WHAT NOW FOR THE OTHER CANDIDATES?

A) REBECCA LONG-BAILEY

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This poll has been a wake-up call for some of Long-Bailey’s most vocal supporters. My dad compared it the ice bucket challenge. The realisation is dawning that not only do they not know the membership as well as they thought, but they can’t control it either. It’s not solely that Long-Bailey doesn’t have enough core support — in first preferences this poll puts her on 20% — it’s that too many other members mind the heir apparent to The Corbyn Project, whoever that may be, being elected. While Corbyn is still very popular amongst a large swathe of the membership, it doesn’t mean they all want to vote for the continuation of the specific operation which just landed the party it’s worst general election defeat since 1935.

On a personal level, Long-Bailey’s only option is to cut ties with the bureaucrats who landed Labour that defeat, or at the very least be seen to have done so. She would need to depend on someone else taking on the label of ‘continuity candidate’ — like Ian Lavery for example — to help her shed some of that baggage. She needs to put forward clear routes to pluralism and inclusivity of other wings of the party, and not those meaningless platitudes she put in her recent article (here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/29/rebecca-long-bailey-labour-party-britain) which were ironically followed pretty sharply by the public endorsement of her close friend for the deputy leadership. Honestly, I’m not quite sure how she can do any of the above convincingly enough without pissing off a lot of other people who she needs to keep onside. She’s pretty stuck between a rock and a hard place. Long-Bailey’s ‘continuity candidate’ label has been well set in for months and it will be incredibly tough to shake the worst of that association. She may just have to depend on her biggest rivals running worse campaigns than her. Which might be difficult for them if her pitch is as vague and triangulating as that article she wrote. And if she sticks with the ‘progressive patriotism’ phrase it will grate on some of her natural supporters, who may eventually vote elsewhere in the first preferences round as a result.

B) JESS PHILLIPS

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Polling at 11% and in third place, Jess Phillips has a similar problem. She is seen as the heir apparent to The Anti-Corbyn Project. Her supporters are vocal and several are blue-tick members of the twitterati. They think she’s feisty, witty, and could wipe the floor with Boris Johnson at the dispatch box, looking up to her as a bastion of strength in a party where so-called ‘moderates’ have felt lost and unwanted for the last few years.

And yet they would be foolish to choose her as the ‘Labour right’ candidate. While she’s got the name recognition they need, I think she can be quite a divisive character. She often offers criticism whilst failing to present alternatives of her own — are these the foundations that moderates want to build their chance for a comeback on? I’m not even convinced that she’s as ideologically aligned to them as they believe. I think Phillips is going to seriously struggle to convince enough sceptical members that she’s the candidate who can bring the party together. So, like Long-Bailey, too many people mind her being leader.

C) YVETTE COOPER

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Yvette Cooper. She who hasn’t said much of a word about running so I’m not entirely sure why she’s been included in this poll instead of others who have made noises about running. Funny enough when I ask non-members (of various ages and backgrounds, who tend to vote Labour) who they’d like to lead the Labour Party, Cooper’s name has come up the most. A lot of this might be down to name recognition, but there’s no denying she puts out quite a strong ‘don’t mess’ vibe which could be very entertaining in Prime Minister’s Questions. She is absolutely forensic in her takedowns of opposition MPs, she comes across as very intelligent and measured, and people are craving that feeling of stability right now. I think her numbers would mostly go to Starmer and Phillips — for some reason Cooper is a darling of Labour Remainers, even though I don’t think this really reflects her Brexit position for the last couple of years accurately at all. If she runs (I don’t think she will) she will need to openly declare the mistakes she made in her bid in 2015, and why she thinks she’s right this time round. But I think her image as a long-standing Corbyn-opponent would make it hard for her campaign to take off properly.

D) CLIVE LEWIS

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Clive Lewis is a bit of an acquired taste ideologically and I don’t think he’s currently got enough name recognition to be as successful as he could be. He is only polling on 7% and, while it will go up slightly as his name recognition grows during the race, I think he has too many difficult questions to answer to climb the rankings significantly. For example, on the issue of institutional antisemitism he wrote an article in summer all about the need for antisemitism awareness education in the party. While it was reassuring, it doesn’t overcome the more symbolic issues he has taken a position on, such as the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Clive has a tough job ahead in reaching out beyond the Love Socialism Hate Brexit types who already like him. It would be interesting to explore why Starmer is such a Remainer darling amongst FBPE Labour types on a level that Lewis is not. I do think some it is down to. being less well known, so he might use this as a profile-building exercise and look at running for leader again next time round when he has more name recognition (perhaps after a long stint in the shadow cabinet).

E) EMILY THORNBERRY

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This poll is terrible news for Thornberry. She recently said if she were leader and the polls showed that a Labour Party led by her would lose a general election then she would step down. So, will she be omitting herself from the leadership race after this poll has put her on 6%? She should prepare an answer to this question. Maybe she should also start sucking up to the frontrunners for a top shadow cabinet job under their leadership, and plan to spend the time between then and the next leadership election fixing up her brand. It really is quite significant that in poll after poll she comes up with high name recognition but not the popularity rating to match. While I don’t think she was in a top spot before the Caroline Flint spat anyway, I think it drew attention to the pre-existing unflattering portrayals of Thornberry… but I think she could land a few important blows in the campaign debates. She is an effective communicator and if I were another candidate I’d need to dodge those blows — or make sure Thornberry aims them at someone else.

F) LISA NANDY

PHOTO: BBC NEWSNIGHT

Lisa Nandy only polls on 5% in this YouGov survey, but I think she is an underdog. She needs to come across as much more decisive, confident and determined. Too often we are watching her frustration with the state of things rather than setting out her own plans to take Labour forward. Just ‘listening’ to the voters we lost isn’t going to cut it, nor is the vagueness of talking about ‘towns’ and narratives which many labour members could feel doesn’t include them. It’s imperative that she makes it clear that she won’t triangulate on right-wing culture war issues.

She is partly behaving as if she is already at the helm of the party — dishing out analysis on where we went wrong in the general election, scrutinising the government’s actions, etc. — which is good and should be stepped up a few notches. She also needs to work on her physical and vocal presence (it’s the trained actor part of me analysing this - I mean things like taking more time with her speech delivery and bringing the images in the words to life. To be honest, all the candidates need some work on this). She’s already a good communicator and has a lot of the elements needed, it’s just about tying them all into a winning brand.

However, she runs the risk of losing her underdog status if her campaign continues to be indecisive and vague, both on messaging AND policy. It’s like — towns. We get it. Towns. But what are you actually saying about towns? That we should listen to them more? What about the towns which have been Tory safe seats for over a decade? Do all the towns we speak to have to possess ‘labour heartlands’ qualifying status? And then what? What do we actually do with the information from the townsfolk? What about large towns which could be cities but just don’t have a cathedral? Do they count? You get the idea.