Angela Rayner set to launch bid to be Labour deputy leader

Luke O'Reilly6 January 2020
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Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner is set to launch her bid to become deputy leader of the Labour Party later today.

Ms Rayner is also expected to say that she would back Rebecca Long-Bailey for the leadership if Ms Long-Bailey runs.

In a speech in Stockport, she will say: "I believe this deputy leadership election is our chance to debate what went wrong, and that a core role of the next deputy leader will be to put it right.

"It is why I want the leadership of our party to be a team effort. I will be quite straightforward: I will be voting for my friend Rebecca Long-Bailey if she stands for the leadership.

"But our collective leadership must go far wider than simply who is elected to these positions. It is why I want us to have an honest, but friendly, conversation with each other. And at the end of it, a united party that starts winning elections for us all."

Rayner has said she will back Long-Bailey for leader, if she decides to run
PA

As the race for leader and deputy leader begins, MPs hoping to take the helm of the party have been setting out their stalls.

Prominent backbencher Jess Phillips told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that she would "wait and see" how Brexit turns out, but hinted that a return to the EU would be possible under her leadership.

However she appeared to row back on that suggestion in an article in the Independent, saying: "People are asking me if I'll lead the campaign to rejoin the EU. We haven't even left yet!

"The honest answer is that I don't know what the future will hold, but we must accept the result, move our country forward and hold Boris Johnson to account.

"I can't see a campaign to rejoin winning support in the next Labour manifesto."

 Clive Lewis, Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Sir Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry have joined the field

She said she would not commit to re-nationalising all key utilities and added that Labour's free broadband proposal - unveiled during the election campaign without the knowledge of Mr Watson, who was shadow digital secretary - was unbelievable.

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Labour had lost the trust of voters, who felt the manifesto was "overloaded".

Sir Keir, the current favourite in the race, said Labour lost the public's trust over a lack of clarity on Brexit, anti-Semitism, and a "feeling that the manifesto was overloaded".

But he told Marr "we shouldn't retreat from the radical" as he outlined his vision for the future.

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said the "dreadful" election result was partly because the manifesto "just wasn't convincing because there was too much in it".

"In the end, we can say until we are blue in the face that there is another way - and there is - but we won't get the opportunity to serve if people don't believe us," she told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday.

Wigan MP Lisa Nandy also said the main factor in Labour's failure was trust, and blamed Mr Corbyn for failing to acknowledge the power of the Prime Minister's Brexit message.

"Trust - trust was the issue, not the radicalism, not the deeper fundamental change we were promising, but trust," she told Ridge.

Ms Nandy also criticised the free broadband pledge, telling Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live that voters cared about the "more pressing issue in their lives" of buses, adding: "It's not about whether you're radical or not, it's about whether you're relevant."

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