John McTernan is a Blairite who is not afraid to speak his mind. On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the former Labour special advisor discusses the state of Labour’s leadership contest with Isabel and me. He believes the right of the party is struggling as it failed to put forward a suitably experienced candidate ‘because David Miliband left the Commons in the last Parliament’:
‘If David had stayed and served in Ed’s shadow cabinet, David would have been the candidate wouldn’t he? There wouldn’t have really been a contest and I think the vagaries of people’s personal career choices has a big impact on where we are.’
McTernan describes the nomination of Jeremy Corbyn by Labour MPs as ‘self-indulgent’ and still doesn’t think he will win. But if Corbyn is victorious, McTernan says he should be removed immediately:
‘I can’t see any case for letting him have two minutes in office, let alone two years in office because I think the damage that will be done to the Labour party in that period makes it incredibly hard to recover … it just beggars belief that there isn’t something that, in the unlikely event Corbyn wins, there is something is done swiftly and quickly to restore the party to its sense.
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