British leadership election to replace Ed Miliband
The 2015 Labour Party leadership election was triggered by the resignation of Ed Miliband as Leader of the Labour Party on 8 May 2015, following the party's defeat at the 2015 general election. Harriet Harman, the Deputy Leader, became Acting Leader but announced that she would stand down following the leadership election. It was won by Jeremy Corbyn in the first round. Coterminous with the leadership election, in the 2015 Labour Party deputy leadership election, Tom Watson was elected to succeed Harman as deputy leader.
Four candidates were successfully nominated to stand in the election: Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn, and Liz Kendall. The voting process began on Friday 14 August 2015 and closed on Thursday 10 September 2015, and the results were announced on Saturday 12 September 2015. Voting was by Labour Party members and registered and affiliated supporters, using the alternative vote system.
Support for Corbyn, who entered the race as a dark horse candidate, and the release of opinion polls which showed him leading the race, led to high-profile interventions by a number of prominent Labour figures including Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Jack Straw, David Miliband, and Alastair Campbell, among others, many of whom argued that Corbyn's election as leader would leave the party unelectable.
Despite these interventions, Corbyn was elected in the first round receiving 59.5% of the votes, winning in all three sections of the ballot. Less than a year later, a leadership challenge saw another leadership election, where Corbyn again won, with an increased share of the vote.
Procedure.
The leadership election, triggered by Ed Miliband's resignation, took place under the reformed rules adopted from the proposals of the February 2014 Collins Report, which was led by Ray Collins, and was itself partly the result of calls for inquiry and reform relating to the 2013 Falkirk Selection Scandal. The plan entailed a shorter election than the one that took place in 2010, with a new leader being in place before Labour's party conference in September 2015.
The review changed the way in which Labour elects leaders. Under the former system, a three-way electoral college chose the leader, with one-third weight given to the votes of the Parliamentary Labour Party (i.e., Labour members of the House of Commons and Labour members of the European Parliament), one-third to individual Labour Party members, and one third to the trade union and affiliated societies sections. Following the Collins review, the electoral college was replaced by a pure "one member, one vote" (OMOV) system. Candidates are elected by members and registered and affiliated supporters, who all receive a maximum of one vote and all votes are weighted equally. This meant that, for example, members of Labour-affiliated trade unions needed to register as Labour supporters to vote.
To stand, candidates now needed to be nominated by at least 15% of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), i.e. 35 MPs, at that time. The vote, as in previous elections, was held under the alternative vote (instant-runoff) system. The deputy leadership election was held under the same rules.
The election itself was overseen by Electoral Reform Services.
In late August, the Labour Party reported that about 552,000 members and supporters were eligible to vote; about 292,000 full members, 148,000 affiliated supporters (members of trade unions and socialist societies who opted to affiliate), plus 112,000 registered supporters.
Timetable.
A meeting of Labour's National Executive Committee took place on 13 May 2015 to set a timetable and procedure for the two elections.
The deadline on 12 August 2015 to join as a member or supporter was extended by 3 hours due to heavy demand making the party website difficult to use.
Candidates.
Nominated.
To be placed on the ballot, candidates for leader had to obtain the nominations of 35 MPs. An MP who nominates a candidate does not have to subsequently support, or vote for, that candidate. Some MPs have stated that they nominated only to ensure that candidate got onto the ballot paper.
The number of MPs next to the candidate's name below includes the candidate, who can count as one of the 35 MPs needed. Public nominations for candidates by MPs were as follows:
Before dropping out of the race on 12 June, Mary Creagh had 10 nominations: Sarah Champion, Jo Cox, Neil Coyle, Thangam Debbonaire, Helen Hayes, Susan Jones, Mike Kane, Stephen Kinnock, Tulip Siddiq
A total of 26 Labour MPs did not nominate any candidate: Graham Allen, Ben Bradshaw, Alan Campbell, Rosie Cooper, Mary Creagh, Stella Creasy, John Cryer, Angela Eagle, Natascha Engel, Caroline Flint, Barry Gardiner, Roger Godsiff, Harriet Harman, Meg Hillier, Lindsay Hoyle, Alan Johnson, Gerald Kaufman, Ed Miliband, Rob Marris, Ian Murray, Graham Stringer, Mark Tami, Keith Vaz, Tom Watson, David Winnick, Rosie Winterton
Media reaction.
Burnham was praised for having both "a radical left-wing vision" and being credible enough "to unite the party and win back power", as well as for being someone who "actually listens to party members and the public".
Burnham attracted press criticism for claiming £17,000 a year from the taxpayer to rent a London flat, despite owning another within walking distance of the House of Commons. A spokesman for Burnham said that renting out the original flat was necessary to "cover his costs" as parliamentary rule changes meant he was no longer able to claim for mortgage interest expenses. Burnham was criticised for saying that Labour should have a woman leader "when the time is right", with the "New Statesman" saying that he had "tripped over his mouth again".
Cooper was praised by the "Huffington Post" for her hard work in local constituencies during the leadership contest and for her preparation for the Local Government Association hustings.
She has been criticised both for thanking David Miliband for putting her as his second choice (after Liz Kendall) and for her "broken, downbeat delivery".
Corbyn's leadership bid was the subject of fierce discussion within the media. Janan Ganesh in the "Financial Times" argued that the election of Corbyn "spells disaster" for the Labour Party. Owen Jones argued in "The Guardian" that the reason Corbyn was so popular was because he "offers a coherent, inspiring and, crucially, a hopeful vision" addressing social injustice and economic inequality, comparing the surge of support for Corbyn to the popularity of both UKIP in England and the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland.
In June 2015, Kendall's leadership bid received praise from "The Sun", who said that she is the "only prayer they [the Labour Party] have". "The Sun" also praised her for saying 'the country comes first' in response to Andy Burnham who said 'the [Labour] Party always comes first' in the "Newsnight" Labour leadership hustings. Commentators from across the political spectrum have said that Kendall is the leadership candidate that the Conservatives "fear the most".
However, the Huffington Post criticised her, saying "Liz Kendall just doesn't seem to have it, she seems to be always on the verge of tripping over her own words, as if she is perpetually being caught off guard."
Dispute over election integrity.
Labour Party membership since 1993
One of the most notable features of the election was the large increase in Labour Party membership, and the registration of significant numbers of the new affiliated and registered classes of voting supporters, during the period of the campaign. Concern was expressed that the new rules were unfairly benefiting Corbyn, and there might be a legal challenge, but in the event the result was so decisive these concerns were not pursued after the election.
In June 2015, the Conservative-identifying political commentator Toby Young wrote in the "Telegraph" encouraging Conservatives to join Labour to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, his reason being "to consign Labour to electoral oblivion". This trended on Twitter as #ToriesforCorbyn and the attempt, as well as Labour's response, were subject to criticism. Two days later the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) wrote also in support of Corbyn. Following this, Labour MP John Mann called for the election to be halted. Acting leader of the party Harriet Harman responded by calling on constituency parties to check new members, but stated that Labour has "a robust system to prevent fraudulent or malicious applications." Labour MP Fabian Hamilton stated there was "no evidence" that groups were trying to infiltrate the election. Leadership candidates Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall also responded by saying there was no evidence of infiltration, and while not dismissing the claims, Corbyn stated he only wanted "genuine Labour supporters" to vote for him.
Rejected voters.
It emerged in early August 2015 that 260 former candidates from the Green Party, Left Unity and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition had attempted to become registered supporters but would now be blocked from voting. Shortly before this it was revealed that Conservative MP and former junior minister Tim Loughton had been caught applying to become a registered Labour supporter, subsequently claiming that his intention was to "blow the gaff on what a complete farce the whole thing is". Veteran Labour MP Barry Sheerman also joined calls for the election to be "paused" over the fears of infiltration by other parties. The Labour Party told representatives of the four candidates at a meeting on 11 August that 1,200 members and supporters of other parties had been excluded and a further 800 were under investigation. Harriet Harman at the time admitted that as many as 100,000 people may be blocked from voting.
The number of those rejected would eventually reach 56,000, around 9.1% of the 610,753 considered eligible to vote at the start of the contest. According to the party, 45,000 of those were rejected for not being on the electoral register.
Labour also confirmed that it would cancel supporters' votes after they had been cast if it was found that they were members of other parties. A number of high-profile individuals were blocked from voting, including Marcus Chown, Jeremy Hardy, Douglas Henshall, Ken Loach, Francesca Martinez, Mark Serwotka, Pete Sinclair, Mark Steel, Luke Wright and Toby Young.
Andrew MacKinlay, a former Labour MP, further alleged that Labour was attempting to rig its own leadership election against Corbyn; a view shared by comedian Jeremy Hardy. Such allegations became known to the media – and particularly Corbyn supporters – as the "Labour Purge", with #LabourPurge trending on Twitter. Claims of such a "purge" of Corbyn supporters were rejected by Harman who insisted that the exclusion processes were impartial to candidates. Scottish newspaper "The National" printed a page-long satirical cartoon speculating further vote-rigging by Labour's leadership.
Missing ballots.
With less than 24 hours to go before the voting deadline, the party closed their telephone helpline. The move came during widespread complaints from "thousands" of voters who were missing emailed or physical ballot papers. "The Guardian" reported that one of their sources in the leadership camps stated that "the party has basically decided to stop taking calls and if you don't have a vote, you're now basically not getting one." The party refused to confirm how many ballot papers had actually been sent. Andy Burnham publicly criticised the number of missing ballots and the closure of the phone line.
Labour MP David Lammy called for a full inquiry into the missing ballot papers. Of the 200 people his team phone called in London on the eve of the deadline, one in five were missing their ballots.
Opinion polling.
The polls in this section have been undertaken by media pollsters known to use industry standard polling methods.
The polls below were conducted after nominations for the leadership ballot closed.
Where there is more than one line for a poll, this is for when a candidate has been eliminated and their second or third preference votes passed onto another candidate.
Polling of eligible voters.
The polls below show voting intention amongst those eligible to vote in the leadership election.
Polling of Labour voters.
The polls below asked Labour supporters across the country how they would vote in the leadership election if they were eligible.
Polling of British voters.
The polls below asked voters across the country how they would vote in the leadership election if they were eligible.
Polling of London voters.
The polls below asked voters in London how they would vote in the leadership election if they were eligible.
Polling before close of nominations.
Labour members.
The polls below were conducted before nominations for the leadership closed and therefore include Labour politicians who were not in the final four candidates who were nominated.
Result.
Turnout for the vote was 422,871 (76.3%) of the 554,272 eligible voters, with 207 spoilt ballots. 343,995 votes (81.3%) were cast