Will local parties seek to promote breadth in their nominations?

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Keir Starmer is smashing the Labour leadership election. The Shadow Brexit Secretary became the first candidate in the main race to secure a place on the ballot paper when he won the backing of Usdaw on Monday. (The same goes for Angela Rayner in the deputy contest.) With the nominations of UNISON and affiliate group SERA already in the bag, this meant Starmer passed through the second stage via the affiliates route rather than the local parties one.

This early success isn’t stopping Team Keir from continuing to work CLPs hard, however: an email and text went out to supporters of his campaign last night calling for “Team Keir CLP Organisers”. Scooping up more local party support than necessary could help knock out Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry from the race, giving Starmer a clearer path to victory. (This also applies to Jess Phillips, though that would be less beneficial to Starmer – it’s useful having someone outflank him from a clearly Corbynsceptic position.)

The hopes of Lisa Nandy rest heavily on GMB. As one of the ‘big five’ unions that can propel candidates beyond the 5% of affiliated membership target, the Wigan MP already has the NUM nomination and would only need one other affiliate group. I hear she was “working the room like a demon”, as one source put it, at the Chinese for Labour dinner last night. Emily Thornberry and Starmer’s campaign chair Jenny Chapman also made appearances, but Nandy’s key GMB backer, new MP Sarah Owen, chairs the organisation. Could these groups make up her coalition of affiliates? We are set to find out this afternoon, after their hustings, whether GMB has plumped for Nandy.

Emily Thornberry has surprised members who are keen enough to keep up with CLP nominations. At this very early stage, Starmer is racing ahead with 12, while Rebecca Long-Bailey has four and the Shadow Foreign Secretary is now on two. As I’ve said before, Thornberry launched in Guildford for good reason: she is wisely targeting local parties in safe Tory seats in the South East. Their ‘unwinnable’ statuses mean these CLPs often feel ignored. I’m told Thornberry sent a note to be read out at Newbury, a personal touch that was highly appreciated, and the members were impressed by her hustings performance.

The big question about this process is whether local parties will seek to ‘broaden the ballot paper’ as MPs did. Asking members to give themselves a wider range of choices makes less sense to me than restricting the parliamentary party veto. But it did play a role in CLP endorsements last night, when the point that Starmer and Rayner don’t need extra nominations was raised several times.

Rebecca Long-Bailey has won the backing of Young Labour, which sparked controversy as the decision was made without an all-member consultation. (The youth wing is not allowed to ballot members due to cost and administrative reasons. The argument is over whether YL should therefore endorse by committee vote or decline to do so.) But this move was merely symbolic. More interesting: her event in London this evening, which is sold out. Let’s hope it contains a policy announcement that makes this election more exciting. The idea of replacing the House of Lords with an elected body, which has been a feature of Labour’s manifestos for many years, was not cutting it.

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