Labour members – and Caerphilly voters – have made their feelings clear. When will the PM realise that his strategy just isn’t working?
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his result was never particularly in doubt. Lucy Powell continually polled ahead of her rival Bridget Phillipson, and now she has won. What made her triumph so predictable is just how patently unhappy people, including members of the Labour party, are with Keir Starmer and his progress after more than a year in government.
Polling from the end of September has his approval rating among members at -11. As I never tire of saying, a core thing to remember about internal Labour party contests is that party members – who, along with members of affiliated unions, form the voter base for such races – are fairly bog standard left liberals who like public services and Europe, and nationalising the railways and Ed Miliband. “Tough on immigration” doesn’t do so much for them. They are also often less politically engaged than you might expect, and should be understood separately from the party’s hardened activist class.
Powell was the right person at the right time to be the vehicle for this discontent. Before entering parliament, she was an aide to Miliband during his time as leader: she is on the soft left. She entered parliament in 2012, becoming the MP for Manchester Central, and when Angela Rayner resigned there was a strong sense that her successor should be a woman from the north of England. And, while Powell has decried as sexist descriptions of her as a proxy for the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, a whole bunch of headlines linking her name to one of the most popular figures in the party doesn’t exactly hurt. She was sacked from cabinet in the post-Rayner resignation reshuffle that took the top team unambiguously to the right: that left her available to run and, presumably, not delighted with the leadership herself.
