Labour Deputy Leadership Runners, Riders, Fallers & Refusals

As nominations closed for the Labour Deputy leadership election there were six candidates. Who were they and what happened to them? Read on!

Paula Barker

Fifty-three-year-old Paula is from Merseyside, was raised by a single mother and attended a state school. Rather than go to university, Ms Barker plodded along in local government, starting with Liverpool City Council before moving to customer services at Knowsley Council. A trades union as well as a local council plodder, she later joined Halton Borough Council, where she rose to become the branch leader of the UNISON union. In May 2015, she became the union’s North West Regional Convenor and in doing so filled the shoes, or rather the outsized cyberpunk loafers, of the departing Angela Rayner.

In 2019, she succeeded Luciana Berger (who was hounded out by anti-Semites) as MP for Liverpool Central. Barker has served on various committees and All-Party Parliamentary Groups and is a co-sponsor of the euthanasia bill. Married with two sons, her parents worked at a Sefton sweet factory; her husband is a senior manager in the NHS.

A leftie member of the Socialist Campaign Group, her declared interests include: attended qualifying at Silverstone, £1,400; a £6,700 jolly to Taiwan; tickets and hospitality for successive Opens, £900 a time; and £1,000 for an Elton John concert.

In her own qualifying, Paula was unable to earn the 80 nominations from Labour MPs required to progress to the next round and withdrew with four flat tyres before the embarrassment of her lack of nominees appeared on the leader board.

Alison McGovern

The dullard of the family, Alison McGovern’s interesting grandfather was Peter McGovern, the songwriting author of Spinners’ hit In My Liverpool Home. Not quite ‘born in Liverpool, down by the docks’, posh Alison attended Wirral Grammar School for Girls before graduating in Philosophy at University College London. Never having had a real job, Comrade Alison used her degree to become a communications type for various quangos (and Network Rail) before being elected to Parliament in 2010.

Not her real name – Alison Kumar – husband Ashwin is another policy wallah and a one-time senior economic adviser to the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown. The 44-year-old is now Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. In an interview with Grazia magazine, Ms McGovern spoke of her mental ill-health (her upper case):

‘As I stand on a stage or face a TV camera, something in my head screams “FAT YOU ARE SO FAT AND DISGUSTING WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS PEOPLE WILL SEE HOW FAT AND DISGUSTING YOU ARE”.’

Fortunately, she is able to take her troubled mind off such things by accepting freebies: the Open (value £725), Wimbledon (£1,260), a trip to Minnesota (£1,776), Liverpool matches (£500 a time), attending the Mercury Awards (£570), a jolly to Paris (£1,356).

Unfortunately, as Parliament lies far south of the Wirral, likewise Alison’s support therein lies far south of the eighty nominations required. As G-P goes to press, Ms McGovern has had to drop out of the contest.

Bridget Phillipson

Forty-one-year-old Bridget Phillipson is the MP for Houghton and Sunderland South and the current Minister for Education. As for her own education, a drama school girl, she appeared in an episode of Byker Grove when a youngster and left the North East – at the first opportunity – to study Modern History at Hertford College, Oxford. Although claiming to be from Washington, a town neighbouring her constituency, Bridget hails from further afield, Gateshead.

Ms Phillipson self-describes as having been brought up in a ‘council street’. An odd thing to say, which avoids claiming to have been brought up in a council house or on a council estate. There, the family were so poor that there was no upstairs heating. Pictured here in school uniform, Puffins will note the lack of a backyard, outside toilet or coal shed as the young Miss Phillipson poses in a pleasant and leafy suburban garden.

Bridget’s father was a schoolteacher; therefore, his daughter is unable to chant the Leftie mantra of being the first in her family to go to university. Mother, Clare Phillipson, also a Labour Party member, ran a controversial £1.85 million-a-year charity called Women in Need, which was part-funded by Sunderland’s Labour Council.

One of the youngest MPs when first elected in 2010, Bridgit has never had a job beyond being employed in her mother’s charity. Not her real name, Bridget Maeve Dimery’s husband is Lawrence Lionel Dimery, a financial services wallah, once of the Bank of England and now a market risk analyst.

Donors to Ms Phillipson have included Jim Murphy, a former MP and current public relations executive, who gave £15,000. Money well spent, as Brigit is now a Cabinet Minister and may soon become Deputy Leader of the party of power. As Mr Murphy explains on his website, PR clients might want to ‘understand’ Labour and ‘strengthen relationships’ and ‘shared agendas’.

Perhaps, or because, she looks like a plastercine representation of Thelma from The Likely Lads, Bridget remains in the contest, having secured an impressive 175 nominations from her fellow Labour MPs.

Lucy Powell

Lucy Powell attended Parrs Wood High School in Greater Manchester’s posh Didsbury before going up to Somerville College, Oxford. After graduating in Chemistry, Ms Powell continued her studies at King’s College, London, before embarking on a career of non-jobs in PR and public affairs. Moving sideways into Left-wing Westminster politics, Ms Powell managed Ed Miliband’s party leadership campaign in 2010.

She became his Deputy Chief of Staff for two years, at the end of which she was elected to Parliament in her own right via a by-election. Not her real name, Lucy Maria Williamson is married to James Williamson, a Warrington A&E doctor. Dr James sits on the Central Council of the Socialist Health Association, a campaigning membership organisation that promotes ‘health and well-being and the eradication of inequalities through the application of socialist principles to society and government’. In his profile, the good doctor mentions he lives in Manchester with his three children but omits to say his wife is the local MP.

Via our friends at They Work For You, we learn the Powell-Williams’ commitment to equality includes: £432 of freebies to see a Test match paid for by Sky TV, being paid £570 to watch tennis’s Davis Cup, and £600 to watch the Ashes at Lord’s.

Lucy managed game, set and match in the qualifying round with 117 votes.

Bell Ribeiro‑Addy

Not quite her real name, Bellavia Janet Ribeiro-Addy was the MP for Streatham and, following boundary changes, is now the MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill. Bell can’t claim to be the first in her family to attend university either, as her parents met in London as overseas students (from Ghana). Her father was to return to the West African country while her mother remained in London as a secretary at the electricity board. Despite voting to impose VAT on private schools, and in doing so forcing many of them to close, the 40-year-old was educated at the private £25,000-per-year Streatham and Clapham High School.

Her education continued at Bradford University (Biomedical Science with Ethics & Philosophy of Science) before taking a Master’s in Medical Law & Ethics from Queen Mary University of London. There followed a Graduate Diploma in Law from a BPP Law School. After which, Bell has never had a job. Her non-job credentials include: university Race Relations Officer, Campaign Coordinator, National Black Students Officer and a Campaign Coordinator for Dianne Abbott and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Following the December 2024 Labour general election victory, she became a Trade Envoy to Ghana, but only until voting against government disability reforms, at which point she was sacked. Bell is Chair of the All‑Party Parliamentary Group for African Reparations.

Whereas other struggling candidates euthanised their own campaigns before the embarrassing results were read out, Bellavia remained on the humiliation pathway beyond the last gasp. Upon which, as she left the twitching corpse of her political body and was drawn towards a white light, it was revealed that she only received 24 votes (out of a possible 398).

Emily Thornberry

Emily Thornberry, not her real name, Lieutenant Colonel (Temporary) The Right Honourable and Learned Emily Ann Nugee, KC MP – addressed in this parish as ‘Lardy Thornbelly’ – is the Labour Member of Parliament for Islington South and Finsbury. Lardy is legal establishment royalty, with husband Sir Christopher Nugee being a High Court of Appeal judge and the son of a pre-eminent Chancery barrister. Lardy’s father was an international lawyer.

As for the impoverished upbringing, in a 2017 Guardian interview with Decca Aitkenhead, Lady Emily recalled of her Guildford childhood that herself and her mother were so poor that the cats had to be put down. As well as slumming it in Surrey, the Lady Emily also lived in London with her father, a one-time United Nations Assistant Secretary-General. After graduating from the University of Kent, she attended bar school, where she met her husband and became a human rights barrister before entering Parliament in 2005. Parliamentary donations to Emily include tens of thousands of pounds from Lord Waheed Alli, a media entrepreneur, TV executive and close acquaintance of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

An anglophobic racist, Lady Emily had to resign from Ed Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet for sneering on social media at a tradesman’s white van and display of England and West Ham flags. However, Her Ladyship didn’t despise the people’s game enough to refuse £396 worth of hospitality at a Carabao Cup Final.

In case Puffins are tempted to out Lieutenant Colonel Thornberry as a Walt, her honorary military title was bestowed to allow for use of the officers’ mess while working as a legal representative at military court hearings. Likewise, if you felt the breakfast table rattle on Thursday morning, or your favourite painting parted from its nail just after sunrise, that may be because Lady Emily is also a faller. At 8 am the day before the preliminary results were announced – and to much celebratory waving of England flags – her ladyship tweeted that she had decided to withdraw from the contest.

What a shower!
 

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