Tristram Hunt is not standing as Labour leader and will instead back Liz Kendall, he finally confirmed at the end of a long speech this morning. The party’s Shadow Education Secretary had some fun forcing hacks to listen to his assessment of Labour’s failure, which took a while, before he announced this, saying:
‘It is clear to me that I do not have sufficient support to be certain that I could run for the leadership myself.. there is a real risk that I might help restrict the choice for the party and that is not a risk that I am prepared to accept.’
He complained that other candidates had been working on their campaigns for longer, saying they had ‘longer, more established ambitions’. Perhaps this is a bit politically naive from him, or perhaps it suggests a certain loyalty to the leadership that Cooper and Burnham never quite exhibited.
He said he wanted to back Liz Kendall because ‘she has the confidence and courage to lead our party’.
As Hunt explained at the end of his speech, there was a real risk that his participation in the contest would split the ‘Blairite’ vote and prevent a real debate. He criticised the speed at which the contest was moving, and also took aim at the influence of ‘individuals and individual factions’. Now Kendall will make the ballot, presumably as the third and final name after Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper.
Hunt’s lengthy musings and the interviews he has already given on Labour’s failure are not wasted, though. Some of his remarks, such as the one about Labour needing to be on the side of people who shop at John Lewis, could be helpful to Kendall’s cause as they help reinforce the Blairite narrative about where the party went wrong without Kendall having to make the case on her own.
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