Leadership candidates should promise the party an opportunity to elect a new leader before 2020, says senior Labour figure

Jan Royall has joined a number of people who have said they’d like a “break clause” installed by whoever is the next Labour leader, to avoid having a weak politician taking the party into the election.

Royall, who is a former advisor to Neil Kinnock and who is currently leader of the opposition in the House of Lords (although she announced last week that she will be stepping down from this position) said she wants to leadership candidates to give the party an opportunity to affirm whether they are or are not happy with the chosen leader’s performance.

This is a idea that a number of Labour MPs have also told the Guardian they would be in favour of. This could be related to rumours that back in November there were calls for  Ed Miliband to step down as leader.

Royall told Newsnight that this would help to ensure that a weak leader isn’t at the helm of the party going into the 2020 election:

“It would be very good if whoever puts themselves forward were to say: ‘Look in three years’ time it would be really good if you could reaffirm that I’m the right person to take us forward.’”