Nandy’s looking handy as she reaches last lap of Labour’s leadership race
LABOUR leadership candidate Lisa Nandy last night gained enough support to get her name on the party’s final ballot paper.
The Wigan MP became the second contender to make it into the last round – following frontrunner Sir Keir Starmer – after former rival Jess Phillips said she was her ‘number one’ choice and she was officially backed by the Chinese For Labour group.
To get on to the ballot paper, which will be voted on by all Labour members, candidates need the support of three unions or affiliate groups representing 5 per cent of the membership. Miss Nandy, 40, had already been backed by the GMB union and National Union of Mineworkers. Rivals Emily Thornberry and Rebecca Long-Bailey have not yet reached the threshold.
As Miss Nandy took a step closer to replacing Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, she hit out at former Prime Minister
Tony Blair, saying while she did not want to ‘trash’ the economic record of the last Labour government, ‘the consensus Thatcher built lasted all the way through the New Labour years’.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Mr Corbyn’s rejection of the politics of austerity had been an ‘important moment’ for the party. Just hours later, Mr Blair posted a video defending his record. He said: ‘We made the UK more equal, more fair and more socially mobile. Don’t tell me we did nothing for the poorest in our country or the world. We did and we’re proud of it.’
Miss Phillips announced on Tuesday she was pulling out of the leadership race, saying she was not the right person to bring the party back together after its crushing election defeat. She said: ‘I think both Lisa and Keir can unite the party and begin the process of winning back trust with the country. Lisa will be my number one preference.’
In a speech in London, Miss Nandy said she would raise taxes in order to reverse Tory welfare cuts and said Labour needed to make the case that taxation was not ‘ evil’, but essential to pay for public services. She also pledged to penalise companies which refuse to pay employees the living wage.