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When Lucy Powell got a phone call from a withheld number in her constituency office in Manchester on the day Angela Rayner resigned, Powell told her staff: “This is me getting the sack.” Never would the former Commons leader have believed less than two months later that she might be on the brink of returning as Labour’s deputy leader.
Her rival, Bridget Phillipson, also never expected to be in this position. Hurt by some of the internal briefing against her position as education secretary, she debated for more than a day whether to join the race at all. Being cast as the favoured candidate has not been comfortable.
Nevertheless, the outcome is likely to have profound consequences. “The result obviously matters, and the centre know it,” a Labour source said. “Why else would they have gone to bat so hard for their candidate?”
It is hard to imagine that any newfound unity will follow the result. Powell’s supporters in particular feel deeply aggrieved by how their candidate has been portrayed as the reckless outcast.
Over the weekend Powell was described as “the Momentum candidate” and Phillipson gave an interview saying she would cost the party the election.
“People keep saying the gloves are off – there is only one candidate with the gloves off and it’s not Lucy,” one MP said. Another said: “It’s clear that when the leadership preach unity they only mean one thing – avoid any criticism or debate even when we’re making serious mistakes.”
There will be no big event to mark the result on Saturday, just a camera in Labour HQ with the results and a short speech from the winner. Some of Powell’s backers are irritated by the low-key plan. There are fears that she may be in effect frozen out – and uncertainty over whether she would be able to do her own broadcast rounds or election organising. “They need to respect the mandate if she wins,” one ally said.
Senior strategists had hoped five weeks ago to avoid a contest altogether, with a high threshold for MP nominations. Keir Starmer made appointments in the reshuffle for the party chair and the deputy prime minister, crowding out the role of deputy leader.
But with a restive parliamentary party a fix looked unlikely even though some ministers and aides piled pressure on MPs to back Phillipson.
After the first polls dropped, amid the turmoil over the departure of both Rayner and Peter Mandelson, Powell looked unassailable with a 17-point lead. But the race has a number of unknowns.
Phillipson’s team have made a number of strong policy interventions including on child poverty. Low turnout is expected from an apathetic party membership. And Phillipson, who has close union relations, has gained the endorsements of three major trade unions that have a vote in the deputy leadership – and which have never been polled.
She has more endorsements in London – with a higher membership – and will also be likely to command loyalty in the north-east, which also has high membership numbers. But even with all of those caveats, most Labour MPs believe Powell will win.
The leadership race has pushed both to be more publicly radical. Powell has pushed for an end to factionalism and a louder assault on Nigel Farage and the politics of division, warning about the voters being lost on the party’s left flank. She also made an early call for the end of the two-child benefit limit – a tank on Phillipson’s lawn.
Phillipson has made concrete policy commitments, which hold more weight as a cabinet minister, saying she will work to end to the two-child limit and will be the bulwark in government against the watering down of Labour’s workers’ rights package.
“The stakes are, on the surface, incredibly low,” one MP said. “But it has the potential to have huge consequences if Lucy wins. But for a hell of a lot of my members, believe it or not, they aren’t even that engaged.”
Another MP added: “Members are disengaged with everything frankly – including this – and it’s not good news for the party if that’s the case.”
Inside No 10, there is disquiet among some strategists about Powell as deputy leader. Relations with Starmer’s team were particularly frosty over the welfare vote.
Powell was a key figure in the cabinet underlining the possibility that the government could lose the vote – and the first to tip off No 10 about the possibility of a reasoned amendment to kill the bill.
Some of Starmer’s team then suggested they believed she was in cahoots with some of the welfare rebels, which was fiercely denied. Trust was never regained – Powell was furious that her information led to her being cast as disloyal.
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But a source close to Powell said she intended to be as collegiate as possible – and said she would expect to attend political cabinet, warning there would dire consequences if there was any attempt to ban her. They said Powell had declined numerous media offers to make explicit criticism of government mistakes.
Being the only candidate with the ability to influence cabinet decisions. Phillipson has made a number of firm commitments to members. She will sit on the future of work committee that oversees the workers’ rights legislation – promising she will veto any attempt to water down or slow the proposals.
She said she would formally seek members’ and trade unionists’ views each quarter and report them directly back to the cabinet. And she has argued she has the credentials to fight Reform, in a north-east seat that looks at risk in the next election.
There is no love lost between the two candidates, especially as the race has gone on. Powell is irritated at being seen as the proxy candidate for the leadership ambitions of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester.
But there is a fear among Starmer allies that should Burnham seek to return to Westminster as an MP, blocking his candidacy would be harder with Powell as deputy leader, as she would sit on the national executive committee, which oversees selections.
Tensions were high at the final hustings, hosted by the Fabian Society. Powell laid bare her own fears for her family over taking on such a high-profile role, especially after the targeting of Rayner – but hinted that supporters of Phillipson were fuelling that.
“Do I want my family and myself to be put under the spotlight and face all that … we’ve got to think about how we’re behaving. Some of the things that have been said about me in this campaign by Bridget and her team are frankly appalling as well.”
Phillipson doubled down, saying Powell would “risk the division that we will see that potentially puts us back on the path to opposition”.
“The members hate disloyalty more than they love any politician,” an ally of Phillipson said. “We unapologetically prosecuted the argument that if you’re outside the cabinet, and you’re going out there saying: ‘We need to do X, Y, and Z’ – it will create negative headlines. It’s an entirely legitimate point to make in a campaign.”
But another Labour source cautioned Downing Street against isolating Powell should she win. “What is needed after this contest is for the Labour family to come together as a broad church. Anyone who thinks the outcome should be to lock people out has not been listening to the broad desire for unity.”
Her team are nervous that her victory is seen as a foregone conclusion. Some MPs are even more worried that it would be yet another destabilising moment should she win. “I am dreading it if Lucy wins, every time she opens her mouth it will be a divisive moment,” one MP said.
Powell insists she is not there to cause disruption – but said a victory would be a “mandate for change” in how Labour operated and its messaging. “The country needs us to prove the model that progressive mainstream politics can actually make a difference. If I win, I’m going to get to work on that straight away.”
