Who is new deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell?

Lucy Powell was elected deputy leader of the Labor Party by 87,407 votes to 73,536.

His political life started very early. Powell’s mother went into labor with him on general election day in 1974.

He even delayed going to the hospital to make sure he could vote first.

Lucy Powell: “We used to say ‘he was in the Labor Party and he voted Labour'” He explained it on the Political Thought podcast.

When he was nine, his father, a Labor Party activist, recruited him to help with the party’s campaign efforts. His father rewarded him with a one pound note.

Powell grew up in Didsbury, Manchester, an area variously referred to as the “stockbroker” or “muesli” belt following several years of gentrification.

“It’s luxury now, it wasn’t so luxury then,” he said.

He says he was the only one of 200 people in his sixth form to be accepted into Oxford University; At the time, this was not a success that made him happy.

“I cried the day I got the offer,” he says. “I didn’t want to go.”

He eventually went to Oxford to study chemistry, but lasted only a year before going to King’s College London, where he said he “felt more comfortable”.

“As a northern comprehensive girl who came to Oxford in 1993, I was a duck out of water.”

“Harry Potter hadn’t been written then, but it was like Hogwarts,” he told the i newspaper, adding that for a teenager who spent his weekends clubbing at the Hacienda, the “stuffy environment” of Somerville College, Oxford, did not suit him.

After leaving university, she began her political career, working for Labor MP (and Oscar-winning actress) Glenda Jackson and later for another Labor MP, Beverley Hughes.

Between 1998 and 2005 he worked for Britain in Europe, a group campaigning in favor of Britain’s EU membership.

In 2010, she successfully ran Ed Miliband’s bid to lead the Labor Party and continued to work for him as deputy chief of staff until 2012, when she won a by-election to represent the safe Labor seat of Manchester Central.

He was promoted to the shadow cabinet a year later and continued to serve in various front-line positions until 2016.

He was one of the few party centrists left in the shadow cabinet when Jeremy Corbyn, from the party’s left, unexpectedly became leader of the Labor Party.

But in 2016 he resigned in protest against his leadership and backed Owen Smith’s ultimately unsuccessful coup attempt.

He only returned to the shadow cabinet in 2020, when Sir Keir Starmer took over the leadership role and appointed him shadow housing secretary.

When Labor won the 2024 election, he became Leader of the House of Commons. Its mandate was to manage government affairs in Parliament, modernize Parliament and improve working conditions for MPs and staff.

Powell was one of several ministers sacked from the government in a major reshuffle that followed Angela Rayner’s resignation in September.

He described it as “kind of a shock but not a complete surprise.”

Asked if the Prime Minister had given him a reason for his demotion, he said: “No, I asked but he just said ‘I need to make some changes’.”

Thinking about the possible reason, he said, “I know I’m not in a crowd. I’m not playing some parlor games.”

“Looking back, I thought I was doing the job I was supposed to do, but maybe that was feedback people didn’t want to hear.”

“Some of the things I’ve given feedback on – especially how difficult welfare legislation “It was going to land – I thought I was doing it to help, but maybe it was a message people didn’t want to hear.”

Before the vote, he said he did not want to be given a government job if he won the vice presidency and did not want to be “constrained” by a cabinet post.

He said he sees his role as deputy leader as “a bridge between leadership and members, a constant feedback loop” and “campaigner in chief”.

Asked about his vision for Labour, he said his Manchester Central constituency was made up of “classic Red Wall voters – white working-class, older voters” and “younger, liberal, left-leaning voters with no long-term cultural attachment to Labour”.

He said the problem for Labor was “how do we bring them together”.

“I don’t think we do that by tacking one way or the other.”

He argued that Labor could achieve this by building “a fairer economy, an economy that works for the many and not the few”.

Citing decisions to cut the winter fuel payment and welfare, she said: “Some of the mistakes we have made, some of the unforced errors have given a sense that we are not on the side of ordinary people.”