Labour leadership Manchester hustings: the best and the worst

Key message

Rebecca Long-Bailey: Don’t throw out Corbyn’s policies with a new leader. Long-Bailey is seen as carrying the flame for Corbynism, and she praised the 2019 manifesto. “We won’t win again and unite and inspire our movement if we abandon these building blocks of a socialist society.”

Lisa Nandy: Labour needs to be honest about what went wrong and faces an existential moment if it ducks this after the election loss. “There is a small window when people are looking at us to see if we’ve got it.”

Keir Starmer: It’s all about unity. This is Starmer’s constant refrain – how can Labour come together to win. “I came into politics to change lives, and you don’t change lives by being in opposition.”

Best quote

Rebecca Long-Bailey: Arguing against the Conservatives’ branding as being the party of opportunity: “They don’t make sure that every single person in our community can realise their dreams and ambitions. That’s what we do in the Labour party – support businesses, industries, create those opportunities for people to realise.”

Lisa Nandy: On the London-centrism of politics: “I will not go and sit in Andrew Marr’s studio on a Sunday to debate, from a central London studio, how we rebuild in the north of England.”

Keir Starmer: His scathing response to having been asked in a previous interview to name the most exciting thing he had ever done, in a period when his mother-in-law had just died: “These questions are supposed to be the measure of us and they are so ridiculous.”

Most uncomfortable moment

Rebecca Long-Bailey: Being put on the defensive over her support for Corbyn’s legacy, when asked why her friend, the favourite to be deputy leader, Angela Rayner, criticised Corbyn for not commanding respect within the party. Long-Bailey responded with a slightly rambling answer, denying Rayner had done this.

Lisa Nandy: A potentially tricky area that actually went well – challenged why she sought to topple Corbyn in the 2016 internal coup. Nandy insisted that “every difficult week I went out to bat for the party”, and won applause for saying she quit the shadow cabinet as she could not face the scale of infighting.

Keir Starmer: Some shifting at the lectern when Long-Bailey and Nandy condemned Labour’s approach to Brexit – spearheaded by Starmer. Long-Bailey called it “focused a lot on what was happening in Westminster”, while Nandy called the party’s response to the 2016 referendum “tone deaf”.

What we learned about them

Rebecca Long-Bailey: She actually doesn’t agree with everything in the last Labour manifesto, or at least the way it was presented. Asked if she disagreed with anything Long-Bailey said some ideas, like the four-day week, should have been presented as “long term aspirations”.

Lisa Nandy: If she wins the leadership she will move the Labour HQ out of London and instead base it in Warrington. This could be news to some current London-based Labour staffers.

Keir Starmer: His mother really, really loved the NHS. Starmer recalled being a teenager with his seriously ill mother, who had the chronic illness Still’s disease, when it seemed possible she might die. Starmer recalled: “She took my hand and said, ‘You won’t let your dad go private, will you?’”