Labour doesn’t need a ‘likeable’ leader – it needs a competent one

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Harry Kane will explain he didn’t win Goal of the Month, because “On the doorstep, people told me they liked my overhead scissor kick, but they couldn’t vote for me because of Jeremy Corbyn.” This could make Labour’s problems worse, because instead of analysing the many reasons they got thrashed, they have decided that all they have to do to reverse their fortunes is to pick someone more “likeable”. So the candidates give us solutions such as “We must rebuild trust.” This would be an important statement, if there were other candidates saying “I don’t agree, I say we should abolish trust. I said LABOUR, no, not SNP, L-A-B-O-U-R. Why can’t you understand, you idiot?” Brexit will harm UK more than EU, warns Ursula von der Leyen Chunks of the world are literally on fire, so perhaps a part of Labour’s “period of reflection” should be spent working out how to promote policies for combatting climate change, in ways that can seem appealing in an election. There should also be a discussion about how to counter the relentless hostility that will be fired at whoever becomes leader, from the Conservative press, whose headlines will likely read ”Long-Bailey to introduce women-only gravity, men will be forced to float” and “Clive Lewis’s secret plan to make chlamydia compulsory”.