The odd thing about the Labour leadership contest, nominations for which closed yesterday, is that the leading candidates all appear to have been elsewhere during the last 13 years of Labour government. How else can we account for their disowning so many of the policies pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
The former cabinet secretary Ed Balls has recently discovered that the government of which he was a prominent member was letting in far too many immigrants. And the Iraq war was a “dangerous mistake for which the country has paid a heavy price”. Well he kept that to himself. David Miliband agrees that immigration got out of control in the Labour years and that the government let down Labour voters. Oh, and the former foreign secretary never supported the policy of regime change in Iraq .
