Lucy Powell has been elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, defeating opponent Bridget Phillipson by nearly 14,000 votes.
In her victory speech Powell urged the party to be “bolder” and “step up” to address the struggles faced by both the government and the country.
Just this week, Labour suffered a historic defeat in the Caerphilly by-election to Plaid Cymru.
Powell said that Labour are “in the fight of our lives” against Reform UK: “division and hate are on the rise, discontent and disillusionment widespread.”
“We as the Labour Party…have to step forward and take this on.”
Powell also said: “We won’t win by trying to out-reform Reform, but by building a broad progressive consensus”
“Progressive mainstream politics really can change people’s lives for the better.”
Powell’s victory has been widely seen as a blow for Starmer, with his Cabinet colleague and current Education Secretary Phillipson Starmer’s preferred candidate. Powell paid tribute to Phillipson in her victory speech, as well as to former Deputy Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.
In her speech Powell signalled her intention to support Starmer and his government, addressing the Labour leader directly: “Keir, I am here to help you in that fight.”
The result was announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood at 10am on Saturday [25th October] morning, with Powell taking 87,407 votes (54.3 per cent) to Phillipson’s 73,536 (45.7 per cent) on a 16.6 per cent turnout.
The sizeable support for Phillipson does show that there is not complete contempt for Starmer and his government among Labour members.
Under the rules of the contest, members of both the Labour Party and affiliated supporters were able to vote, meaning there were over 970,000 eligible voters in total. As many of these are members of affiliated trade unions, their lower engagement with the contest is somewhat unsurprising.
The contest was triggered in early September by the resignation of Angela Rayner after it was found that she failed to pay enough tax on a new property she bought in Hove.
Rayner resigned from her positions as both Deputy Labour Leader and Deputy Prime Minister. Powell will not take Rayner’s previous role as Deputy Prime Minister however – this was already given to David Lammy last month. Instead, Powell’s role as Deputy Leader will be entirely party-based and non-governmental.
Powell was born in Manchester and studied Chemistry at Oxford and King’s College London before going on to work for the Labour Party and the quango NESTA. She managed Ed Miliband’s successful leadership campaign in 2010.
Powell was elected the Labour MP for Manchester Central in 2012, and held various Shadow Cabinet positions following Starmer’s election as Labour leader in 2020, including Shadow Secretary for Housing and Shadow Leader of the House of Commons.
Following Labour’s landslide in July last year, Powell was appointed Leader of the House of Commons, a position she held until Starmer sacked her from Cabinet in his September reshuffle, replacing Powell with Labour veteran Alan Campbell.
A fellow Northerner, Powell’s Deputy Leadership campaign was closely linked to former Labour MP and current Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham.
Powell comes from the soft left of the party, as does Burnham, and was endorsed by him and Ed Miliband among others as part of her successful deputy leadership bid.
Her closeness with Burnham, in contrast to Phillipson’s proximity to Starmer as a Cabinet minister led some to assert that the deputy leadership contest was a sort of proxy war between Starmer and Burnham. This was criticised as misogynistic by Powell, underplaying the strength and independence of the female candidates.
Speaking on the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast, Powell said: “You’ve got two strong women standing in an open and transparent contest”
“And instead of talking about the two strong women, everybody’s talking about this being a sort of proxy for war between two men which, quite honestly, I find kind of sexist, but it’s also completely wrong.”
With Labour trailing Reform in the polls and the November budget looming, only time will tell if Powell can really rally the party behind her and Starmer.
Featured image via Number 10 / Flickr.
