The young moderates
You can read Labour young socialists' views on the Labour party's future here
Labour party member Tom Miller, 21, thinks that the party desparately needs a leadership contest, not a Gordon Brown coronation: he just doesn't think that John McDonnell offers much by way of credible competition. 'I don't think that John McDonnell is an alternative. We are not a socialist revolutionary party. He [McDonnell] will not get on the ballot paper and he would not win an election.'
That said, Miller hasn't a lot of time for the party's 'Blairite outriders' either. 'I think that Blair has annoyed the bulk of the party.' And that said, he thinks that Brown is probably the party's best leadership option. 'He has made indications that he could bring the soft left and the soft right together. You can't help feeling that he will be more distributive.'
Fair and equal distribution of life's happier aspects is one of Miller's preoccupations as a party member. He joined the party when he was 16, just a few months before Blair decided to go to war with Iraq. ('I felt like ripping my [membership] cards up [when the war began], but I decided that I didn't want the Labour party to be dominated by extremists, right or left.'). He joined the party because he thought that party membership would complement his A-level studies. Now, he's a final-year law and politics student at Manchester University and a member of the Labour students group there.
'I thought that I was joining a party that had been through a lot of changes, but that it would head back in a leftward direction. There used to be a lot more emphasis on distribution with the party. I think the current direction is a manifestly bad thing. I can't figure out why we don't try and pull society leftward.'
He thinks that areas the party ought to focus on in particular include 'extending the minimum wage, [developing] a stronger green policy, and improving education and public services.' He says the party has done well in areas like setting the minimum wage and he likes the PFI initiative as an idea, at least. 'I think [the problem with PFIs] is that they haven't been well-managed. I'm not an expert on it, but I would say that there's something wrong with the tendering process. We're basically spending too much and getting too little. We've been getting more hospitals, though, so we can't really complain about that.'
The party leadership campaign being a disappointment to date, Miller will support Jon Cruddas' campaign for the deputy leadership and says that 'it's really important that the [Cruddas] campaign gets going.' Cruddas is particularly critical of the government's handling of healthcare, record on social housing and eagerness to use (or abuse) cheap migrant workers to keep labour costs down and the workforce flexible - or low-paid and sackable, as Cruddas implies.
Miller thinks the Iraq crusade has been a complete shambles - 'Iraq has been opened up to terrorism by military intervention.' He says that it is almost impossible to get people to join the Labour party now. What has his success rate been recently? 'Absolutely none,' he says.
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Kris Brown, 21, tries his best to see the funny side of the horror that is the expiring Labour party membership: he goes about it a bit like David Attenborough doing one of his countdowns for doomed pandas. '[I think it's something like] a Labour member leaves like every 20 minutes. For every member that joins, seven leave. At this rate, by April 5 2013, they'll all be gone.'
Brown is a councillor on the Tory-held Enfield Council. He represents the Edmonton Green ward, which is one of the most socially-deprived areas in the country - the area that Enfield council Tory deputy leader Michael Lavender described so charmingly at a recent council meeting as a 'UN feeding station.'
Brown says the issues in his ward are as you might expect in an area that is not a Tory council's priority: unemployment, inadequate housing, few training opportunities, a high teenage pregnancy rate and a population that tends towards the young, angry and disillusioned. He joined the party in 2002 when he was 17, because he wanted to do something about those problems: he didn't come from a political family, but he 'always had an interest in politics' and wanted to give something back to area in which he had lived all his life.
He didn't have a problem with Blairism at the start ('there was a need for the party to modernise') but he's got a big problem with it now. 'There's this awful decline and distance between the party members and the executive. It's awfully hard to get people back into the party. [We have to] bring back membership, bring back policy.'
The party executive's consistent ignoring of party conference votes on policy like the fourth option for housing, the emphasis on privatisation, the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan - these are all turning people away from the party, Brown says. If David Cameron has been bright enough to figure that the masses are gasping for a centre-left turn, why is it taking so long for Labour to rally from the coma?
Brown says the party needs a leadership contest because it needs to debate its shape, or die: unfortunately, he says, he doesn't think there will be a contest. He says he did support McDonnell's leadership bid at the start, but that he changed his mind. 'You have to be realistic... we can't get back to the policies of the eighties. If McDonnell did get on the ballot paper, that would be good, but I don't think he will.' He says McDonnell's problem is that he's supported by hundreds of people who are, alas, not in the party - hence McDonnell's grassroots support and healthy constituency majority. Kris Brown says that McDonnell is just not popular in the party, although he might get a few votes from ultra-Blairites who want to stick it to Gordon and pals.
A coronation will be problematic for Gordon Brown - 'he hasn't got a mandate, so he will be constantly watching the polls.' Like a few of the moderates who want a contest, Kris Brown plans to devote his energies to the Cruddas deputy leadership campaign. He doesn't see 'any indication' that Gordon Brown would be better than Blair on policy, but he thinks Cruddas might be a useful instrument of the centre-left as deputy leader. 'He [Cruddas] has the right idea about housing (more of it) and immigration (wants a debate on it, because he believes cheap migrant labour is tacitly being used to deregulate labour markets). Kris Brown says he believes there is a chance of winning the next election if there is a renewal of policy. '[But] if we continue with more of the same... well, I don't want that to happen.'