Choosing Labour’s next deputy leader shouldn’t be a cabinet beauty contest, with token representation from the party’s Left. In fact, Labour’s next deputy leader should not be an MP at all.
Its time the rulebook was changed and figures from outside the Parliamentary Labour Party were able to stand for the deputy’s role.
Helpfully the annual conference in Liverpool is three weeks away, providing the perfect opportunity to do just that.
Labour’s General Secretary, Hollie Ridley, has rightly warned about navel-gazing, reminding the party that the contest to find the party’s 19th deputy leader should be conducted ‘in a manner that befits the party of government.’
That’s code for keep it cheap and quick, but it’s also a chance to hold a meaningful election without disrupting ministerial business.
Indeed, the party’s internal workings are not keeping pace with the government’s own agenda.
One of Angela Rayner’s final acts in government was to publish the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which aims to ‘permanently change the balance of power’ between centre and provinces towards the latter, as she put it in her resignation letter.
Limiting the process to candidates outside the cabinet would amplify Labour as a party for the whole country and show it really is serious about devolution.
And it’s not like there’s a shortage of talented applicants out there.
A poll of party members by Survation/LabourList found that Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, was comfortably ahead of any other party figure as a potential successor to Keir Starmer. (Ironically, Angela Rayner was second).
Another recent poll from YouGov saw party veteran David Blunkett come top in the public popularity stakes.
Would either Blunkett or Burnham – or other Labour Mayors like Claire Ward or Tracey Brabin – not be a suitable fit?
Or for that matter Eluned Morgan, the Welsh First Minister? Or Sir Steve Houghton, leader of Barnsley Council and one of the most respected figures in local government?
Rather than a troupe of busy cabinet ministers taking bites at each other, with every utterance translated into an attack on the government, undermining cabinet collective responsibility in the process, would it not be better to leave the stage clear for the party’s stars beyond the Westminster bubble to become deputy leader?
