Emily Thornberry is the straggler in the Labour leadership contest. Unlike Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy, she’s not going to get on the ballot with trade union nominations. She currently only has two nominations from constituency Labour parties, and doesn’t poll well with members. She needs a breakthrough moment – or at least an explanation of why she’s standing.
This evening she had her grilling with Andrew Neil, where she struggled once again to explain how she would take the Labour Party on a different course, away from its catastrophic election defeat. Her main pitch seems to be that a Thornberry-led party would be Corbynism but without the disorganisation. She told Neil she wanted a pledge card which showed the party’s priorities and that she wanted to make Southside, the party’s headquarters in London, ‘an election fighting machine first and foremost’.
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