Jess Phillips launches Labour leadership bid

Bloomberg

Maverick politician Jess Phillips said Labour needs a “different kind of leader” as she launched her bid to succeed Jeremy Corbyn, following the UK opposition party’s worst electoral defeat since 1935.
Labour needs to regain support from “huge parts” of the working class base it has lost and is in “big trouble” if it fails, Phillips, 38, said, according to the Press Association.
Corbyn said in the aftermath of the crushing defeat on December 12 he would stand down as leader following a “period of reflection” to determine the direction the party should take. Labour’s National Executive Committee is due to outline a timetable for the leadership election next week.
“Now is not the time to be meek: Boris Johnson needs to be challenged, with passion, heart and precision,” Phillips said. “We need to recognise that politics has changed in a fundamental way by electing a different kind of leader. More of the same will lead to more of the same result.”
Lisa Nandy, 40, another member of parliament, tweeted that she is running because “it has to be different and it can be better.”
The leadership race is shaping up as a clash between opposing wings of the party. Corbyn supporters want to install a new leader in his left wing, socialist mold to push on with an agenda of wealth redistribution and the nationalisation of key industries.
The two early favourites, Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer and business spokeswoman Rebecca Long Bailey, have yet to formally declare their candidacies — though both have said they are considering a bid. A YouGov poll of Labour party members showed that Starmer, a moderate who remained loyal to Corbyn, would comfortably beat Long Bailey — viewed as the current leadership’s preferred candidate — with Phillips in third.
Phillips has been a fierce critic of Corbyn and is known in parliament for her no-nonsense, blunt style.
A Remainer who backed a second referendum on Brexit, she held her Leave-backing Midlands seat of Birmingham Yardley in the election with a comfortable majority of more than 10,000 votes, even as Labour lost dozens of similarly pro-Brexit seats in central and northern England.