Latest news from Labour conference after Keir Starmer wins vote on party reforms to require leadership candidates to have backing of 20% of MPs
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Good morning. Sir Keir Starmer won the vote last night on the internal Labour reforms that will require leadership candidates to have the backing of 20% of MPs, not 10%, stop registered supporters voting in leadership elections and make it harder for activists to trigger a reselection ballot in their local Labour MP. The changes were passed by 53.67% to 46.33%, which was closer than some expected, but it does go some way to compensating for Starmer’s failure to get the unions to back his plan to change the leadership election system more fundamentally (he wanted to return to the electoral college) and his allies are treating this as a significant victory.
In an interview for the Today programme this morning, Lord Mandelson, one of the main architects of New Labour and a Starmer supporter, was much more explict about that this might mean than Starmer himself, and his shadow ministers, have been. He said this was all about locking out another leader like Jeremy Corbyn. He said:
Jeremy Corbyn built on the rules that Ed Miliband introduced, which allowed hundreds of thousands of people to apply to vote for our future leader without actually caring about the Labour party, knowing about the Labour party and in many cases not even becoming a member of the Labour party.
That avalanche of people who were allowed in the Labour party to back one far left candidates who they wanted to see elected leader will now no longer be allowed to happen …
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