Three more Labour leadership candidates – Rebecca Long-Bailey, Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy – have joined Keir Starmer in securing enough nominations from MPs to reach the next stage of the contest.
Labour published figures showing Starmer was the clear favourite among MPs, with 63 nominations from colleagues.
Long-Bailey, who is backed by John McDonnell and Diane Abbott, secured 26, while Phillips had 22 and Nandy 24, putting them just over the threshold needed to make it on to the ballot.
The two other candidates, Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis, were trailing on nine and four nominations each, suggesting they may not make the next round unless they can make huge gains by the deadline for nominations on Monday. Barry Gardiner, who made a surprise announcement that he was considering a bid this week, did not have any nominations by close of play on Thursday and later said he would not run.
In a statement, Gardiner said: “I want to thank all my colleagues as well as the party activists and members of the public who encouraged me to stand for the Labour leadership. I am now clear that at this late stage I cannot secure sufficient nominations to proceed to the next round. I have therefore decided not to stand for the leadership at this time.”
The figures for deputy leadership candidates showed Angela Rayner, who is backing Long-Bailey, racing ahead with 71 nominations.
Ian Murray, Labour’s only Scottish MP, was in second position with 29 nominations, while Richard Burgon, a Corbyn ally with the backing of McDonnell, got 18 names.
Dawn Butler had 14 nominations, while Rosena Allin-Khan had 16. Khalid Mahmood dropped out after getting the backing of only two colleagues.
The leadership candidates now have to secure the backing of either 33 constituency Labour parties or three affiliate groups, at least two of which must be trade unions, representing 5% of the total affiliate membership, which some of the campaigns acknowledged would be “a challenge”.
Starmer for leader and Rayner for deputy are now almost certain to be on the list of names put to the membership, as they won the backing of Unison on Wednesday.
The other major unions – Unite, the GMB, Usdaw and the CWU – are all yet to decide who they will support.
Speaking on a visit to the Unison headquarters, Starmer said Labour needed to regain the trust of voters after its “devastating” defeat in December.
“I do believe that we can be an effective opposition, that we can take the challenge to Boris Johnson, that we can restore trust in our party,” he said.
“But we can only do that if we unite, if we put factionalism on one side. Divided parties don’t win elections, united parties win elections. I want to be able to pull our party together so we are all in one team batting together.
“We have lost four elections in a row. If you lose an election you are in opposition, if you are in opposition you are not changing lives. So we have got to focus on forging that path to victory.
“You do that not by trashing the last Labour government, not by trashing everything that has happened since 2015, but by focusing relentlessly on the future.”
After securing her nominations, Nandy said she was “proud to have been nominated by a group of MPs representing different parts of the country and different traditions in our movement”.
