Chuka Umunna 10/1 2nd favourite for next LAB leader with rising star Tristram Hunt now 20/1 pic.twitter.com/TErZ2wazOg

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) November 3, 2013

The Blair and Brown of next generation Labour?

There’s a great piece in the Sunday Telegraph today by Matthew d’Ancona in which he identifies rising LAB stars Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt as the Blair and Brown next generation Labour.

It is a good comparison which I’d not thought of before. On Hunt he writes:-

“..Hunt’s importance to Labour is that his very bearing is meant to signal to aspirational voters of all backgrounds that the party is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of the public sector unions. When Hunt refuses to “rule out” sending his own children to private school, he sends not a “dog-whistle” but what might be called a “don-whistle”: the reassurance that he is not going to sacrifice the educational prospects of any pupil on the altar of Left-wing doctrine…”

On Chuka Umunna he notes:-

“…For what it is worth, Umunna is one of the most impressive young politicians I have ever interviewed: I think those Tories who fear him are right to do so. He waves away the “British Obama” comparisons, but it was surely no accident that he concluded his speech on Thursday with one of the president’s favourite passages of Martin Luther King’s oratory: “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.”

If EdM does lead LAB to victory at GE2015 then there’s not going to be a leadership contest for a long time and by then, who knows, other “stars” could have emerged.

In the betting the price on the favourite, Yvette Cooper, has eased a fair bit since the re-shuffle. She’s now 11/4 at Ladbrokes.

Mike Smithson

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