviction is Thatcherism which is why on any pretence to be anything different they are unconvincing. This is also why they avoid media scrutiny wherever they can. Ironically there are principled bighitters in the Tory party but one, Iain Duncan Smith, will be an irritant to Cameron and I suspect will not last long and the other, David Davies, has been consigned to the backbenches.
The Lib Dems meanwhile are a mixture of unprincipled ambition, naivety and shell shock.
So to those outside the machinations of the politcal party this Labour leadership is not damaging, it is casting some light on to a very strong front bench. It's only to be hoped, a possiblity acknowledged by Simon Heffer in the Telegraph, that the new Labour leader will not have to wait too long before being elected into number 10.
