By QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER Published: 00:03 BST, 10 September 2025 | Updated: 00:03 BST, 10 September 2025
And they’re off. We may need racing commentator Cornelius Lysaght to do justice to Labour’s deputy leadership election, there are so many runners.Some will end up in the glue factory before they reach the paddock. To switch sports, this is the political equivalent of the Birdman of Bognor competition, when maniacs leap off a pier to see if they can fly. Splosh.Bridget Phillipson! Dame Emily Thornberry! Paula Barker! Who she? Paula is a co-sponsor of the assisted dying Bill. Might happily slip a needle of Prussic acid into Sir Keir Starmer’s rump if given a chance.Monday night brought news that purple-haired crowd-pleaser Louise Haigh would not be competing. Offered a bon-bon by Downing Street? But there were other options to relish. Bell Ribeiro-Addy! Will it be addy-os to Bell? Alison McGovern! She was once Gordon Brown’s Miss Moneypenny. A soothing manner, good with lunatics.We soon had the pipe-sucking intellectual that every contest needs: Lucy Powell. Catches more bluebottles in her gaping gob than the stickiest flypaper in any Tangiers cafe. ‘Andy Burnham fancies her,’ said the bookies. I BEG your pardon?Your sketchwriter was despatched to Brighton, East Sussex, redoubt of plutocrat class-warriors. This was where race favourite Ms Phillipson was going to pitch herself to the TUC conference. I arrived in time to hear a tetchy debate on defence spending. It was won by pacifists in ‘Wages Not Weapons’ T-shirts. Most speakers ended their remarks by crying ‘solidarity with Palestine’.A poisonous little know-all from the Communications Workers Union told munitions factory employees to ‘go and educate yourselves’ about Palestine.Another supporter of the disarmament motion said ‘I will not tolerate being lectured about jobs’. Isn’t that the whole point of the TUC? But no, Gaza is what stirs their juices these days. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has put herself forward to be Labour's deputy leaderMs Phillipson failed to capitalise on this. Her speech did not mention Gaza. She droned on about schools and did not even mention the deputy leadership election. Rapture was contained. Perhaps one in 25 delegates clapped. A few stood when she completed her turn but that may have been to work some cramp out of their groins. The speech had dragged.Scary Bridget is no demagogue. Beforehand, sitting beside the conference’s amiable chairman, she gulped a half-pint of water and licked the outside of her front teeth. While delivering her dull words she darted her eyes left and right.The only time the delegates showed much enthusiasm was when she confirmed that the Government would proceed with Angela Rayner’s employment rights Bill.‘Forward with the Bill in full!’ screamed Bridget, her weirdly precise bob of inky hair swinging like a black satin curtain in an Istanbul brothel, wafted by a Bosphorus breeze.Dame Emily’s candidacy, which is supported by the amalgamated guild of parliamentary sketchwriters and television impressionists, may play more heavily on Gaza and Israel. First she must assemble sufficient parliamentary support to get on the ballot paper.Can she sweet-talk enough new-intake MPs to nominate her? That might necessitate some hard work and, even trickier, remembering their names. Effortless charm is not the old trout’s forte.But what a confection she is. Dame Emily, so brutally ill-served by Sir Keir a year ago, is a computer-generated melange of Simone Signoret and Gwyneth Dunwoody, with maybe a flick of Boris Yelstin after lunch.An ashtray voice. Pudgy pinkies dispense imperious gestures. She is pukka, dimpled, drawly. If she were beaten to the Labour deputy leadership by a rigid misery such as Scary Bridget it would be an offence against the comedy gods and natural justice.
