The longest suicide vote in history?
Tensions rise between Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall over who can beat Jeremy Corbyn Margaret Beckett says she was a ‘moron’ for nominating maverick leadership candidate Tony Blair says Labour risks disaster – and there are still seven weeks of this cont
The two women vying to become Labour leader are locked in a fight to avoid being knocked out of the contest following a surprise surge in support for the left-wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn.
Yvette Cooper, the centrist candidate, and Liz Kendall, the Blairite standard-bearer, both claim they are now the only runners who can overtake Mr Corbyn after Andy Burnham angered some of his supporters by “flip-flopping” over whether Labour should support the Government’s £12bn of welfare cuts.
Labour’s contest, which will not end until 12 September, produced another day of turmoil for the party yesterday.
The first opinion poll among those entitled to vote showed Mr Corbyn ahead on first preference votes. The YouGov survey for The Times showed him on 43 per cent; Mr Burnham on 26 per cent; Ms Cooper on 20 per cent and Ms Kendall on 11 per cent. It pointed to a 53-47 per cent victory for Mr Corbyn over Mr Burnham in the final round.
The poll was taken seriously by senior Labour figures, who admitted that Mr Corbyn, who started as the rank outsider, is now ahead and has the momentum to produce a shock victory. Some fear this outcome would doom Labour to defeat at the 2020 election. But other figures said the sur- vey could be a “wake-up call” that persuades members to pull back from backing him.
Tony Blair intervened in the contest for the first time with an appeal to Labour not to return to the vote-losing leftwing policies of the 1980s. He described Mr Corbyn as the “Tory preference” and said the party could not regain power if it was simply a “platform for protest” against cuts. “It would not take the country forwards, it would take it backwards,” he said.
Labour’s shadow Business Secretary, Chuka Umunna, who dropped out of the race to support Ms Kendall, said yesterday that he would “find it difficult” to serve in the shadow Cabinet under Mr Corbyn. “I’ve nothing against him personally but I think there’s far too much … I’ve been on record about my views on how we recovery our economic competency [and] he is sitting in a far different place to me,” he told Sky News.
There were recriminations over Labour MPs who nominated Mr Corbyn to let him enter the race even though theywill not vote for him. John McTernan, a former Blair aide, branded them “morons”.
The YouGov survey provoked claims about who was best-placed to halt the Corbyn bandwagon under Labour’s preferential voting system. Allies of Ms Cooper and Ms Kendall admitted privately that to win, they will have to eliminate the “other woman” in the first round. Members can rank the candidates in order of preference if they wish. If no one wins a majority, the bottom-placed candidate drops out and the second preference vote of their supporters is reallocated.
Ms Cooper argued that the survey showed Labour members need to “get serious”. She said the party would not win by either moving sharply to the left or right. “We do have to stand up for the ideas we believe in but we have to make sure that we can deliver,” she said. “Otherwise it is people who depend on Labour who are going to be let down by this. That is why it is so important and serious that we are credible.”
Allies of the shadow Home Secretary claimed the second preference votes in the YouGov survey showed she was the only candidate who could defeat Mr Corbyn. But the Kendall camp claimed its canvassing showed Ms Cooper was “tanking” and could come last in the first round. It will argue that the contest is now a straight fight between Ms Kendall and Mr Corbyn.
This claim was dismissed as “a desperate last throw” by the Cooper camp, which said it was clear Ms Kendall had no chance of winning. Senior Labour figures believe the Conservatives privately fear a female Labour leader and many Labour members would welcome one.
Aides to Ms Cooper and Ms Kendall accused each other of leaking two private polls last week showing Mr Corbyn ahead. Both denied the claims.
Burnham allies insist his second place in the survey showed the fight was between him and Mr Corbyn. But one MP supporter admitted: “The morale in the camp is really bad at the moment. We know how badly Andy’s position on the Welfare Bill has played.”
Mr Corbyn said his campaign was going “extremely well” but that talk of him winning was “a bit premature”.