Britain’s Labour Party agrees to timetable for deputy leadership contest

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer has lost his deputy Angela Rayner, and a contest is under way to find a replacement. Photo / Getty Images

The United Kingdom’s governing Labour Party agreed to a timetable for the election of a new deputy leader to replace Angela Rayner, firing the starting gun on a potentially destabilising process for Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The timetable agreed by Labour’s National Executive Committee will culminate in the announcement of a result on October 25, Labour said today.

Candidates will take part in a hustings for Members of Parliament this Thursday, with nominations by MPs closing at 4am on Friday NZT.

That gives potential contenders - who must be a Labour MP to stand - little time to secure the support of 80 colleagues in order to meet the necessary threshold to move to the next stage.

Candidates then need to seek endorsements from local party branches, unions and affiliate groups, with those nominations closing on September 27.

A ballot of members will then be held October 8-23, before the result is announced two days later.

The contest is expected to open up a difficult conversation for the British Prime Minister about what has gone wrong for his party in its first year in government, after bruising U-turns and low poll ratings.

A candidate from the party’s “soft left” - further to the left than Starmer and his aides - is expected to stand, such as former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh or Foreign Affairs select Committee chair Emily Thornberry.

Haigh wrote an essay for the New Statesman yesterday calling for “an economic reset: a decisive break with the fiscal rules and institutional constraints that hold back renewal”.

That’s a clear message to Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves to step up spending and worry less about a commitment to budget rules that Reeves has described as “iron-clad”.

“Now is the time to do better, on Gaza, on welfare, and on wealth inequality,” Thornberry wrote on Instagram.

A person familiar with the matter said the Labour veteran - who had been in Starmer’s shadow cabinet in opposition - is considering standing for the deputy leadership.

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