\n<\/p>\n
Lucy Powell has hit out at the \u201csexist\u201d framing of her deputy Labour leadership campaign, with people claiming she and her rival, Bridget Phillipson, are standing as \u201cproxies\u201d for two men.<\/p>\n
With the contest to replace Angela Rayner under way this week, the pair have been forced to contend with political rumours that they are stalking horses for a future leadership battle.<\/p>\n
It has been heavily speculated that Andy Burnham, a longtime ally of Powell, is among the senior Labour figures eyeing up a leadership challenge if the prime minister\u2019s recent turmoil continues. Phillipson, meanwhile, is seen as a Keir Starmer loyalist.<\/p>\n
Powell, the MP for Manchester Central and former cabinet minister, lost her role as leader of the Commons in the recent reshuffle. According to a survey by LabourList, Powell is 17 percentage points ahead of Phillipson in the contest.<\/p>\n
Asked if her campaign was essentially a \u201cstalking horse\u201d for Burnham, she told BBC\u2019s Political Thinking podcast: \u201cIt\u2019s just Westminster bubble obsession that, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
\u201cReally, you\u2019ve got two strong women in an open and transparent contest. And instead of talking about the two strong women, everybody\u2019s talking about this being a sort of proxy for war between two men, which, quite honestly, I find kind of sexist.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had previously warned that the contest must not be turned into a shadow battle between Burnham and Starmer, telling the Manchester Evening News: \u201cWoe betide anyone who wants to try and tell me that I\u2019m subservient to some other man. I\u2019m probably more alpha male than most men I know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Powell insisted her aim for the deputy Labour leadership was to unite Labour\u2019s values with the voters its politicians claimed to serve.<\/p>\n
Asked if she would be proposing ideas before Rachel Reeves\u2019s budget, Powell said: \u201cI think it\u2019s really important that I don\u2019t, and we don\u2019t in this contest try and sort of write some alternative budget or some alternative policy programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I am here to say, look, let\u2019s communicate much more strongly what our values are, what our motivations are, whose side we are on, and connect that back to our communities through our great movement which is our strength.\u201d<\/p>\n
Powell, who once described herself as an \u201cegg-breaker\u201d, said it was clear lifting the two-child benefit cap \u201cwould be the single biggest policy we could do to address child poverty\u201d and she urged ministers to be clearer about wanting to scrap it, adding: \u201cThe question is how and the when.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n She added that her campaign drew lessons from her Manchester constituency, where older, working-class voters in the outskirts of the city coexist with younger professionals in the centre. \u201cIt\u2019s how we unite them together,\u201d she said. She argued it was wrong for Labour strategists to be focused only on one type of voter, or attempting to \u201cout-Reform\u201d Farage\u2019s party.<\/p>\n Powell said it was a \u201ckind of shock but not a total surprise\u201d to lose her cabinet job as Commons leader, but she claimed maybe she was passing on too much honest feedback to No 10.<\/p>\n \u201cI know I\u2019m not really in the in-crowd, and I don\u2019t really sort of play some of the parlour games,\u201d she said. \u201cI had fed back things that weren\u2019t, with hindsight \u2013 maybe I thought I was doing the job I was supposed to be doing \u2013 but maybe that wasn\u2019t feedback people wanted to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lucy Powell has hit out at the \u201csexist\u201d framing of her deputy Labour leadership campaign, with people claiming she and her rival, Bridget Phillipson, are standing as \u201cproxies\u201d for two men. With the contest to replace Angela Rayner under way this week, the pair have been forced to contend with political rumours that they are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2094,3265,102,134,1165,4439,13415,13414,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-21894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-andy","9":"tag-burnham","10":"tag-hits","11":"tag-labour","12":"tag-lucy","13":"tag-powell","14":"tag-proxy","15":"tag-sexist","16":"tag-talk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}