Starmer leadership bid steps up Keir as 30,000 new members join post-election
Sir Keir Starmer’s hopes of being Labour leader have risen – because of a surge in new party applicants since the election.
Insiders say the 30,000 who signed up in the past week are mostly moderate EU Remainers who back the Shadow Brexit Secretary. A source said: “Anyone who joins within three weeks of the leadership election will get a vote.
“There is a widespread view Labour should ditch its ambitious spending promises.”
Only Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry and Shadow Treasury Secretary Clive Lewis have formally joined the leadership race. But Yvette Cooper is deciding over
Christmas whether to have a second tilt at the top job.
She would vie with Starmer for the support of the 90 MPs in the soft left Tribune group.
Bookies’ favourite is Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, who can expect the backing of Jeremy
Corbyn’s supporters among 465,000 members.
Coral make her 7-4 in front of Starmer on 5-2 and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy, on 4-1. Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner is considering joining her on an all-woman ticket as deputy. There is broad agreement Labour should return to its well-received 2017 manifesto plus this year’s Green Industrial Revolution programme.
Election candidates need the support of 22 MPs and MEPs – though that will drop to 21 MPs if nominations do not begin before MEPs are abolished by the January 31 Brexit. A source said: “It would be Becky LongBailey’s sense and sensibility position. There’s a feeling traditional Labour voters are looking to return to Labour given the right leader.”
The new leader of the UK Labour Party can’t, we’re told, be someone who wants to remain in the European Union.
It can’t be anyone from south of Crewe or the middle classes.
They should be “northern”, apparently – though this most certainly does not mean Scottish. The only MP north of the Border isn’t even deemed suitable to be shadow Scottish secretary.
It would be preferable if they weren’t a man. And, on pain of death, it cannot be anyone tainted by an association with Tony Blair
– a figure who the Jon Lansman/John McDonnell/Len McCluskey power triumverate appear to despise even more than they revile Boris Johnson.
What doesn’t appear to be harming anyone’s prospects is a first-hand involvement with the biggest British electoral fiasco for more or less a century.
In fact, membership of Jeremy Corbyn’s scraped-together shadow cabinet now seems to be almost a pre-requisite for standing.
Unfortunately, anyone who thinks Clive Lewis, Rebecca Long-Bailey or Richard Burgon are the answer is asking the wrong question.
Labour’s prominent faces from the disastrous Christmas election of 2019 will be seen by the voting public for what they are: A bunch of losers.
It’s a charge which would be levelled at all of them for years to come and it’s an impossible one to refute.
The bizarre survival of Corbyn’s cronies appears to be replicated in the back office, where highly-paid advisers Seumas Milne and Karie Murphy seem set to keep their roles.
Sadly,any breakthrough candidate who could clear out the deadwood has yet to make themselves known.
It means that Yvette Cooper – a highly able and likeable minister of state from the days when Labour used to trounce the Tories on a regular basis – looks the most compelling potential candidate to have been mentioned.
Whether she will be up for staying the course in what’s likely to be a bruising campaign must be open to question.
Earlier this year, her daughter Ellie was moved to write about the strain on family life as a result of her mum’s work and the hurt caused by the threats and abuse she received because she campaigned to stop a No-Deal Brexit. Ellie wrote: “I am scared when I scroll through the replies to her tweets calling her a liar and a traitor.
“I am scared when our house gets fitted with panic buttons, industrial-locking doors and explosive bags to catch the mail.”
Even with these real concerns put to one side, Cooper is unlikely to triumph because the numbers are against her and because of, well, Blair.
She’s too closely associated with the party’s most effective post-war figure and not close enough to a Boris Johnson-enabler who couldn’t win the sack race at a school sports day if he tied the opposition’s hands behind their back.
What a troubled vessel the good ship Labour is right now.
It sails further and further away from what ought to be its primary purpose – making real improvements to the lives of working people.
Every day spent denying the need for a complete overhaul is a further betrayal of the people who need Labour most.
They’re the people who benefitted when a Labour government introduced a legal minimum wage for the first time and made real improvements in education and healthcare.
The left of the party have argued – and will continue to argue – that a reheat of Blairism won’t work now, that the country is different, that the electorate and demographics have changed, that only a radical solution will save Labour from being stuck in the middle of the road.
They might be right.
Without a credible figure to rally behind, without a potential winner who looks capable of at least running a medium-sized supermarket, it’s all just pointless theory.
The uncomfortable truth is that the further you travel towards the centre, the more likely you are to find someone with relatability, managerial prowess and the power of political persuasion.
These people are close to the centre because they have shown an ability to compromise – a quality voters actually like.
Centre left is the ground Blair, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown and even Barack Obama occupied. Nicola Sturgeon – a more effective leader than anything showing in Labour’s Westminster ranks – is in that territory, too.
The coming weeks and months are crucial for what was once the party of the people.
A continuity selection of Corbyn 2.0 has to be resisted.