Fight over the Corbyn legacy continues in Labour leadership race

As the Labour leadership campaign gets underway it looks to be a three and half horse race. Among the candidates who have passed the first hurdle of getting the nominations of 22 MPs and MEPs Keir Starmer leads the way with 89 nominations. The Jeremy Corbyn continuity candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey trails by some distance with 33 nominations – not entirely surprising given Labour MPs were always far more sceptical of Corbyn than the membership.

Finally, we have two backbench MPs Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy with 23 and 31 nominations apiece. Phillips, who once threatened to “knife Corbyn in the front”, is the preferred candidate of MPs on the right of the party. Nandy owes her success to a strong policy portfolio focused on winning back small town voters via devolution, and an apparently barnstorming performance in the MPs leadership hustings where she rounded on the audience proclaiming “How dare we tell working class people what’s good for them.” Emily Thornberry managed to scrape together 23 with minutes to spare, lent nominations by her rivals, but this is hardly an auspicious start for someone who should have been an important contender in her own right. Clive Lewis, who received only 5 nominations respectively, pulled out shortly before the deadline.

The next step – starting 15 January and ending 14 February – requires the candidates who have been nominated by MPs to gain the nomination of 5% (33) constituency Labour Parties, or 3 Labour Party affiliates of which at least two are unions and together make up 5% of the affiliates section. If this sounds rather torturous that is because it is.

While Starmer and Long-Bailey are essentially guaranteed to make this threshold things will be more difficulty for Phillips and Nandy. Starmer has already been endorsed by Unison, which gives him the backing of a large powerful union and puts him over the 5% threshold, and getting two more affiliate endorsements should be no problem. Long-Bailey is expected to receive the backing of Unite, controlled by Corbyn’s key ally Len McCluskey, as a matter of course which will put her in the same position as Starmer.

This leaves Phillips and Nandy in a difficult situation. There is some speculation the GMB union may endorse Nandy, one of her nominating MPs was Sarah Owen who was GMB’s representative on Labour’s National Executive Committee before standing down to take part in last month’s election. If this does not happen both she and Phillip’s will be looking for CLP endorsements. This means lots of work squaring lots of people across the country – and both of them, as backbench MPs, have fewer resources than the two frontrunners. On top of this CLPs can still endorse candidates nominated by affiliates and many often remain uncommitted. As such it would not be surprising if at least one of the two does not make it to the final stage of the leadership election

The upcoming second stage will also be an excellent indication of the relative strength of the various candidates. Union endorsements are a big asset as they bring with them money for campaigning, a bank of activists, and contact lists. Meanwhile, CLP endorsements are good indication of popularity among the membership that ultimately chooses the leader. Corbyn leading the way in CLP endorsements in 2015 was an early sign of his unlikely success.

The leadership campaign is also a time when candidates look to cement their public image and define what they will represent as leader before the members’ voting period – 21 February to 2 April with results announced 4 April. Long-Bailey’s profile and pitch seems the most obvious here as the choice of the Corbynite left to continue their project. There have been hints she wants to differentiate herself from Corbynism in some ways. Her use of the phrase “progressive patriotism” in a Tribune article and affirmation in an interview that she would be prepared to use nuclear weapons suggested a calculation that left-wing economic policies could win if concessions were made on social and foreign policy.

However, the fact that the merest murmur of the word patriotism provoked a backlash from parts of her base, which she responded to by quickly backtracking – and the fact she felt the need to absurdly rate Corbyn “ten out of ten” as a party leader – suggests that she lack the confidence to really differentiate herself. Her recent pledge to enact of all of the Jewish Board of Deputies’ recommendations on combating anti-Semitism should she become leader is a step in the right direction, but is likely not enough as Starmer has made the same pledge.

Long-Bailey’s failure to clearly differentiate herself is made even more apparent by how her friend Angela Rayner, who she has endorsed as deputy leader, has struck a very different tone. Rayner has warned that Labour must steer clear of promises to revolutionise the economy and called on Long-Bailey to sack key Corbyn advisors Seumas Milne and Karie Murphy, long bêtes noires of Corbynsceptics and widely blamed for Labour’s disastrous electoral strategy, if she becomes leader. Consequently, Rayner is not supported by the Corbynite faction which has instead lined up behind Richard Burgon for deputy leader – who nonetheless only scraped together the necessary 22 nominations with less than an hour to spare. Unless Long-Bailey finds a way to stake out her own personality, without alienating her core supporters, she risks seeming the puppet of her backers.

Starmer for his part is rather mysterious in what he represents. His endorsements from MPs that span the party testifies to just how effectively he has walked the line between the Corbynite and Corbynsceptic camps. His campaign has focused on shoring up his left-wing credentials. Starmer’s launch video opened with a miner and he has touted his time on picket lines and giving free legal advice to Poll Tax protestors.

Still, red meat for the base is par for the course in these elections – even Tony Blair promised to nationalise the railways and called himself a socialist in his leadership campaign. Starmer’s record as Director of Public Prosecutions shows not just liberal tendencies but also a willingness to take a tough on crime approach in areas that Labour supporters might not like – such pushing through measures which would see benefits fraudsters face up to ten years in jail.

For Phillips and Nandy the former already has an identity as a champion of the Labour right. Beyond that her pitch seems to be honesty and tough talking with her admission today she nearly left Labour over the anti-Semitism scandal, and the slogan “Speak Truth. Win Power.” However, so far she has given little sense of what her “truth” is – beyond anti-Corbynism. Indeed, here recent statement that the candidate other than herself she most favours is Lisa Nandy seems like someone who doesn’t have high hopes of winning the nomination herself but

Nandy for her part is well known to political hacks but has a limited public profile beyond some niche memes about her obsession with towns. If she wants to win the membership she will have to build an effective public profile fairly quickly. A recent interview with Daily Mirror journalist Kevin Maguire where she talked at length about the need to respect voters and let them feel like they are in control, and portrayed herself as someone who could unite different groups across the country and in the party, seemed a trial run of her campaign brand. With the leadership campaign serving as a useful test of political nous it will repay watching closely to see just how formidable an opponent Boris Johnson will face.