Cruddas

Jon Cruddas has been the MP for Dagenham since 2001, and for the Dagenham and Rainham constituency since 2010. During the course of a 35-year career in the Labour party, he has become one of its most respected intellectual figures, standing for the deputy leadership in 2006 and chairing the party’s policy review under Ed Miliband. His new book, A Century of Labour, is a sweeping historical survey of the party’s ideas and personalities since its formation. Cruddas lives in London with his wife, Anna. He will be standing…

With Labour potentially on the brink of a historic general election victory, the hard-fought question of what the party stands for has taken on an immediate, practical relevance.At the outset of this twisty political history, Jon Cruddas, the outgoing MP for Dagenham and Rainham, admits he is not a neutral observer of Labour’s battle of ideas. His central claim is that Labour’s purpose cannot be reduced to a single statement or slogan – but embraces three distinct ideas of justice, whose hold on the party has ebbed and…