Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has consolidated her place as the frontrunner in the contest to be Labour’s next deputy leader. Last night Labour published the first list of nominations for candidates, and Phillipson was in the lead. Here are the figures.
Bridget Phillipson: 44
Lucy Powell: 35
Bell Riberio-Addy: 8
Emily Thornberry: 7
Paula Barker: 3
Alison McGovern: 2
To be on the ballot paper, candidates need to get 80 MP nominations by 5pm on Thursday. An updated list of MP nominations will be published tonight, and it seems very likely that at that point Phillipson – who is in effect the No 10 candidate – will pass the threshold.
In Tory leadership contests, MPs can back a long-shot candidate and then switch to someone else in a subsequent round of voting, after they drop out. But in this process MPs who have already nominated one candidate cannot switch before the Thursday deadline unless their candidate withdraws. And MPs don’t have to nominate any candidate if they don’t want to. As a result, it is possible that Phillipson could end up as the only candidate on the ballot, and likely that the three candidates most critical of Keir Starmer (Emily Thornberry, Bell Ribeiro-Addy. and Paula Barker) will struggle to reach the 80-MP threshold.
According to Politico, Phillipson’s allies are “very confident” that she will get 80 nominations by the end of the day.
But, as Aubrey Allegretti and Max Kendix report in the Times, critics have been briefing against her.
Despite Phillipson’s strong lead among parliamentarians, she was criticised by rival camps. One senior MP said: “I think she’s quite robotic. She obviously has a very strong story, but she’s never really come across as having a personality. She’s no Angela Rayner.”
Phillipson’s perceived closeness to Starmer also concerned some. A minister said: “She’s not charismatic, engaging or going to light a fire under our membership, which is desperately needed. With Bridget, it’ll be continuity Keir.”
An ally of Thornberry expressed scepticism that “a sitting cabinet minister is never going to properly stand up to Keir and Rachel”, while a source close to Barker said it would be “impossible” for Phillipson to be a “constructive critic”.
According to Sam Blewett and Bethany Dawson in their London Playbook briefing, Phillipson’s supporters are arguing that it would be in the party’s best interests for the eduction secretary to be elected unopposed. One said:
The question Labour MPs need to be asking themselves is do they want a damaging six week internal deputy leadership contest, which opens old sores and potentially divides the party, because there is one candidate that can unite the party now — and that is Bridget Phillipson.
In 2021 at Labour conference Keir Starmer narrowly won a vote changing the leadership election rules so that candidates for leader need to be nominated by 20% of the PLP, not just 10% as before. The move did not attract a huge amount of attention in the national media, but in Labour circles it was extremely contentious, and Starmer and his allies saw it as an essential move in marginalising the left.
This week we are seeing why that rule change mattered so much. Under the old system, the deputy leadership contest would have been much more open to a Starmer-critical voice.
