Powell says Labour ‘must change how we are doing things’
Lucy Powell was sacked from Keir Starmer’s cabinet in September and has indicated she will refuse a return to a government role so she can speak more openly about the direction of the party in office.
She has insisted she wants to “help Keir and our government to succeed” but the party “must change how we are doing things to turn things around”.
In a final message to supporters earlier this week she said Labour had to be “more in touch with our movement, and the communities and workplaces we represent, more principled and strategic, less tactical, and strongly guided by our values”.
Key events
Pippa Crerar
The Guardian’s political editor, Pippa Crerar, says that Lucy Powell’s election as Labour’s new deputy leader will be “widely interpreted as a sign of disillusionment among party members, after she pledged to be their voice to leadership”.
Crerar also highlighted the low turnout of 16.6%.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said she would continue to be a “strong voice” at the cabinet table despite losing out to Lucy Powell in the deputy leadership contest.
Phillipson said:
I want to congratulate Lucy on her victory in this contest.
It’s crucial that our party now comes together to take the fight to Reform in next year’s crucial Senedd, Holyrood and local elections.
I am obviously disappointed at today’s result but I’m proud of the campaign I’ve run. I want to thank everyone who voted for me in this contest. I feel privileged to have had the chance of meeting members across the country, talking about their priorities and what they want to see: a united party, talking about the good things this Labour government is doing, not fixating on our mistakes.
Regardless of today’s result, I will always be a strong voice for our members and trade unions at the cabinet table and I will still be that powerful campaigning presence at the top of government working to deliver a crucial second term of Labour government.
Labour ‘must unite’ says Starmer as he admits past week has shown urgency of the task
The election of Lucy Powell as Labour deputy leader follows a bruising few days for Keir Starmer after the chaos in the grooming gangs inquiry, the return of a small boat migrant who was sent to France under the one in, one out deal, the error which saw Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu released from prison, and defeat for Labour in its Welsh stronghold of Caerphilly, reports the PA news agency.
Starmer said:
We must press ahead with the renewal that working people need to see.
Now, this week, we received another reminder of just how urgent that task is. A bad result in Wales, I accept that, but a reminder that people need to look out their window and see change and renewal in their community, opportunities for their children, public services rebuilt, the cost of living crisis tackled.
Renewal is the only answer to decline, to grievance and to division and we have to keep going on that. It is the offer we must make to the people of Scotland, Wales and England next year.
And that means we must come together. We must unite. We must keep our focus on what is, in my view, the defining battle for the soul of our nation.
Powell: Country and economy has ‘worked in the interests of the few, not the many’ for ‘too long’
Lucy Powell said Labour “won’t win by trying to out-Reform Reform” after being elected as the party’s new deputy leader.
Speaking after the results of the deputy leadership were announced, Powell said:
It starts with us wrestling back the political megaphone and setting the agenda more strongly.
Because let’s be honest, we’ve let Farage and his ilk run away with it. He wants to blame immigration for all the country’s problems.
We reject that. Our diagnosis is different: that for too long, the country and the economy has worked in the interests of the few, not the many.
The Manchester Central MP added:
We won’t win by trying to out-Reform Reform, but by building a broad progressive consensus.
Starmer describes Powell as ‘proud defender of Labour values’ and urges party to come together to protect British values
As mentioned below, Keir Starmer described the new deputy Labour leader, Lucy Powell, as “a proud defender of Labour values”. The prime minister also touched upon British values and said the Labour party needs to come together to defend them.
He added:
We’re facing opponents who want to wage war against all that.
Labour deputy leadership results breakdown
Here is a breakdown of the results:
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Lucy Powell received 87,407 votes from the Labour party membership and affiliates.
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Bridget Phillipson received 73,536 votes.
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The number of eligible voters was 970,642 and a total of 160,993 votes were cast, resulting in a turnout of 16.6%.
Powell was first elected as the MP for Manchester Central in a byelection in 2012. Her election as deputy leader marks the fourth time the Labour party has elected a woman to this position, after Margaret Beckett, Harriet Harman, and Angela Rayner.
Labour has to ‘offer hope’ and ‘the big change the country is crying out for’, says Powell
Labour’s new deputy leader Lucy Powell said the party had to give a “stronger sense of our purpose” and our “values and beliefs”.
Powell won the Labour deputy leadership contest with 54% of the vote, beating Bridget Phillipson who took a 46% share.
The new deputy leader said:
We have to offer hope, to offer the big change the country is crying out for.
We must give a stronger sense of our purpose, whose side we are on and of our Labour values and beliefs.
She said that “people feel that this government is not being bold enough in delivering the kind of change we promised”.
Powell says Labour ‘must change how we are doing things’
Lucy Powell was sacked from Keir Starmer’s cabinet in September and has indicated she will refuse a return to a government role so she can speak more openly about the direction of the party in office.
She has insisted she wants to “help Keir and our government to succeed” but the party “must change how we are doing things to turn things around”.
In a final message to supporters earlier this week she said Labour had to be “more in touch with our movement, and the communities and workplaces we represent, more principled and strategic, less tactical, and strongly guided by our values”.
Desire for change is ‘palpable’ says Lucy Powell in first speech as Labour’s new deputy leader
Lucy Powell has paid tribute to former Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner, saying she has some “big shoes to fill”, as she took to the stage to celebrate her win.
Powell spoke about how “division and hate” has increased. She said the desire for change is “palpable”.
After her speech, Keir Starmer said he was “delighted” to work with Powell and they would get started straight away. He described Powell as having “always been a proud defender of Labour values”.
Lucy Powell elected as Labour’s new deputy leader
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood, the chair of Labour’s National Executive Committee, has announced the results of the Labour deputy leader contest, naming Lucy Powell as the winner.
Powell received 87,407 votes, while Bridget Phillipson got 73,536 votes. The turnout was 16.6%.
You can follow the announcement of Labour’s new deputy leader and speeches via the live stream in the video below:
Keir Starmer, Lucy Powell and Bridget Phillipson have now all arrived at the venue where the result of the deputy leadership contest will be announced.
The result of the contest is expected to be announced at 10am and will be followed by a speech from the winner. Starmer will also speak after.
Jessica Elgot
Inside No 10, there is disquiet among some strategists about Lucy Powell as deputy leader. Relations with Keir Starmer’s team were particularly frosty over the welfare vote.
Powell was a key figure in the cabinet underlining the possibility that the government could lose the vote – and the first to tip off No 10 about the possibility of a reasoned amendment to kill the bill.
Some of Starmer’s team then suggested they believed she was in cahoots with some of the welfare rebels, which was fiercely denied. Trust was never regained – Powell was furious that her information led to her being cast as disloyal.
But a source close to Powell said she intended to be as collegiate as possible – and said she would expect to attend political cabinet, warning there would dire consequences if there was any attempt to ban her. They said Powell had declined numerous media offers to make explicit criticism of government mistakes.
Being the only candidate with the ability to influence cabinet decisions, Bridget Phillipson has made a number of firm commitments to members. She will sit on the future of work committee that oversees the workers’ rights legislation – promising she will veto any attempt to water down or slow the proposals.
She said she would formally seek members’ and trade unionists’ views each quarter and report them directly back to the cabinet. And she has argued she has the credentials to fight Reform, in a north-east seat that looks at risk in the next election.
There is no love lost between the two candidates, especially as the race has gone on. Powell is irritated at being seen as the proxy candidate for the leadership ambitions of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester.
But there is a fear among Starmer allies that should Burnham seek to return to Westminster as an MP, blocking his candidacy would be harder with Powell as deputy leader, as she would sit on the national executive committee, which oversees selections.
Jessica Elgot
There will be no big event to mark the new deputy leader result on Saturday, just a camera in Labour HQ with the results and a short speech from the winner. Some of Lucy Powell’s backers are irritated by the low-key plan. There are fears that she may be in effect frozen out – and uncertainty over whether she would be able to do her own broadcast rounds or election organising. “They need to respect the mandate if she wins,” one ally said.
Senior strategists had hoped five weeks ago to avoid a contest altogether, with a high threshold for MP nominations. Keir Starmer made appointments in the reshuffle for the party chair and the deputy prime minister, crowding out the role of deputy leader.
But with a restive parliamentary party a fix looked unlikely even though some ministers and aides piled pressure on MPs to back Bridget Phillipson.
After the first polls dropped, amid the turmoil over the departure of both Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson, Powell looked unassailable with a 17-point lead. But the race has a number of unknowns.
Phillipson’s team have made a number of strong policy interventions including on child poverty. Low turnout is expected from an apathetic party membership. And Phillipson, who has close union relations, has gained the endorsements of three major trade unions that have a vote in the deputy leadership – and which have never been polled.
She has more endorsements in London – with a higher membership – and will also be likely to command loyalty in the north-east, which also has high membership numbers. But even with all of those caveats, most Labour MPs believe Powell will win.
The leadership race has pushed both to be more publicly radical. Powell has pushed for an end to factionalism and a louder assault on Nigel Farage and the politics of division, warning about the voters being lost on the party’s left flank. She also made an early call for the end of the two-child benefit limit – a tank on Phillipson’s lawn.
Phillipson has made concrete policy commitments, which hold more weight as a cabinet minister, saying she will work to end to the two-child limit and will be the bulwark in government against the watering down of Labour’s workers’ rights package.
“The stakes are, on the surface, incredibly low,” one MP said. “But it has the potential to have huge consequences if Lucy wins. But for a hell of a lot of my members, believe it or not, they aren’t even that engaged.”
Prime minister Keir Starmer and justice secretary David Lammy should take responsibility for the error which led to a former asylum seeker who sexually assaulted a woman and a teenage girl to be accidentally released from prison, Epping Forest’s Tory MP said on Saturday.
Ethiopian asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, was jailed for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, a crime which triggered protests at the Bell hotel in Epping where he had been staying.
Epping Forest MP Neil Hudson told BBC Radio 4’s Today:
This sounds like an operational error, but the buck has to stop somewhere, and it has to stop at the top, at the justice secretary, the home secretary and the prime minister.
They have said that they are livid and appalled. Well, quite right, they should be livid and appalled. But that’s that’s not good enough, and the Labour government needs to get a grip of this issue.
They need to apprehend this man, but they’ve got to sort this issue out, and that’s what my constituents, who are deeply distressed and upset are saying.
In case you missed it, in this previously published piece from the Guardian Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell answered reader questions on wealth taxes, Brexit, the climate crisis and the far right:
Today’s agenda
Here is today’s politics agenda, according to the PA news agency’s schedule:
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10am: Labour’s new deputy leader will be announced in central London. Speeches are expected afterwards from the winner of the contest and from the prime minister.
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1pm: Protesters from opposing groups are expected to descend on different sides of London after police banned Ukip supporters from gathering in Whitechapel, an area of the capital with a large Muslim population, because of what officers called a “realistic prospect of serious disorder”. Ukip supporters are expected to gather in west London at 1pm.
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Saturday: Counting is to begin today to reveal who the Irish public have voted to be their next president.
Epping Forest MP Neil Hudson is on the morning media rounds for the Conservatives.
Labour’s new deputy leader to be announced today, as polling puts Powell ahead of Phillipson
Labour’s new deputy leader will be announced today, with polling suggesting Lucy Powell enjoyed a healthy lead over education secretary Bridget Phillipson as voting closed on Thursday, reports the PA news agency.
During the campaign, Powell frequently referred to “mistakes” made by the party on issues such as the winter fuel allowance. And in a final message to supporters this week the Manchester Central MP appeared to criticise a “command and control” culture within government, arguing that “blindly following along” was “a dereliction of our duty to defeat the politics of hate and division”.
If Powell does emerge victorious, the result is likely to be seen as a rebuke to Keir Starmer’s leadership from Labour members, more than half of whom now believe the party is heading in the wrong direction, reports the PA news agency.
The prime minister has already endured a difficult week, dominated by a row over the grooming gangs inquiry and capped with defeat in a Senedd byelection in Caerphilly, a seat held by Labour for a century.
Labour’s struggles in the polls have already led to some questions among backbenchers about Starmer’s leadership of the party.
Powell has stressed that she wants to “help Keir and our government to succeed” but also told supporters the party “must change how we are doing things to turn things around”.
Meanwhile, Phillipson, seen as No 10’s preferred candidate for the deputy leadership, has stressed unity, warning that voting for her opponent would result in “internal debate and divisions that leads us back to opposition”.
The result of the deputy leadership election is expected to be announced on Saturday at 10am BST. I’ll bring you updates on the results and reaction as they come in.
Here are some other headlines from UK politics:
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Cutting the annual cash Isa allowance will not encourage many savers to switch to shares but could push up mortgage costs, MPs have warned the chancellor. Earlier this year, Rachel Reeves paused plans to limit the cash Isa allowance but in the run-up to next month’s budget there has been renewed speculation that it could be reduced to £10,000 in an attempt to promote growth.
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A wipeout for Labour in next May’s local elections would spell the end of Keir Starmer’s premiership, MPs have said, after the party suffered a crushing defeat in its traditional heartland in Wales. Though Plaid Cymru beat Reform UK to capture the Senedd seat in Caerphilly, the result highlighted a striking collapse of Labour’s vote, prompting fears in Westminster that Labour could be reduced to third place in Wales, a loss that would leave the leader’s position unrecoverable.
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Rishi Sunak was the only politician to be sent a witness statement by the deputy national security adviser at the centre of a controversy about the collapse of a case against two British men accused of spying for China. According to letters sent to the joint committee on the national security strategy, the statement from Matthew Collins in December 2023, which was sent to the then prime minister and his advisers, did not describe China as an enemy, another key element of the case.
