Angela Eagle has emerged as the early frontrunner to challenge Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch trade unionist favoured by the party’s soft left.

Teary-eyed after she handed over her resignation letter from the shadow cabinet on Monday, Eagle was arguably the most senior MP to quit Corbyn’s beleaguered team. She has not ruled out running for the leadership, but made it clear the person who stands next must be a unifier.

The Wallasey MP has both party unity credentials and economic nous, having served in the Treasury under Gordon Brown. Her backers will be making the case that she is both experienced and popular with party members, regularly topping the Labour List shadow cabinet rankings. MPs had previously urged Corbyn to make her his shadow chancellor before he chose his old friend John McDonnell.

However, Eagle may face a backlash in Merseyside. Her own constituency Labour party wrote to Eagle on Tuesday to urge her to reject the motion of no confidence in Corbyn, saying the delegates at the CLP AGM on Friday had asked their MP to back the leader. “On behalf of the constituency I would ask you to make a clear public statement of support for him,” the letter from the local party chair read, published on Huffington Post.

Eagle is battle-hardened, standing in for Corbyn at PMQs and winning more accolades than the leader. She first came to mainstream public prominence when David Cameron snapped at her to “calm down, dear” at PMQs, prompting cries of sexism but which Eagle is said to have taken as a triumph.



Yet she had already made political history, when in 1997 she became the first female MP to openly declare that she is gay. In the same year, with her sister Maria, they became the first set of twins to sit in the Commons.

Born in Bridlington and the daughter of a seamstress and a print worker, Eagle was the first in her family to go to university, reading philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford and spending her early working life at the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) trade union, now part of Unison.

Despite being on the left of the party, Eagle showed she could beat a Tory, winning her seat from Conservative minister Lynda Chalker in 1992. During the Blair years, she served as opposition whip and then held junior positions in the Environment and Transport ministries, until she was sacked, reportedly by accident, from the Home Office in 2002. Once Brown was in power, Eagle was a junior minister at the Treasury, and then promoted in a reshuffle to a minister of state at the DWP.

After the party’s defeat in 2015, having been in Miliband’s shadow cabinet, Eagle stood for deputy leader, backed by some of the most influential trade unions. Of the party’s most prominent MPs, Eagle showed commitment to making Corbyn’s leadership work, despite speculation she had been offered the first shadow secretary of state position because of concerns about the lack of women in Corbyn’s top team.

The days since the EU referendum result have been turmoil for the MP, who campaigned solidly for a remain victory, representing the Labour In campaign at the ITV referendum debate during which she was cheered for challenging Boris Johnson to “get that lie off your bus” over the £350m-a-week figure, which Nigel Farage has since conceded is incorrect.

During the campaign, Eagle told the Guardian it had not been just immigration that was fuelling the leave vote. “It’s a visceral us-and-them thing, not only immigration at all ... the feeling is ‘why doesn’t anything change? how can we make things better?’ When you explain the figures though, then it’s different.”

After the resignation of desperate colleagues on Sunday, Eagle requested a face-to-face meeting with Corbyn on Sunday, but received no response. Her own resignation was over the phone on Monday, and the discussion was civil, but Eagle said she made it clear Corbyn had to go.

Her resignation letter said she was “devastated by the result of the EU referendum” and said the campaign by the leadership had been half-hearted. “It is with the greatest of sadness that, after nine months of trying to make your leadership work and despite your considerable personal qualities, I have come to the conclusion you are not the right person to lead the party we both love.”

During a TV interview on Monday, Eagle appeared close to tears, saying she had “examined her conscience”. Leaving the PLP meeting on Monday night, Eagle was ashen-faced at the scale of the challenge. One fellow former shadow cabinet member described Corbyn as a leader “willing to destroy the party”.

Eagle has declared herself opposed to party splits, telling the Guardian earlier this year that Labour must learn from history. “Splits don’t work, as the people who joined the SDP are telling us,” she said. “The party is a broad church. We’re used to arguments. That’s not a problem.”

Eagle, who was the under-18s national chess champion, is now being positioned against Corbyn who once described his shadow cabinet appointments as a game of multi-dimensional chess. Her biggest political challenge yet will be whether the party leader who refused to play the game can still be outmanoeuvred.