At a lavish drinks gathering hosted by Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband at his grand townhouse in north London recently, the main subject was who would take over as Labour’s deputy leader from Angela Rayner.
The event saw several political figures with bruised egos after Sir Keir Starmer’s recent Cabinet reshuffle, which was triggered by Rayner’s resignation due to unpaid stamp duty on her luxury coastal home in Hove.
David Lammy, who had been reassigned from the position of Foreign Secretary (a role he cherished) to Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, seemed to maintain a positive outlook despite what was largely viewed as a downgrading. However, the blunt anger of Lucy Powell, dismissed as Leader of the Commons, was unmistakable.
The candid Northerner made her intentions known to fellow attendees, including ITV’s left-leaning Robert Peston and ex-journalist Tom Baldwin, who penned a laudatory piece about Starmer, that she intended to run for the deputy position.
‘I’m so angry,’ she reiterated, her frustration clearly aimed at Starmer, with whom she now claims she often had behind-the-scenes clashes. ‘I relayed things [from Labour MPs to No 10] that in hindsight… wasn’t feedback that was well-received.’
It was also abundantly clear at the drinks event that she had the backing of Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester and self-declared King of the North, for her candidacy.
Within 24 hours, Burnham, who seems intent on replacing Starmer and is widely thought to be seeking a seat before the next election, had pointedly criticised the ‘London-centric’ make-up of the Government. Starmer and Lammy, tellingly, are both north London lawyers.
Powell is playing up her working-class roots. Born and brought up in Moss Side in Manchester, she managed to get to Oxford to study chemistry from Parrs Wood High School, a comprehensive in East Didsbury, and went on to work in public relations roles for the lobbying company Britain in Europe.
Now the odds are shortening on Lucy Powell, who claims she will be an independent voice who will not pull her punches with the PM when there is a rift with Labour backbenchers
She has been the MP for Manchester Central since 2012 and, appalled by the Brexit vote in 2016, campaigned for a second referendum. She joined the Party as a student. On the ‘soft left’ of Labour, she is in a two-horse race with Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, who was the original favourite to win and widely seen as Starmer’s choice.
Now the odds are shortening on Powell, who claims she will be an independent voice who will not pull her punches with the PM when there is a rift with Labour backbenchers. Only yesterday she was criticising the botched attempt by the Cabinet to impose £4 billion of disability benefit cuts – though she backed them at the time as a member of the Cabinet.
Powell, 50, who’s married to a doctor and has three children, is certainly gaffe prone. Last September she warned that there could have been a ‘run on the pound’ if the Chancellor Rachel Reeves had not axed the winter-fuel payment for more than 10 million pensioners.
The intervention was described as ‘over-dramatic’ and ‘silly’ by economists such as Ben Zaranko of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The reaction of some Labour MPs was much more pointed. ‘It was a ridiculous thing to say,’ said one last night.
Then in May, on the BBC’s Any Questions, she was sneering when a Reform UK commentator raised a documentary about ‘grooming gangs’ of mainly Pakistani heritage. Powell responded: ‘Let’s get that dog whistle out shall we?’
The following month Baroness Casey’s Government-commissioned report into grooming gangs revealed 15 years of Establishment denial about their existence and found there had been ‘a collective failure to address questions about the ethnicity of grooming gangs’.
Powell was viewed as ‘haughty’ by ministers on a Cabinet committee which she chaired. ‘She appeared to take pleasure out of giving ministers a hard time, which is why most ministers will back Phillipson.’
However, she secured a major boost with Ed Miliband’s endorsement of her deputy leadership. They have form together – she was an architect of his doomed 2015 general election campaign when he was Labour leader.
Most Labour MPs think the race is hers to lose and a poll of Party members on LabourList gives her a 17-point lead over Phillipson who had the support of more MPs when the votes were counted last week. Could she go on to challenge for the leadership? In its 125-year history the Labour Party has never elected a woman leader and many MPs think Starmer’s successor has to be female.
With Rayner out of the picture will Powell fit the bill? Who knows. But the female Labour MP who relishes her nickname of ‘Egg Breaker’ because of her bull in a china shop approach to negotiations dismisses any notion that she will be a stalking horse for Andy Burnham.
She told the Manchester Evening News: ‘Woe betide anyone who wants to try and tell me that I’m subservient to some other man. I’m probably more alpha male than most men I know.’ As Sir Keir Starmer may be about to find out to his cost.
