Closing summary
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Here is a summary from today’s blog:
Lucy Powell has won Labour’s deputy leadership election, beating her rival Bridget Phillipson, as she said the party would not win by trying to “out-Reform Reform”. Powell, who was the Commons leader until she was sacked in Keir Starmer’s reshuffle at the start of September, was seen as the favourite throughout the contest. She won 87,407 votes, 54% of those cast, while Phillipson received 73,536. Turnout of eligible voters was 16.6%.
Her election as deputy leader marks the fourth time the Labour party has elected a woman to this position, after Margaret Beckett, Harriet Harman, and Angela Rayner.
The result was announced on Saturday morning after a vote that was widely seen as a referendum for Labour members on the direction of the party under Starmer. Phillipson, the education secretary, was seen as Downing Street’s preferred candidate.
Powell has insisted she wants to “help Keir [Starmer] and our government to succeed” but the party “must change how we are doing things to turn things around”. Speaking after the Labour deputy leadership results were announced, Powell said the party had to give a stronger sense of its purpose, values and beliefs.
Powell also said “that for too long, the country and the economy has worked in the interests of the few, not the many”. The Manchester Central MP said: “Because let’s be honest, we’ve let Farage and his ilk run away with it.” She also said Labour has to “offer hope” and “the big change the country is crying out for”. Powell described the desire for change as “palpable”.
Labour “must unite” said prime minister Keir Starmer after Powell was elected Labour’s new deputy leader. In his speech, he admitted that the past week, a bruising one for the party, had shown the urgency of the task. He added: “Renewal is the only answer to decline, to grievance and to division and we have to keep going on that.”
Starmer described the new deputy Labour leader as “a proud defender of Labour values”. The prime minister also touched upon British values and said the Labour party needs to come together to defend them as the party are “facing opponents who want to wage war against all that”.
At an event in Southwark in London after the official election result announcement, Powell said it was Labour’s job to stand together and see off “division, hate, disillusionment [and] “discontentment”. Powell told activists and Labour party supporters that she was “absolutely thrilled” to have been elected as the party’s new deputy leader.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said she would continue to be a “strong voice” at the cabinet table despite losing out to Powell in the deputy leadership contest. She said it was “crucial” for the party to “come together to take the fight to Reform in next year’s crucial Senedd, Holyrood and local elections”.
Former deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, congratulated Powell on her victory, describing her as “a powerful voice for our movement, our Labour party values, and the change the country needs”. The contest was triggered by Rayner’s resignation after she failed to pay the correct stamp duty on a property purchase.
“The country doesn’t have time for internal party feuds,” said Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper in comments responding to the news that Powell had been elected deputy leader of the Labour party.
“Powell’s election is a sign of the disillusionment of Labour members – but there is a much much bigger and more worrying sign. Turn out was just 16%”, wrote the Guardian’s deputy political editor, Jessica Elgot, as she shared her reaction to Powell being elected as Labour’s new deputy leader.
Starmer and justice secretary David Lammy should take responsibility for the error which led to a former asylum seeker, who sexually assaulted a woman and a teenage girl, to be accidentally released from prison, Epping Forest’s Tory MP said on Saturday. Epping Forest MP Neil Hudson told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “This sounds like an operational error, but the buck has to stop somewhere, and it has to stop at the top, at the justice secretary, the home secretary and the prime minister.”
The influential Labour thinktank the Fabian Society is urging Rachel Reeves to raise £12bn in next month’s budget by extending the freeze on income tax thresholds for another two years. Joe Dromey, the Fabians’ general secretary, argues in a new report that the move is the “best available option” for the chancellor as she seeks to offset the impact of weaker economic forecasts in her 26 November statement.
The leftwing independent Catherine Connolly is on track to win Ireland’s presidential election, according to early vote tallies. Reports from tallymen – unofficial but usually reliable observers at count centres – gave Connolly a wide lead on Saturday soon after ballot boxes were opened at 9am.
Health secretary Wes Streeting has warned people not to buy weight loss jabs from unregulated sources after an illegal laboratory was dismantled. Officers from the Criminal Enforcement Unit (CEU) of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) raided the factory in Northampton and seized unlicensed medication worth £250,000.
Updated
Deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell said she had “stood firm” with victims of grooming gangs and wanted the promised inquiry established as soon as possible, reports the PA news agency.
Powell was forced to apologise in May after appearing to dismiss concerns about grooming gangs as a “dog whistle” issue.
Asked about her comments after her deputy leadership election victory, she told broadcasters:
I’m absolutely determined, I always have been, to make sure that those that were perpetrating grooming against vulnerable young girls and women they are found, they are charged, they are brought to justice, and all of those who turned a blind eye are also held to account for what they did.
I’ve stood firm with those victims throughout my career and I continue to do so today and I hope we get the inquiry up and running as soon as possible.
During a debate on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions in May, Reform UK supporter Tim Montgomerie asked Powell if she had seen a recent Channel 4 documentary on grooming gangs.
Powell responded “oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now do we” and “let’s get that dog whistle out shall we”. She subsequently said she was “challenging the political point scoring around it, not the issue itself” and was “sorry if this was unclear”.
