Labour leadership contest: Lisa Nandy says party treated its voters as 'irrational or racist' on immigration over past 20 years
Labour has treated its traditional voters as “irrational or racist” about immigration over the last 20 years, Lisa Nandy has said.
In a blunt assessment of her predecessors, the leadership hopeful said Labour had shown a “shallowness” of understanding over concerns about immigration in working class areas and a “lack of courage” in providing answers.
Ms Nandy, the Wigan MP, said Labour leaders over the past 20 years - Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn - had all sought “more desperate ways to pretend we were offering solutions” instead of making a "more principled and braver case" for immigration.
Her comments came ahead of the opening of the Labour membership ballot on Monday, with many supporters expected to cast their votes within days.
Ms Nandy, initially an outside candidate, faces competition from shadow cabinet members Rebecca Long-Bailey, a close ally of Mr Corbyn, and frontrunner Sir Keir Starmer.
Writing exclusively for The Independent, Ms Nandy said: “As immigration climbed up the list of voters’ priorities there was a shallowness of understanding in our analysis and a lack of courage in our response.
“We need to understand why in areas with low immigration people are concerned about it.
“And we need to understand that in towns like mine, freedom of movement meant opportunities for people from other countries to come and work at the local hospital, while local people weren’t able to train as nurses because the government had cut the nursing bursary.
“Voters weren’t irrational or racist but our political strategy treated them like they were. It’s not the fault of voters that this complexity was missed – it is our fault, the politicians who should have been making a more principled and braver case for the last twenty years.
“Because too often we lacked courage and ended up seeking ever more desperate ways to pretend we were offering solutions to something that, in our heart of hearts, we don’t agree is the problem.”
Ms Nandy said she was “tired of defeat” and warned that Labour “cannot just change the man at the top again and hope for a different result”.
She said: “For decades now Labour hasn’t been listening to what people are trying to tell them. About the decline of local economies and high streets.
"A loss of trust in politicians and in us to deliver on our promises.
“We’ve offered policy solutions devised by a small group of people behind desks in central London, when the deafening cry from people out in the country was for more power and control over their lives and communities, and a new national story in which they felt they had a role to play."
She said it was time for Labour “levelled with people and trusted them to get it right” as well as making the case for freedom of movement but did not set out any further detail on her plans.
Labour members and supporters will begin voting on Monday in a leadership ballot that runs until 2 April.
The new Labour leader will be announced at a special conference on 4 April.
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