Jess Phillips Starts Bid to Win U.K. Labour Party Leadership
Jess Phillips Launches Bid to Win U.K. Labour Party Leadership
(Bloomberg) -- Maverick politician Jess Phillips said Labour needs a “different kind of leader” as she launched her bid to succeed Jeremy Corbyn, following the U.K. opposition party’s worst electoral defeat since 1935.
Labour needs to regain support from “huge parts” of the working class base it has lost and is in “big trouble” if it fails, Phillips, 38, said in a statement Friday, according to the Press Association.
Corbyn said in the aftermath of the crushing defeat on Dec. 12 he would stand down as leader following a “period of reflection” to determine the direction the party should take. Labour’s National Executive Committee is due to outline a timetable for the leadership election next week.
“Now is not the time to be meek: Boris Johnson needs to be challenged, with passion, heart and precision,” Phillips said. “We need to recognize that politics has changed in a fundamental way by electing a different kind of leader. More of the same will lead to more of the same result.”
Lisa Nandy, 40, another member of parliament, late Friday tweeted that she is running because “it has to be different and it can be better.”
The leadership race is shaping up as a clash between opposing wings of the party. Corbyn supporters want to install a new leader in his left wing, socialist mold to push on with an agenda of wealth redistribution and the nationalization of key industries. But moderates want to steer the party back toward the center ground from where Tony Blair led it to victory in three successive elections between 1997 and 2005.
The two early favorites, Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer and business spokeswoman Rebecca Long Bailey, have yet to formally declare their candidacies -- though both have said they are considering a bid. A YouGov poll of Labour party members published on Jan. 2 showed that Starmer, a moderate who remained loyal to Corbyn, would comfortably beat Long Bailey -- viewed as the current leadership’s preferred candidate -- with Phillips in third.
Phillips has been a fierce critic of Corbyn and is known in Parliament for her no-nonsense, blunt style. A Remainer who backed a second referendum on Brexit, she held her Leave-backing Midlands seat of Birmingham Yardley in the election with a comfortable majority of more than 10,000 votes, even as Labour lost dozens of similarly pro-Brexit seats in central and northern England.
In her statement, she criticized Corbyn’s “woeful response” to the party’s antisemitism crisis as well as the ambiguous position he adopted on Brexit. Phillips is a member of the Labour Friends of Israel parliamentary group.
Phillips adds her name to Labour’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Emily Thornberry, and a junior economy spokesman, Clive Lewis, in formerly declaring her leadership bid. Party Chairman Ian Lavery has also suggested he’ll stand. Backbencher David Lammy took himself out of the running in a Twitter post on Saturday.
“After serious consideration, I’m ruling myself out,” he said. “I’m committed to playing my full part in opposition, but we need the candidate best placed to unite our party’s factions so we can win the country’s trust.”
Nandy, who represents Wigan, a community between Liverpool and Manchester in northwest England, sent a letter to her local newspaper to announce her plans.
“I’m standing because I know too many people in places like Wigan no longer feel they have a voice in our national story,” she said. “So many of you have told me you believe many leaders are not interested in what you have to say and are unable - or unwilling - to understand your lives. I believe you are right.”
--With assistance from Alex Longley.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Marion Dakers, Sara Marley
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