E3: Keir Starmer elected Labour leader with 56% of vote on first round — live news

Live coverage of the results of the Labour leadership and deputy leadership elections

Labour has also announced the results today of elections to fill three posts on the national executive committee, the party’s governing body. As Sienna Rodgers reports at LabourList, all three posts have gone to candidates backed by “centrist” groups, not Corbynites. Rodgers explains:

In another huge victory for Corbynsceptics today, all three candidates were endorsed by Blairite group Progress and ‘old right’ organisation Labour First ...

Multiple slates were put forward by organisations belonging to the Labour left, however, with Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy backing different candidates.

Another set of important results today – Corbynsceptics have won the NEC by-elections. The Labour left royally screwed up putting together slates for CLP reps, but they didn't get the one BAME rep either. Full results here: https://t.co/i5wLhWSbTZ

Sir Keir Starmer has accepted Boris Johnson’s offer (see 10.19am) to meet next week to discuss the coronavirus crisis. A spokesperson for the new Labour leader said:

This afternoon Keir Starmer spoke with the prime minister about the current national emergency. Keir offered to work constructively with the government on how best to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, accepted the prime minister’s offer to meet next week and agreed arrangements for privy council briefings and discussions.

And this is from Ed Miliband, Jeremy Corbyn’s predecessor as Labour leader. Miliband is seen as someone who may well be offered a post in Starmer’s shadow cabinet.

Congratulations to Keir Starmer on a clear and deserved victory. His decency, values and intelligence are what our country needs at this moment of crisis and to lead us to a more equal, fairer and just future.

Here is Jeremy Corbyn on the result.

Congratulations @Keir_Starmer and @AngelaRayner.

Being Labour Party leader is a great honour and responsibility.

I look forward to working with Keir and Angela to elect the next Labour government and transform our country.#LabourLeadershipElection

The Conservative party has issued this statement from Amanda Milling, the Conservative party co-chair. Echoing Boris Johnson (see 10.19am), she is urging Starmer to work with the government in fighting the coronavirus. Milling said:

I congratulate Keir Starmer on becoming the new leader of the Labour party.

The coronavirus is the biggest threat this country has faced in decades, so I call on Keir Starmer to put aside the divisiveness and infighting that has plagued the top of the Labour party for the last five years, and work with the government to support the national effort.

Here is Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, on the election result.

Delighted that @Keir_Starmer and @AngelaRayner have been selected as the new Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

I look forward to working closely with them. #LabourLeadership pic.twitter.com/AXaqSfPN38

And here is the statement that Lisa Nandy has released congratulating Sir Keir Starmer on his victory.

Heartfelt congratulations to @Keir_Starmer and @AngelaRayner. We will move forward together pic.twitter.com/zzfixL6s6H

And this is from Rebecca Long-Bailey, the leadership candidate supported by the Corbynite left. She is urging everyone in Labour to support Starmer, who she says will be a “brilliant prime minister”.

To those who supported our campaign, thank you for putting for your faith in me pic.twitter.com/lNhkZ06QoF

This is from Angela Rayner, who has been self-isolating at home while recovering from coronavirus.

Your support means everything. I will never stop fighting for our movement. pic.twitter.com/MIdls0n3WG

The Labour MP Jess Phillips, who stood for the Labour leadership herself before withdrawing when it became clear that she would not get enough CLP or union nominations to get onto the final ballot, has just told Sky News that if Starmer offers her a post in the shadow cabinet, she will probably accept.

Here is my colleague Rowena Mason’s full story about the leadership election result.

Related: Keir Starmer wins Labour leadership election

Momentum, the Labour organisation for Jeremy Corbyn supporters, has put out a statement saying that it intends to hold Starmer to account and that he should appoint a “broad” shadow cabinet (ie, one that includes members of the Corbynite left). A Momentum spokesperson said:

In four and a half years, Jeremy Corbyn and the movement around him has changed our party and country for the better, giving a voice to the hopes of millions who felt unrepresented in politics.

Austerity as a political project has been defeated and the dark days when Labour cheered on privatisation, pursued illegal wars and demonised migrants are long gone. Our membership has tripled in size, we have doubled the number of socialist MPs and our party brims with ideas and vision for a socialist future.

And here are the results for the deputy leadership.

Here are the overall number of votes cast.

Here are the full results of the Labour leadership election.

Here are the overall results.

Angela Rayner won the deputy leadership on the third round, after the votes of Dawn Butler and Ian Murray were eliminated, the party has confirmed.

I will post full details of the results in a moment.

Labour has still not released the full results of the ballot yet, but it says that Sir Keir Starmer won with 56.2% of the vote, and Angela Rayner won with 52.6% of the vote.

Sky says that’s what Starmer got on the first ballot. It is not clear yet whether or not Rayner won on the first ballot.

Sir Keir Starmer has released the text of his victory statement.

It is long, but I will post it in full anyway. Here it is.

It is the honour and the privilege of my life to be elected as leader of the Labour arty. It comes at a moment like none other in our lifetime.

Coronavirus has brought normal life to a halt. Our cities, our towns and our villages are silent, our roads deserted. Public life has all but come to a standstill and we’re missing each other.

And Angela Rayner is the new deputy leader, the Press Association has confirmed.

Labour has confirmed the result.

Congratulations to @Keir_Starmer, the new Leader of the Labour Party!#LabourLeadership pic.twitter.com/i2PjxXaWMf

Sir Keir Starmer has won, the Press Association is reporting.

The page on the Labour website, where the leadership result is due to get posted, has crashed.

This is from Labour First, a Labour group supporting Sir Keir Starmer. We have not had official confirmation from the party yet.

Congratulations @Keir_Starmer! pic.twitter.com/6soME9S9jy

John McDonnell has confirmed he is standing down as shadow chancellor.

As I step down as Shadow Chancellor I want to thank all those party members and supporters who have sustained us through the last years with their solidarity. It’s been a privilege and honour to serve our movement. Solidarity.

From the FT’s Jim Pickard:

BREAKING

am hearing that Keir Starmer won the leadership on the first round

and that Angela Rayner won the deputy leadership on the third round

(we'll found out in a minute or two for sure)

With the results of the Labour Party leadership election due to be announced soon, here's our chart on the results of leadership contests since 1922.

More on the process of electing a new Labour leader in our explainer here https://t.co/7qnSrNvGBV pic.twitter.com/hE1EoeZJ0J

These are from Sunder Katwala, a former general secretary of the Fabian Society.

Lowest first-round score of a winning candidate for leader

Ed Miliband 34.8% of college (2nd to D.Miliband 37.8%)

Every other post-1980 Labour leadership contest has been won on the first ballot count (1983, 1988 challenge; 1994; 2015; 2016 challenge, plus uncontested in 2007)

Labour deputy leadership (first round scores of winners)

2010: Harman 18.9% (2nd to Cruddas, 19.4%)
2015: Watson 39.4% (1st, lead of 20% over Creasy)

1992: Beckett 57.3% in 3-candidate race
1994: Prescott 56.5% (59% of party members) in two candidate race.

This is from the Labour MP Yvette Cooper who, as the Times reports this morning (see 9.57am) is being seen as a possible candidate of one of the top shadow cabinet jobs if Sir Keir Starmer wins.

Best of luck to @Keir_Starmer & @AngelaRayner as we wait for results. Tough time to take on leadership but they make a strong, impressive, compassionate @UKLabour team. Glad this has been a positive campaign from all the candidates who’ve worked so hard #AnotherFutureIsPossible

Winning the next election does look, on the face of it, a near-impossible task for the next Labour leader. The Conservatives have a working majority of nearly 90, Labour needs to gain 124 seats to win the next election outright and current polling (see 10.01am) suggests the Tories have a 24-point lead. But on the plus side (even before you try to make allowance for the long-term impact of the coronavirus pandemic) today’s electorate is more volatile than ever.

That is the key conclusion in Electoral Shocks: The Volatile Voter in a Turbulent World, the latest book from the British Election Study team. Published at the end of last year, it focuses on detailed analysis of voting behaviour in the 2015 and 2107 general elections but its core finding is probably more relevant than ever. (Coronavirus is potentially much more disruptive than “electoral shocks” like Brexit and the 2008 financial crisis covered in the book.) A majority of us are now floating voters, the book’s seven authors argue.

When Butler and Stokes looked at panel data of vote choice in the 1960s, they observed that only around 13% of those who voted in both elections switched their vote choices between elections (Butler and Stokes 1969). They concluded that differential turnout and cohort replacement were the major drivers of electoral change. Slightly over a decade later, Särlvik and Crewe (1983) saw sufficient change (21% of voters switched) that they considered there to have been a ‘decade of dealignment’. However, even the switching seen there seems modest when compared to the levels seen in 2015 (43%) and 2017 (33%). Across the four elections from 2005 to 2017, around 60 per cent of voters switched parties at least once.1 Far from being the minority of the electorate, swing voters — defined as people who switch their support to different parties between elections — now comprise the majority of the modern British electorate.

Some Conservatives have suggested that Boris Johnson should invite the next Labour leader to join some form of government of national unity to deal with the coronavirus crisis. Johnson has not (yet?) adopted the idea, but this morning he released an open letter to the leaders of opposition parties inviting them to attend a briefing on coronavirus next week. “I want to listen to your views,” he said.

He added all parties “have a duty to work together at this moment of national emergency”.

I have written to all leaders of opposition parties to invite them to work together at this moment of national emergency. pic.twitter.com/HgEsMo3DO2

It’s the duty of opposition parties to hold it to account, and that is exactly what we’re doing. I think we should be challenging the government and challenging them on the economic response, challenging them on job security, and that is the way to get better government and better decisions.

If everybody got together and said: ‘We’re all absolutely in this together we won’t criticise each other’, that is a negation of what our democratic society is about.

Lisa Nandy posted this on Twitter this morning.

It’s been a marathon contest. Thank you to all the @UKLabour staff and volunteers who made it happen. And most of all the amazing group of people who came together to fight for a better party and country. @LouHaigh @LukeFrancis88 - it’s been a privilege to do this with you https://t.co/bVqYs1banV

The new Labour leader will take over a party that is trailing in the polls by a huge margin. Here are the results of a YouGov poll released yesterday showing the Conservatives 24 points ahead of Labour.

In its preview story on the Labour leadership the Times says that Sir Keir Starmer is “preparing to resurrect the frontline political careers of several senior female Labour MPs who spent much of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership on the back benches”. The story (paywall) goes on:

[Starmer] will begin appointing his shadow cabinet next week but it will not meet face to face until the government relaxes social distancing rules. Several Labour MPs who declined to serve or were ignored under Mr Corbyn are expected to be promoted.

They are likely to include Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and pensions secretary under Ed Miliband, who is chairwoman of the business select committee ...

Some might feel this an odd headline given the last four and a half years is the only time there has been a gender balanced shadow cabinet and there are more female than male Labour MPs for the first time ever. https://t.co/gsYp56n1hf

Some bookmakers have suspended taking bets on Sir Keir Starmer winning because they think it is such an inevitability. But, as the political betting expert Mike Smithson points out, there are odds on what his winning margin might be.

Ladbrokes have Starmer vote share brackets
40-45% 10/1
45-50% 5/2
50-55% 6/4
55%-60% 7/2
60% 6/1

Good morning. This morning the Labour party is going to announce who has been elected to replace Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Even before the coronavirus pandemic forced the UK, and much of the world, into lockdown, the contest was attracting less interest than some previous ones because Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, was - and is - expected to win easily, and this morning the announcement will be entirely overshadowed by the crisis facing the nation. Plans for a special conference, where the result was going to be unveiled, were cancelled, and instead Labour will just be press releasing the results at 10.45am.

But the fact that this announcement will not register as a major news event does not mean it does not matter. Hopefully the next Labour leader will be with us a lot longer than coronavirus, and the result revealed this morning will over time shape our politics considerably.

Tune in this Saturday at 10.45am and be first to know who will lead the Labour Party.
pic.twitter.com/mAdR0UI6Go

Related: Keir Starmer poised to be announced new Labour leader

Keir Starmer’s plans to transform the Labour party will be dictated by the scale of his anticipated victory on Saturday, key supporters have said, as senior Jeremy Corbyn supporters expressed concerns they could be purged from key positions.

Allies of the former director of public prosecutions say they will be watching to see whether he can achieve an emphatic win before assessing how quickly he can remake the party in his own image, with a clearout of those responsible for the damaging 2019 election defeat.

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