By Alistair Smout and David Milliken
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s ruling Labor Party said on Saturday that Lucy Powell had won a vote of its members to become deputy party leader, a victory for a candidate whom Prime Minister Keir Starmer sacked as a government minister last month.
Powell defeated Education Minister Bridget Phillipson by a 54-46 margin with a low 17% turnout, and called on Starmer to stop courting voters tempted by right-wing immigration policies and instead focus on shoring up support on the left.
“We will not win by trying to outdo Reform, but by building a broad progressive consensus,” Powell said in his victory speech, saying the party needed to focus on its traditional values ​​around reducing inequality.
Labor lost a seat in the Welsh parliament on Friday to the left-wing Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru, and was pushed into third place by former Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which focuses on reducing immigration.
The election of a new deputy Labor leader followed Angela Rayner’s resignation in September after she breached ministerial rules by mistakenly failing to pay the correct tax when buying a house.
Powell lost his position in Starmer’s government in a ministerial reshuffle following Rayner’s resignation. She has suggested that she may have been fired from her job overseeing the government’s legislative agenda for letting Starmer know that things like planned welfare cuts were unpopular in the party.
Speaking on Saturday, Powell said the party’s leadership needed to change its culture to reengage with its members and lawmakers and abandon a “command and control” approach.
Unlike Rayner, Powell will not serve as deputy prime minister, as Starmer appointed Justice Minister David Lammy to that role following Rayner’s resignation.
Powell has promised to be “a strong, independent voice” after the party’s tough first year in office, during which its popularity has declined.
Responding to Powell’s victory speech, Starmer celebrated her election as “a proud defender of Labor values” and said Friday’s defeat in Wales highlighted the urgency of delivering visible improvements to voters.
(Reporting by Alistair Smout and David Milliken; editing by Barbara Lewis)