Hard-Left loses its grip as Long-Bailey fired
REBECCA Long-Bailey’s sacking marks the last gasp of the hard-Left grip on Labour.
The ex-solicitor was one of the few torch bearers left for Corbynism and just three months ago was its candidate for the party’s top job.
Ms Long-Bailey, 40, was a cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn right from the very start, backing him for leader when he was viewed as a nohope outsider.
After Labour suffered its worst electoral defeat since 1935 last year, she gave him 10 out of 10 for leadership.
The Salford and Eccles MP, elected in 2015, told of how she was shaped by seeing her dad “worrying when round after round of redundancies were inflicted” when he worked on Salford docks, even though they closed in 1982 when she was just two.
A claim that she was “born to the sound of the roar of the Stretford End” was mocked when it emerged Manchester United were playing away that day.
The Long family moved to Ellesmere Port in Cheshire and she later studied politics and sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Ms Long-Bailey, who is married with a son, promised radical socialist reform if she succeeded Mr Corbyn and pledged to back workers and trade unions in every strike and dispute “no questions asked”.
But she struggled to be decisive over whether to hyphenate her name. Her own website was without but her Twitter page had one.
After her sacking Ms LongBailey will have more time for her hobbies of Chinese takeaways and TV box sets.