"I am outside the Labour Party's headquarters, and this is as close to the announcement of the party's new deputy leader as I am going to get. This was a contest Labour did not want and its outcome was so underplayed us reporters were not even let in to watch it. Thankfully, after a bit of to and fro, they did let a few broadcast cameras in so we could watch outside and you could watch too, if you chose to."
"Seven weeks ago the prime minister sacked Lucy Powell from his cabinet. Today she became his deputy leader of the Labour Party. Politics is a funny old business. When Angela Rayner resigned Sir Keir Starmer used the moment to embark on a pretty widespread reshuffle of his ministerial team. The most high profile casualty? Powell. A month and a bit later she is back."
"But while this is not the result of this contest Sir Keir would have preferred, it is worth briefly dwelling on the numbers in this election. While Powell was the favourite once this race was down to two candidates and she was the clear victor, it was not a landslide. It was not a wholesale, overwhelming rejection of Bridget Phillipson, who was seen as the candidate closer to the prime minister as a serving cabinet minister."
Access to the deputy leader announcement outside Labour headquarters in south London was tightly controlled, with reporters initially excluded and only a few broadcast cameras admitted. Seven weeks after the prime minister sacked Lucy Powell during a reshuffle prompted by Angela Rayner's resignation, Powell won a directly elected deputy leadership. The result was clear when the contest narrowed to two candidates but fell short of a landslide and did not represent a wholesale rejection of Bridget Phillipson. The prime minister met Powell after the result, and expectations of frequent public disloyalty by Powell are judged overblown given her recent cabinet role.
Read at www.bbc.com
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