Jon Cruddas

We continue our interviews with Labour party members about the party's future at a time of falling membership, undecided leadership and confused policy direction.

There are interviews with party socialists here
There are interviews with party moderates here
There are interviews with party Blairites here

Party members Nick Parrott, Max Freedman, Omar Salem and Mazher Hussain are as clear as most of us on the key to saving party's future: re-train Labour's straying focus on the domestic agenda, and aim policy at those constituents Labour was meant for.

'Blair maybe put too much of the focus on Worcester Woman and Mondeo Man,' Freedman admits. Re-engaging with Labour's traditional, and presently very sad, supporters will also go some way to keeping that smiley wanker David Cameron in his box. Everybody knows that Cameron will rat the masses out, particularly in areas like housing - everybody is already all too aware of the large and nasty gap that yawns between Cameron's warming, right-on hippie rhetoric and the evil social policies that his Conservative activists, especially in local authorities, are developing and implementing on the ground as we speak.

Hammersmith and Fulham is an excellent example: less than a year has passed since the Conservatives took that council from Labour, and they've already washed their flabby white hands of the needy and the not-so-fabulously rich. Schools are being earmarked for sale to developers and housing centres for closure, housing staff are being made redundant and the Council's committees section is no longer quite staffed. A similar rape of services that are desperately required by the beleaguered poor is underway at the Lib Dem-Conservative Camden council. The Conservatives are not here to make friends.

Bitch story with interviews with Young Labour members on the future of the Labour party is at the New Statesman site. Feel free to comment over there. Can't sort it out here at the moment too wrecked

Are you a member of the Labour party? We want to interview you about the direction you think the party should take. Contact us and we'll call you.

You can read Labour young socialists' views on the Labour party's future here
You can read Labour young moderates' views on the Labour party's future here

The young Blairites. More interviews to come on all

Legendary online Blairite Shamik Das, 27, thinks a contest for the Labour party leadership is vital for the party, but implies that no sane man toys with the notion that John McDonnell will be anywhere near it. 'Arrrrgh,' he laughs, placing a hand on a pained forehead. 'Arrrrggh. Arrrrrrrgh. No.'

Das would prefer the debate about the party's future to take place at the deputy-leadership level, with the centre-left's Jon Cruddas at the plate for party members of a socialist bent, and Hilary Benn doing whatever it is that he does for the right. Das will support Benn, but he thinks he can probably stand Cruddas, at least for the duration of a contest. It's true, Das says, that Cruddas has made a few socialist noises in his campaign, but he's so far steered clear of serious fruitcake rhetoric. 'He [Cruddas] is not as barking as some of them are,' Das laughs. 'His [voting] record is quite sound from my point of view.'