STARMER ENTERS RACE TO REPLACE CORBYN
V
OCAL Remain supporter Sir Keir Starmer will launch his Labour leadership bid in Brexit-backing Stevenage as he calls on the party to listen to voters to win back trust.
The shadow Brexit secretary will visit the Hertfordshire town which voted 59% for Leave today as he makes his pitch to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.
He became the fifth MP to enter the race to lead Labour following its worst general election defeat since 1935 when he made the announcement to the Sunday Mirror.
Backbenchers Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy declared on Friday, while shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry and shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis are also running.
Sir Keir said: “Over the coming weeks, I’m looking forward to getting back on the campaign trail and talking to people across the country about how Labour can rebuild and win.
“Britain desperately needs a Labour government. We need a Labour government that will offer people hope of a better future. However, that is only going to happen if Labour listens to people about what needs to change and how we can restore trust in our party as a force for good.”
Sir Keir’s Remain stance has been partly blamed by some Corbyn allies for the disastrous election performance.
Appealing to Mr Corbyn’s base, however, Sir Keir urged the party not to lurch to the right and said the case for a “bold and radical” Labour government is as important as ever.
The human rights lawyer, who was made Queen’s Counsel in 2002, served as head of the CPS and accepted a knighthood in 2014, and has struggled to shake-off perceptions of privilege.
But he was named after Labour legend Keir Hardy and he has stressed his upbringing by his toolmaker father and nurse mother in London’s Southwark when dismissing allegations he is too middle-class to speak to the party’s historic heartlands.
His CV includes co-founding the renowned Doughty Street Chambers and advising the Policing Board to ensure the Police Service of Northern Ireland complied with human rights laws. He entered Parliament as the MP for Holborn and St Pancras in 2015.
Critics have also raised concerns that Sir Keir is seen too much as a Londoner, but a recent survey made him the clear front-runner in the leadership race regardless.
He would beat the current leadership’s favoured candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey 61% to 39% in a run-off, according to a YouGov survey of 1,059 Labour members conducted at the end of December.
But the outsiders will yet be hoping to boost their profiles, with the race not expected to formally get under way until Tuesday and the new leader installed by the end of March.
WIGAN MP Lisa Nandy has begun her campaign to become the new leader of the Labour Party with a round of media interviews in the town pledging to “do things differently” compared with the years under Jeremy Corbyn. An outsider according to the polls, Ms Nandy is hoping to boost her profile within and outside the party which suffered its worst election trouncing since 1935.
With the ra race not expected to formally get under way u until Tuesday, she joins leadership rivals alo alongside outspoken Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, shadow treasury m minister Clive Lewis and shadow Brexit secretary secr Sir Keir Starmer.
The current cu leadership’s favourite Rebecca L Long-Bailey is also expected to enter the race.
Ms Na Nandy, a 40-year-old mother-ofone, sai said she was standing because Labour needs “to do things differently”. She s said: “We need a different sort of leaders leadership that helps to root us back in every c community across the UK, turns us back bac into a real movement and real force, driven from the ground up so that w we can win people’s trust back. “W “We’ve been wiped out in Scotland virtually, we’ve seen the red wal wall crumble in the North and Mi Midlands and parts of north W Wales.
“We’ve been told over and over ag again by people in what were our fo former Labour heartlands that we need to change, we can’t just ke keep changing the man at the top an and making decisions from Victoria Street in London and think we canM can fix things for people.” Ms Nandy announced her candid didacy in her local paper, the Wi Wigan Post, saying she has “a deep deeper understanding” of what has gone wrong having represented her const constituents since 2010.
A former f MP’s assistant, charity worker and councillor in London before becoming the Wigan MP, Ms Nandy s said: “I was born and brought up in Manc Manchester, went to college over in Bury in L Lancashire, I spent time as a London coun councillor, I worked with homeless teenager teenagers in Soho, spent 10 years living in Wigan Wigan.
“This is my community, this is where my family i is raised, born and bred and I couldn’t care more about winning back votes. “This really matters to me, I do have skin in the game, I’m not unlike many of my colleagues like that, but I’ve heard loud and clear what p people have been telling us in places like L Leigh, Ashfield, Easington where we felt the ground g collapse beneath our feet a few weeks ago. This has been a long time coming for the t Labour Party.”