Left Foot Forward spoke to Richard Burgon at TUC Congress in Brighton
Left wing Labour MP Richard Burgon has claimed that the Labour leadership has deliberately made it hard for a left wing candidate to get on the ballot in the deputy leadership election, claiming they would ‘move heaven and earth’ to prevent this. Labour is set to elect a new deputy leader following the resignation of Angela Rayner.
Burgon made the comments in an interview with Left Foot Forward at the annual Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Brighton this week.
Burgon has said he wants to see a left candidate on the ballot, telling Left Foot Forward that this would be someone who “at the very least voted for a ceasefire [in Gaza] and voted against the disability benefit cuts.” He says this is because he is “interested not in what people say they’re going to do when there’s a vacancy for the job they want, I’m interested in people’s record.”
Any candidate for the deputy leadership will need nominations from 80 of their fellow Labour MPs in order to get on the ballot. This is double what would previously have been required.
Burgon told Left Foot Forward that this was an example of the Labour leadership seeking to “move heaven and earth” to prevent a left candidate being on the ballot. He went on to say that this was because the leadership “do not want a candidate on the ballot paper who will be drawing attention in a robust way to the huge mistakes that the government’s made over the last year”, later adding: “They don’t want Gaza on the ballot paper. They don’t want the Winter Fuel Payment cuts on the ballot paper. They don’t want disability benefit cuts on the ballot paper.”
He went on to say: “I think it will be very hard for a left candidate to get on the ballot paper. And the reason for that is because the leadership are making it deliberately very difficult for a left candidate to get on the ballot.”
Despite conceding that it would be challenging for their to be a candidate from Burgon’s wing of the party to get sufficient support from the Parliamentary Labour Party to get on the ballot, he was not be willing to endorse a candidate from the soft left of the party.
He told Left Foot Forward: “I have to say I don’t think the left should nominate any candidate – however good they may be in other ways – if they couldn’t vote for a ceasefire in Gaza, if they couldn’t vote against disability benefit cuts. I’m afraid I can’t pick up a pen and put a cross by their name in an internal election and that would be my advice to all left Labour MPs as well.”
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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