1.2.2 – Established parties
Whilst much of the coverage in recent days has been on who the next prime minister will be, they will only hold that position by virtue of being leader of the Labour Party. It is therefore an internal party matter first and foremost (albeit one which will have national consequences).
On Thursday 25 June, Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) published the timetable for choosing its new leader. All members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) are eligible to put themselves forward for the role. This excludes those who were elected as Labour MPs but who have had the whip removed. Any MP looking to be nominated requires the backing of 20% of the PLP. At present, this amounts to 81 MPs.
In addition to requiring 81 nominations, prospective candidates also require the backing of three bodies affiliated to Labour, two of which must be trade unions. The deadline for nominations is Thursday 16 July.
If only one candidate is nominated for the position, they will be declared the winner on Friday 17 July and could feasibly be appointed Prime Minister by the King that day. If, however, more than one candidate is successfully nominated, the party membership will then be required to vote on who it wants to be the party leader over the summer, with the deadline for ballots being 27 August.
If there are three or more candidates in the leadership contest, members will vote using the Alternative Vote (AV), requiring them to rank candidates in order of preference. If a candidate receives more than half the vote (as Starmer did in 2020), they will be declared the winner. If not, the candidate with the lowest share of the vote will be eliminated and their votes redistributed. This process continues until someone has a majority.
The above situation is very unlikely, however, as nobody other than Andy Burnham has publicly declared their desire to run. The 20% threshold is a high one, and it would be very difficult for any candidate to achieve without attracting attention from the media. Last week there were rumours that Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister and a close ally of Starmer, would run. However, he later declared publicly that he would not seek the nomination. With West Streeting making a similar declaration, it is difficult to see who would stand any chance of reaching the threshold.
In some ways, it would suit Burnham for there to be a contest for two reasons. Firstly, it would confer more legitimacy on him and avoid the image of a coronation. The appointments of Theresa May and Rishi Sunak during the previous Conservative spell in office attracted these criticisms, and will be used by the opposition to try to undermine them.
Secondly, it would give him more time to flesh out his ideas and policy priorities over the summer and effectively give him the opportunity to test ideas during hustings. Instead, the newly elected MP for Makerfield is likely to go from the Manchester mayoralty to Downing Street in just under one month. A similar situation occurred in 2016, when Andrea Leadsom withdrew from the Conservative leadership contest after reaching the members’ ballot. This meant May became prime minister in July rather than September, giving her only limited time to prepare for Brexit negotiations and meaning that she was on the back foot from the outset of her premiership.
The mechanics of Labour leadership contests are arguably more democratic than those of the Conservatives, where MPs get to whittle candidates down to a final two before handing the decision over to the party members. This allows MPs to try to manipulate the choice presented to party members (as was rumoured to have occurred in 2019, with Boris Johnson allies voting for Jeremy Hunt, believing he would be an easier opponent to defeat than Michael Gove who ended up coming third).
Whilst the Labour system has merits, it also poses a far greater risk that the winning candidate is unpopular within the PLP, as was the case in 2015 with the election of Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn, who for decades had been a fringe figure on the left of the party, scraped onto the ballot thanks to the support of party grandees who thought it would be good to widen the debate (with little prospect of him winning). However, once he made the ballot, the party membership chose him to replace Ed Miliband over more mainstream figures, including Andy Burnham.