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Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell make their final arguments ahead of ballot closing in Labour’s deputy leadership contest
Jessica Elgot
Jessica Elgot is the Guardian’s deputy political editor.
At noon today voting will close in the Labour’s deputy leadership election. It has been a tight race between education secretary Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell, the recently ousted cabinet minister.
Powell has been calling for Labour to change direction and to champion more loudly progressive values, so as to take on both Nigel Farage and leftwing parties.
And Phillipson has told supporters that she needs a “mandate to smash child poverty” so that in cabinet she can get agreeement to end the two-child benefit cap.
Powell has led comfortably in polls of Labour members, but Phillipson has endorsements of three of the largest unions whose members have not been polled and who also get a vote if they pay into the party.
Powell wrote to supporters last night:
The politics of division and hate are on the rise, and it is up to us, the Labour party, to stand firm against it, and show that progressive, mainstream politics can make the change people have voted for again and again.
I want to help Keir and our government to succeed. But we all know that we must change how we are doing things to turn things around.
Phillipson has said she does not believe changes comes from criticism of Keir Starmer’s leadership. “We all know Reform are a clear and present danger which we can’t ignore – so are the Greens peddling their false hope,” she said in a final statement last night.
But we’re not going to beat them by having spats in public. We’re not going to beat them by throwing rocks at the leadership just as we’re not going to beat them by straying from our values. We’re going to beat them by coming together.
Powell has routinely been dubbed as the divisive candidate by her rival, in a contest that has left both camps feeling bruised, though there is particular anger from allies of Powell.
In her letter, Powell said:
[It is] not divisive to be honest about where we are, it’s the only way we can collectively face up to it and change course. Blindly following along is not unity, it’s a dereliction of our duty to defeat the politics of hate and division.
There will be two urgent questions in the Commons after 10.30am. First, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, is asking for a statement about the role of the attorney general in the collapse of the China spy trial. And then the SNP’s Seamus Logan is asking for a statement on the fishing and coastal growth fund.
ShareBadenoch criticised for using grooming gangs inquiry for ‘point scoring’
Yesterday Jim Gamble, a former deputy chief constable and a former head the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command centre, said he was no longer interested in being chair of the grooming gangs inquiry. He was the only known candidate left, because the other candidate known to have been shortlisted pulled out earlier in the week.
In an interview with Times Radio, Gamble said that he was “disappointed” with the with Kemi Badenoch has approached this issue. He said:
She’s a forthright and direct individual. But I was disappointed at the manner of the engagement because actually it would be much better to say, look, I’ve been speaking to some of the victims and survivors, you know, let’s get together and discuss this because not all victims and survivors want the same thing.
At PMQs yesterday Badenoch devoted all her questions to the grooming gangs inquiry, using the topic to attack Keir Starmer’s leadership.
In a separate interview with GB News, Gamble said the atmosphere around the inquiry had become “toxic”. He explained:
And my goodness, if politicians can’t come together cross-party on this, when are they ever going to come together?
I think the toxic environment; there needs to be a pause now. There needs to be a calming. Those people in positions of responsibility need to think about the victims and survivors rather than their own political point scoring.
ShareJess Phillips has full confidence of PM, says minister, after grooming gang survivors say inquiry will fail if she stays
Good morning. Kemi Badenoch is entitled to take a bit of the credit for persuading Keir Starmer to change his mind and agree to a national grooming gangs inquiry. (GB News and Elon Musk probably played a rule too – although Starmer says the voice that mattered was Louise Casey’s.) When opposition parties influence policy, they always look a bit more serious. But – intentionally or not – by getting the inquiry off the ground, Badenoch has also plunged the government into process turmoil that guarantees endless negative headlines and unwanted distraction.
The government is now on day four of the grooming gangs inquiry “crisis” and it is not getting any better. After the resignation of four survivors on the inquiry’s oversight panel, and the withdrawal of both lead candidates to be chair, Starmer is now under fresh pressure to sack Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, over claims that she falsely accused survivors of lying about the process in an urgent question in the Commons on Tuesday.
Last night the four survivors who have resigned from the oversight panel released a joint statement saying Phillips’s comment took them “right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again”.
Letter from survivors Photograph: Ellie-Ann Reynolds
The survivors said that Phillips was unfit to oversee the inquiry process and that they would not rejoin the inquiry panel unless she went.
It is important to remember that most of the survivors on the oversight panel have not quit, and that there are plenty of victims who do not agree with these criticisms. Still, it is far from ideal.
In the Commons yesterday Starmer defended Phillips. Josh MacAlister, the children’s minister, has been doing a media round this morning and he said Phillips has the “full backing of the prime minister and the home secretary” and that he would “stay in post”.
He went on:
I know Jess, she’s been a lifelong advocate and champion for young girls who’ve been abused, and she has already shown that she’s properly engaging with the survivor community.
MacAlister said the scope of the inquiry would not be broadened (one of the concerns of survivors).
He added:
The government’s intent on this is incredibly solid. We want to get this right. We’re taking action and we’ll set the inquiry up.
I would just urge other political parties to turn the volume down a little bit, or turn the heat down a little bit on, on their attacks.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister, takes questions in the Commons.
9.30am: The ONS publishes crime figures for England and Wales for the year ending June 2025.
9.30am: David Lammy, the deputy PM, gives a speech in London.
10.15am: The Lords committee considering the assisted dying bill takes evidence from medical and legal experts.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Morning: John Healey, the defence secretary, and his German counterpart Boris Pistorious visit RAF Lossiemouth in north-east Scotland.
Noon: The ballot for the deputy Labour leadership closes. The result will be announced on Saturday.
Afternoon: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in north-west London.
And in Caerphilly voters are going to the polls for a Senedd byelection that may herald a fundamental realignment in Welsh politics. Steven Morris has a very good preview here.
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Updated at 04.20 EDT