Labour needs to “stir up a democratic revolution” and “pick a fight with the political establishment” in order to win power, Rebecca Long-Bailey, one of the frontrunners, has said.

As she was endorsed for the party leadership by Momentum, the leftwing grassroots group, Long-Bailey said it was time to stop mourning Labour’s defeat last month and start plotting a path to No 10.

Writing for the Guardian, Long-Bailey said the party’s Brexit position lay at the heart of its failure to win against Boris Johnson.

She said that after the EU referendum in 2016 Labour should have spent less time trying to “win procedural games in parliament” and more time holding public meetings outside Westminster.

“We should have used the aftermath of the referendum result to go around the country, holding public meeting after public meeting to stir up a democratic revolution, pledging to take on the political establishment and raise up the people’s demands beyond our institutional arrangements with the European Union,” she said.

Her approach echoes that of Jeremy Corbyn, whose leadership was focused on trying to build a socialist movement to help transform society. Long-Bailey said the next Labour leadership team “must not junk our values” but ought to change in order to “trust its members and be so much more than a group of politicians in parliament”.

By holding public meetings, Labour could have come up with “a set of popular remedies to deal with the three, linked crises our country faces: of democracy, the economy and the environment”, she said.

As leader of the party, Long-Bailey said she would seek to create a “popular movement to turn the British state against the privatisers, big polluters and tax dodgers that have taken hold of our political system”.

She said scrapping the House of Lords was only the beginning, as the British state “needs a seismic shock to prise it open at all levels to the people”.

One poll so far has indicated Long-Bailey is the favourite with the membership, while a previous one put Keir Starmer ahead.

Momentum’s backing for Long-Bailey is likely to give her a big boost, as the group is planning to host hundreds of phone banks across the country and use peer-to-peer calling apps to support her campaign. More than 70% of 7,395 respondents from the group’s 40,000 members gave her their support.



A Momentum spokesperson said: “Our membership has spoken and overwhelmingly backed Rebecca Long-Bailey to be the next leader of the Labour party and the next prime minister of the UK. We will now be mobilising thousands to persuade Labour members in the coming months.”

Long-Bailey will also be hoping to pick up the endorsement of at least one big union, such as Unite. Starmer has picked up Unison, the biggest union, while Lisa Nandy won the backing of the National Union of Mineworkers.

All five candidates – Emily Thornberry and Jess Phillips round out the list – need three affiliates including two trade unions, or the backing of 33 constituency Labour parties to make it through to the next round of the contest.