Keir Starmer has been elected leader of the Labour Party, with more votes than Corbyn won with in 2015. A massive mandate…

Leadership:

• Starmer – 56.2% ELECTED
• Long-Bailey – 27.6%
• Nandy – 16.2%

Deputy leadership:

• First round:
  • Angela Rayner: 41.7%
  • Richard Burgon: 17.3%
  • Rosena Allin-Khan: 16.8%
  • Ian Murray: 13.3%
  • Dawn Butler: 10.9%
• Second round:
  • Angela Rayner: 46.5% (+4.8)
  • Rosena Allin-Khan: 19.5% (+2.7)
  • Richard Burgon: 19.2% (+1.9)
  • Ian Murray: 14.3% (+1.0
• Third round:
  • Angela Rayner: 52.6% (+6.1) ELECTED
  • Rosena Allin-Khan: 26.1% (+6.6)
  • Richard Burgon: 21.3% (+2.1)

 Turnout:

• Members: 72.6% (401,564)
• Registered supporters: 95.5% (13,006)
• Affiliated supporters: 35.0% (76,161)

With just 650 registered supporters and fewer union affiliates than Lisa Nandy, Rebecca Long-Bailey sees a worse result than Owen Smith in 2016…

Angela Rayner, who the bookies are sure is going to be the Labour Party’s deputy leader come Saturday, was originally backed by Momentum following their North Korean style endorsement process. She subsequently mildly criticised Corbyn. Now they don’t really back her, as can be seen from this reminder text sent out this morning. Angela appears to have been forgotten, again.

Guido has contacted the Momentum press office to find out what democratic decision over-turned the previous “democratic” decision. They have yet to get back…

Momentum emailed supporters this morning to remind them that voting in the Labour leadership elections finally closes on Thursday and that they should vote for their slate. Back in January the faction’s National Coordinating Group (NCG) unanimously voted to support Becky Long-Bailey for Labour leader, and Angela Rayner for the deputy position. They then offered supporters a North Korean style yes or no endorsement ballot. They were criticised for this by left-wing luminaries like Owen Jones and Paul Mason for this exercise. Many hardcore lefties wanted the organisation to back the continuity Corbyn candidate, Richard Burgon…

The backlash controversy tore into the Momentum faithful. It is noticeable that this morning there was no repeat of the call to vote for Rayner. Yet she is still likely to win the race for deputy-leader by a decent margin. Rayner has been implicitly de-slated…

Following in the footsteps of Ian Lavery, in a Zoom call to supporters last week, Rebecca Long-Bailey claimed that the coronavirus crisis gives Labour the chance to campaign, Guido can reveal. Talking to what she thought was a group of just supporters, the leadership candidate claimed:

“The case in this crisis is being made very strongly for socialism and we need to make sure that people don’t forget that all of the support that we’re pushing for, it is socialism.“

For the avoidance of doubt, a few months of emergency measures taken now are not socialism, will take years to pay off, and would be disastrous to deploy in normal times. Keep it classy, Becky…

Labour’s leadership election has become much more subdued due to the Coronavirus outbreak, with their announcement event (due on April 4) being cancelled; however the zeal of Rebecca Long-Bailey’s hard left supporters hasn’t softened. Messages sent last night in the ‘LDN for RLB’ WhatsApp group – used to organise Labour members campaigning for Rebecca for Leader – show Long-Bailey’s activists calling for a “Real Labour Jehad (sic) to bring equality for all”. An unfortunate campaign slogan…

One Becky supporter voiced his (mild) concern, that there are “negative connotations with that word, mate. Context-wise yeah I agree.” With another activist warning that “it only takes one person with a grudge to join the group and put it all over Twitter…. Imagine the bloody fauxtrage from the sensibles”. Just imagine…

The group’s admin info links to the official campaigns guide setting out the groups’ guidelines, asking participants to both stay on topic, and be respectful and tolerant. Some of Becky’s fans clearly don’t understand the rules…

Speaking to ITV, John McDonnell has said the event to announce the next Labour leader on April 4 will very likely have to be cancelled due to Coronavirus, and will now happen behind closed doors, either “through a TV event or social media”. Don’t be surprised when Rebecca Long-Bailey now wins with 110% of the vote…