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We are all hurting after last week’s election loss.

We are hurting because good colleagues lost their seats and we know how much our communities are going to suffer with another five years of austerity.

Labour do need a serious period of reflection and that means we can’t jump to conclusions.

I didn’t lose my seat because Jeremy Corbyn is a man from North London. People in Darlington have just elected an MP whose party is led by an old Etonian from Islington who speaks Latin.

This Westminster media obsession with personalities misses the point entirely.

I know what my constituents were telling me on the doors. They wanted to know who is going to protect our national security, their children’s future, their mortgages, their pensions. And on this occasion they did not trust Labour with any of them. We have to be honest about that.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

If we think we can solve that problem by changing the accent of our leader then we will have missed the point entirely and we’d be insulting the intelligence of the voters who couldn’t put their trust in us. The red wall can’t be rebuilt on platitudes.

If I am to be re-elected the MP for Darlington then Labour needs a proven leader who can rise to the enormity of the challenge. We need someone who can unify our party and will have the qualities to speak for the whole nation.

This is the deepest crisis our party has been in for a generation. This has been a horrendous loss for our party and for our movement. Labour can rebuild. But, the choice we are facing now is whether we defeat the Tories in four years time or face another decade of austerity of right-wing Government.

That’s why I will be sitting in Keir Starmer’s office until he agrees to stand. I have worked with Keir for four years and I know he is the best person to make Boris Johnson’s life hell and stand up for the people I represented.