Money

Long Bailey and Thornberry to launch Labour leadership bids


Rebecca Long Bailey and Emily Thornberry will launch their campaigns for the Labour party leadership on Friday evening as the five contenders seeking to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as head of the UK opposition party prepare for their first public hustings.

The frontrunner, shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, is holding an afternoon campaign event in Leeds ahead of the hustings in Liverpool on Saturday.

Ms Long Bailey, the shadow business secretary, won the endorsement of Momentum, the grassroots group set up to support Mr Corbyn, on Thursday — which will give her campaign organising muscle and an army of activists. She is widely seen as the “continuity Corbyn” candidate who would continue to take Labour on the hard-left path forged by the outgoing leader.

By contrast, the other four candidates are relatively moderate, although all are self-proclaimed socialists.

All the candidates have already secured the signatures of at least 22 MPs; they now need to win the backing of more than 33 constituency Labour parties or three affiliates such as unions. Those who do then go forward to a ballot of Labour’s 500,000 members. A YouGov poll for the Times on Friday indicated that Sir Keir would beat Ms Long Bailey in the final round by 63 per cent to 37 per cent.

Sir Keir, who picked up the most nominations from MPs, at 86, has already secured the support of Unison, the public services union, while Lisa Nandy’s team is hopeful of winning over the GMB manufacturing union when it makes its decision on Tuesday.

The support of Unite the Union, the biggest union, remains up for grabs with general secretary Len McCluskey refusing to endorse any candidate.

Unite’s backing for Mr Corbyn proved crucial when he won the leadership in 2015. While Unite is expected to endorse Ms Long Bailey, there is some resentment inside the union that Karie Murphy, Mr Corbyn’s former chief of staff and a close friend of Mr McCluskey — has been shut out from her campaign.

Some Labour insiders have blamed wrangling between different leftwing factions for the relatively slow start to the Long Bailey campaign — with Unite, Momentum and shadow chancellor John McDonnell all competing for influence.

Relations between senior Corbynistas became increasingly strained in the final months before the December election. “John McDonnell has absolutely haemorrhaged trust among the left,” said one Corbyn ally. “His fingerprints were all over the decision to back a second referendum, which cost us so many seats up north.”

Meanwhile the TSSA union, the first to back Mr Corbyn four years ago, is balloting members with the choice of either Ms Long Bailey or Sir Keir.

Ms Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary, scraped together 23 nominations from MPs and came in at just 1 per cent in a LabourList Survation poll this week. She will launch her campaign in her home town of Guildford, Surrey, promising to be the “battle-hardened” experienced figure to help propel Labour back to power.

Meanwhile, Jess Phillips, who also received only 23 nominations, is seen as an outsider in the race given her support from the “Blairite” centrist faction of MPs.

All five candidates will gather at 11.30am on Saturday for the first of 12 hustings that will mostly take place in cities around the country during the contest, which concludes on April 4.

It was during the initial hustings in 2015 that the perceived outsider Mr Corbyn emerged as the frontrunner for the leadership.

While Sir Keir is the bookmakers’ favourite, some Labour MPs are uneasy about the fact that the party has never had a female leader in its century-long history.

Ms Long Bailey will use her launch to promise an end to the “gentlemen’s club of politics”. She has also criticised the party for “winning procedural games in parliament” instead of spending the past three years building a local movement for change — in a coded dig at Sir Keir, who orchestrated the parliamentary manoeuvres over Brexit.

Labour has invited members of the public to pay £25 to take part in the ballot as “registered supporters” but only 14,700 signed up — compared with 180,000 in 2015.



READ SOURCE

Leave a Reply

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.