The Labour Leadership Election - Angela Eagle’s challenge

On 23rd June 2016, the EU Referendum took place, where the UK decided to leave the EU with a final result of 51.9% leave to 48.1% remain with a turnout of 72.2% UK citizens. This resulted in there being a large shake up within the main political parties due to the significant split between members of the same party taking opposing sides. However, one party that is still undecided about the main leadership role is the Labour Party, where the members have been debating whether to keep Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

Since the referendum, members of the party have been discussing whether Corbyn did enough as leader to promote the remain party, especially as in an interview he told the British public that he was only a 7 out of 10 on how much he wanted to remain in the EU. Therefore, politicians believe that one of the main reasons as to why the country voted to leave was because Corbyn failed to lead the Labour Party and to successfully get the working class supporters of the party to vote remain.

Angela Eagle was the first to challenge Corbyn’s leadership, which she did a week after many of the shadow cabinet resigned once finding out the results of the referendum. Eagle has been a member of the Labour Party since she was 17 years old and has been an MP for nearly 25 years. Unlike many Labour Party MPs, when Corbyn became leader, Eagle backed him and called for unity within the party, however, once the referendum had taken place, Eagle was upset to conclude that was not the right person to lead the party.

After being the first to challenge Corbyn, Eagle pulled out of the leadership race ‘in the interests of the party’ so that she could back Corbyn. This was because she realised that her movement would have a much larger chance of being successful if there was only one challenger, and so she dropped out because polls showed that Owen Smith had more of a chance of beating Jeremy Corbyn than she did. MD

The Labour Leadership Election

Following the vote for Britain to leave the EU on the 23^rd June, Jeremy Corbyn was criticised by Labour MPs for a disappointing campaign to encourage Labour voters to vote Remain. Despite the Labour party’s official position being Remain, many traditional Labour areas, such as Swansea, Sunderland and South Tyneside voted heavily for Brexit and many put this down to Corbyn’s lacklustre campaign, during which he attended ‘limited’ EU events and was reported to have dropped pro-EU sections from speeches. As a result, two Labour MPs – Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey - submitted a motion of no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership. This was later passed by a secret vote of 172-40, which led to calls for the Labour leader to resign. Hilary Benn – the shadow foreign secretary – was sacked by Corbyn after it had been shown that he was planning a mass resignation of shadow cabinet ministers to force Corbyn to stand down and told him that there was ‘no confidence in his ability to win the next election’. This then triggered 20 members of the shadow cabinet to resign in protest, as well as several other MPs, totalling 63 resignations. However, Corbyn stood firm and said that he would not resign but would stand against any challenger in a leadership contest.

Anyone wishing to challenge the sitting leader of the party must have the backing of 20% of the 229 Labour MPs and 20 MEPs. Both Angela Eagle and Owen Smith launched leadership bids to challenge Corbyn, who was automatically included on the ballot paper without needing to be nominated by MPs. However, amid calls for there to be just one leadership challenger to Corbyn to act as a unity candidate, Eagle and Smith came to the decision that the one with the fewest nominations from MPs would be the one to pull out of the contest. Eagle who had just 72 nominations in comparison to Smith’s 90, subsequently removed her leadership bid and chose to back Smith. The ballot papers for this election have been sent to Labour members since the 22^nd August with the deadline for votes being the 21^st September. The result will then be announced on the 24^th September. A recent poll conducted by YouGov suggests that Corbyn will win this leadership election with a landslide victory, having 62% of support with Smith having just 32%. This is even higher than in the 2015 election where Corbyn won with 59.5% of the vote. Regardless of the outcome of this election, the Labour party faces an uncertain future, as the past few months have unearthed deep divisions within its members. AE