Over the course of the past two months 30,000 people have joined the Labour Party, but this does not necessarily signal the new dawn that many within the Party would have you believe.
In their current Leaderless state it is easy to attack Labour by saying that they are lacking direction and a real purpose, without actually addressing the main reason why this is the case. The ineptness and at times downright tedium of the leadership contest does validate some of the criticism, but direction cannot come from a leader alone. It must be derived from principle and policy. Labour’s greatest contemporary problem is that they are currently bereft of both.
John Prescott, writing for the Guardian (1), reports that Labour’s research on its new arrivals attests that the majority of new members have joined in order to make a protest against the cuts in spending announced by the new government, Harriet Harman has made statements to similar effect (2). It is in the motivations of the new members that danger lies for Labour. If they are to rebrand as an anti-cuts Party, as it this which is attracting people to the Party, it is highly likely that they will only further decrease their electoral appeal.
In yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (3), David Cameron, pointed out that the difference between Labour’s proposed cuts and those of the Coalitions is 1% per year over the course of the Parliament. For Labour to then grasp the mantle of being the main anti-cuts party would be a huge mistake. The public are well aware that it is they who amassed the huge deficit, and that they were also part of the mainstream consensus on cuts. To ignore this fact, as many of the leadership candidates have been doing quite brazenly (4), would make the Party irrelevant on the key debate of the day: What should be cut from government spending?
Fuelling the anger of new members by not accepting cuts without restructuring the movement constructively will leave Labour on the sidelines. It will further dent their chances of ever reattaining power, and, probably more importantly for the country, leave Parliament without an effective opposition, something which arguably blighted Labour itself for many years.
Labour’s greatest immediate challenge is to find its purpose. To become relevant again. Without real honesty from leadership candidates as to how the deficit should be reduced, finding a purpose which will also make the Party electable seems a distant hope.

(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/07/labour-party-engage-new-members
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/07/new-activist-labour-harriet-harman
(3) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t164p/Prime_Ministers_Questions_07_07_2010/
(4) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10181112.stm