Angela Rayner is expected to endorse Rebecca Long Bailey as Labour leadership candidate in the New Year, despite intense speculation that she may not back her flatmate and instead pursue a leadership bid of her own.
A source close to the shadow education secretary told the Guardian that she has only discussed a possible deputy leadership bid with colleagues, including Long Bailey. The source dismissed suggestions that Rayner would ever stand against or refuse to back her close friend.
This follows reports that Rayner was being urged by allies not to back Long Bailey’s bid to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as party leader.
The source said: “This speculation should be dismissed. Angela has been discussing with other Labour MPs a potential deputy leadership and is expected to make a decision early in the new year.”
In an article in the Guardian, Long Bailey said she was considering running to become leader and would back a deputy leadership bid by Rayner.
A report in the Times claimed that allies of Rayner had warned her not to endorse Long Bailey. One source told the newspaper: “It’s clear what Rebecca gets out of Angela’s support but not clear what Angela gets out of it. She’ll walk deputy either way.”
The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, and the shadow Treasury minister, Clive Lewis, have confirmed they will stand to become party leader.
Another eight MPs say they are considering standing including Long Bailey, Ian Lavery, the party chairman, Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, and the Wigan MP Lisa Nandy.
The candidate who many saw as Corbyn’s strongest loyalist candidate, Laura Pidcock, lost her seat in the 12 December election.
Some Corbyn supporters have expressed concern that the possibility of three leftwing candidates – Long Bailey, Lavery and Lewis – could split the left vote and allow a centrist MP to win.
But Toby Perkins, the Labour MP for Chesterfield, suggested that the left was in fact acting together to smooth Long Bailey’s path to the leadership. “Don’t be fooled by this,” he wrote on Twitter. “It’s purely an attempt to convince us all that [Long Bailey] is not a far-left choice. He [Lavery] won’t really stand, she will.”
Corbyn has said he will stand down as leader early next year in the wake of the election defeat, where much of the party’s traditional Northern English strongholds fell to the Conservatives.
While the timetable for the contest has yet to been announced, it is expected to begin next month, with a new leader to be in place by the spring.
To be a candidate on the ballot paper, each potential leader will need the backing of 10% of Labour MPs and MEPs. Because there are 203 MPs and 10 MEPs, they will need 22 votes.
They will then have to win support from either 5% of constituency Labour parties or “at least three affiliates (at least two of which shall be trade union affiliates) comprising five per cent of affiliated membership”.
This has given both trade union general secretaries and grassroots organisations such as Momentum considerable say in who will become the next leader.
Jon Lansman’s grassroots’ group Momentum has proved itself to be adept at rallying its supporters at key internal elections.
There are only 12 unions affiliated to the Labour party, of which only five are big enough to take a candidate across the 5% threshold – Unite, Unison, GMB, Usdaw and CWU. Some in the centre of the party say that rule changes, introduced in 2016, have vastly improved the odds of a leftwing successor to Corbyn.
Once on the ballot paper, every MP, party member and affiliated supporters – members of trade unions and socialist societies – will have one vote each via post or online. Registered supporters, who paid a one-off fee to participate in a leadership election, can also vote.
The contest has to take at least five weeks, according to party rules, but the actual timetable will be decided by a meeting of the party’s national executive committee on 6 January.
