Speaking in a week that saw a briefing war emerge over Keir Starmer’s leadership, the Deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell called for a ‘cultural reset’ in how politics was done
The Deputy Labour Leader has condemned “horrible personal briefings” as “totally unacceptable”.
Speaking in a week that saw a briefing war emerge over Keir Starmer’s leadership, Lucy Powell called for a “cultural reset” in how politics was done. Speaking to The Times, Ms Powell also opened up about being sacked as leader of the Commons by the PM.
She said: “There are horrible personal briefings that are totally unacceptable. We do operate in quite a difficult environment for politicians now [with] social media, so then to have your own side doing that to you as well … we’ll just end up with poorer politics and poorer politicians.
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“We do need a cultural kind of reset in how we approach some of these things. I’ve called it out and I’ll continue to call it out. It’s just completely unacceptable and people need to be held to account for it. ”
She also suggested there was an element of misogyny in the briefings against her during the deputy leadership contest, which saw her defeat the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson.
She said: “Well it was sort of self-evident. There were some things said about me during the deputy leadership campaign as well — really nasty and wrong.”
Discussing her sacking, the Manchester Central MP said she was worried the moment she learnt about the issues facing Angela Rayner over her stamp duty.
Explaining the phone call that led to her exit, Ms Powell said: “I knew that I was hanging by a bit of a thread, to be honest.
“I had spoken out on some things and I had delivered some difficult messages. I’ve been on the other side of those conversations in the room when reshuffles are being done. Obviously the sackings are the first thing you do. So getting a withheld call from Downing Street, I knew straight away what it meant.
“I kind of gave an account of myself.I thought I’d done a good job and I thought I’d achieved stuff. I wanted to make the point that the reasons he may have been given from other people about why to sack me weren’t the right ones.”
A month into the role of Deputy Leader, Ms Powell added she now has a “strong grasp of what people’s priorities are”.
She said:“They just can’t understand why we’re doing some things and what we’re doing them for.
We’re not showing clearly enough the kind of Labour values and the ‘labour’ bit of the Labour government.
“I think we’re all clear that we can’t out-Reform Reform, and that’s not a successful strategy, but I think it’s absolutely vital that we do the fundamentals of what people expect a government to do well. Securing our borders and being in control of our immigration system is part of that.”