It’s always nice when the muses of tragedy and comedy seem to be working in perfect sync: nowhere is this truer than the Labour deputy leadership contest.
It would genuinely be difficult to relate how many people have indicated that they are standing for the role so unceremoniously vacated by Big Ange. Candidacies have come and gone like a thief in the night. There are bugs which breathe the sweet air of earth for only 24 hours which have longer lifespans than some Labour deputy leadership bids. Quite possibly higher IQs as well.
Clearly a consensus has arisen that, with a greying man in his sixties as their dear leader, it is necessary for his deputy to be a woman. This is classic Labour – skill or suitability or even political opinions are irrelevant in favour of surface-level diversity. It’s doubly delicious coming from a party that has, until recently, barely been capable of saying what a woman is. Either way it means that anyone with two X chromosomes and a red rosette has been ‘taking soundings’ as to their viability.
Some of the more worrying candidates come from the interminable swathes of dross on the party’s back benches. Enter Kim Leadbeater, the MP for Hades-on-Styx, who is said to be taking time out from her scythe-sharpening to ‘canvass opinion’.
Then there’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy, whose main parliamentary obsession seems to be slavery reparations. I know the Labour back benches have a track record for being out of touch with the mood of the country, but this seems a little on the nose. With the state of public finances as it is, electing someone who wants to spaff unnumbered billions to gain some ‘soft power’ with allies of the Chinese is like electing a well-aimed rock to be deputy queen of a hornet’s nest. Also in the running was someone called Alison McGovern. I don’t know who Alison McGovern is and I’ve been doing this job a while.
Among the more probable candidates we have Lucy Powell. Recently sacked from the Cabinet for being – even by the standards of that body – useless, Powell is mounting a comeback by way of the deputy leader’s office. Emily Thornberry is also running and was also passed over for office in favour of Starmer’s lawyer pal Lord Hermer, a fact she is not-so-secretly furious about. Either of these figures would pose Starmer a double challenge: being both gaffe-prone and with very good reasons for hating him. Truly, this set of crises couldn’t have happened to a nicer Prime Minister.
All that leaves the only candidate from the Cabinet (and therefore, some will assume, Sir Keir’s preferred choice): Bridget Phillipson. That the woman in charge of the mendacious and vindictive past year of education policy is considered by No. 10 to be their best bet is a sign of just how bad things really are. Comedy and tragedy elide once again. You laugh at the clowns until you realise how depressing the whole affair actually is: sometimes sketching this government is like watching a Big Top get napalmed.
‘Philistine’, as some in the teaching profession have christened her, was out and campaigning hard. Unlike other candidates who were making appeals to their parliamentary colleagues, she was going straight to the puppeteers rather than the limp pieces of goggly-eyed cloth which they control: the Education Secretary had scuttled straight from Parliament to address the Trades Union Congress in Brighton.
The speech was a string of platitudes about what a radical and wonderful job she’s doing; the government were ‘building a cycle of hope, not hostility’, creating a Britain that was ‘strong and fearless, yet kind and compassionate’. Every so often she’d bare her teeth at the audience. Had one of her minders reminded her to smile? Part Lenin, part Barney the Dinosaur but with less charm than either.
Tragicomic the whole affair may be, but when the answer to something is ‘Bridget Phillipson’ you know that things are headed to a very mad and very bad place indeed.
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