At a swish drinks party hosted by Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband in his imposing north London townhouse recently, the main topic of conversation was who would succeed Angela Rayner as Labour‘s deputy leader.
There were some bruised political egos in the room after Sir Keir Starmer‘s Cabinet reshuffle days earlier, prompted by Rayner’s resignation over unpaid stamp duty on her luxury seaside home in Hove.
David Lammy, who had been moved from Foreign Secretary (which he loved) to Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, was putting a brave face on what was widely seen as a demotion. But there was no disguising the unbridled fury of Lucy Powell who had been sacked as Leader of the Commons.
The straight-talking Northerner made it clear to fellow guests, who included ITV‘s left-leaning Robert Peston and the former journalist Tom Baldwin who wrote a hagiography of Starmer, that she was running for the deputy’s post.
‘I’m so angry,’ she said repeatedly, her ire directed squarely at Starmer with whom she now claims she had often clashed behind the scenes. ‘I fed back things [from Labour MPs to No 10] that with hindsight… wasn’t feedback that people wanted to hear.’
It was also crystal clear at the drinks party that she was running with the support of Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester and self-styled King of the North.
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.
