Thornberry is first to confirm bid to become Labour’s next leader

LABOUR’S EMILY Thornberry has declared her candidacy to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as she revealed that she warned the leader it would be an act of “catastrophic political folly” to back the doomed election.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary yesterday became the first candidate to formally announce they are running to replace Mr Corbyn as the party tries to recover from its worst general election result since 1935.

Others including Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy have signalled they are considering a bid, while key Corbyn ally Rebecca Long-Bailey is seen as the choice of the current leadership.

Former Cabinet Minister and Normanton, Pontefract, and Castleford MP Yvette Cooper said she was also considering a leadership bid, having unsuccessfully stood against Mr Corbyn in 2015.

She suggested the party needed to move away from the politics of both Mr Corbyn and Mr Blair if it was to win back the support of “patriotic” older voters who abandoned it for the Tories.

“We cannot just become a party that is concentrated in cities, with our support increasingly concentrated in diverse, young, fast-moving areas while older voters in towns think we aren’t listening to them,” she told the Today programme.

Ms Cooper’s majority was cut significantly last week.

The race to replace Mr Corbyn following the electoral disaster comes amid a battle over the future identity of the party.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said Labour needs another John Smith or Clement Attlee from the “mainstream tradition” as the party has become a London-centric “liberal left echo chamber”.