Labour Dashboard

Labour Leader Nominations Topline Summary - full breakdown, analysis and commentary is below

• MPs: Burnham 326; No Nomination so far 71; Unlikely to Nominate due to role 5; Confirmed non nominator 1.

• Affiliates: 

  • Affiliated Trade Unions: Burnham 5; No Nomination so far 6; Confirmed non nominator 0

  • Affiliated Socialist Society: Burnham 0; No Nomination so far 20; Confirmed non nominator 0

Introductory Note to all the data below  and on other pages

This unofficial website simply aims to aggregate in one place a set of useful links and data for:

• The current 2026 Labour Leader Election (arguably the only public place online where the election process itself is being treated as an ongoing election!)

• The 2025 Deputy Leader Campaign which models a break down of the numbers not given in an official result

• Labour member polling collated to help reduce all the need for "secret polling" in future

• Labour internal election results including delegate/committee composition estimates

• Labour Party Conference - attempting an annual online experience of it for those who cannot attend in the absence of an official one

• Labour Party membership data back to 1928 but also current estimates now the data is not provided at NEC after the rare transparancy of 2021-2025 

• Labour Party Rules - all of them not just the rulebook plus tacit/informal ones (eg use of Citrine)

• and the Labour Party more generally with an expanding archive

It has a particular focus on exploring Labour as a complex "institution" that through its distributed structures various views will inevitably exist in. An "institutional" approach to this seems important for any consideration of any form of "associational politics" that might be seen as overarching value across all wings of the Party. Also Labour as an institution has a lot of formal but perhap also sometimes tacit/informal "rules" (more than some think as shown at Labour Archive) & lack of awareness of them tends to lead to lots of misunderstandings.

This "Labour Dashboard" page also links above to "Labour Almanack" covering key annual dates & deadlines and useful events links and also "Labour Archive" where myself and a few others may collate useful historical and data materials that explains the context of the politics better. The aim is to contribute in a small way to "member induction" into the cultural and political institution that is the Labour Party and the wider Labour and Co-operative Movements which should be seen as an ongoing process and all members can always learn more. At the bottom of this page are some useful member induction links.

It aims to be non-partisan regarding internal Labour contests and disputes aiming to give all the links to help people understand things better and also be able to do further research for themselves. It also researches some narratives about the Party from all its wings and the data generally tends to suggest some issues are more complex than the most simplistic or partisan framings. Indeed this website is kept very simple so interlinked narratives are all on the same page and you have to look for them.

What this site does, that nowhere else singularly collates together, is provide:

Labour Dashboard

• Segmentation of the current Leader election MP nomination process in more detail than most places & also set up to analyse the affiliate nominations too.

• The only place that sequentially goes through all aspects of both the process and the politics of the current 2026 Labour Leadership campaign as well as publicly benchmarking Leadership campaign targets and modeling a hypothetical contest even if we end up with a coronation. It's important to do this to understand the baseline politics of the Labour membership at the point when a new leader takes over. Unlike 2020, by having no contest this time, we are unlikely to see any "members were misled" narrative, but the lack of contest may itself become part of other narratives in future so best to have the data from now available for the future in one place.

• The only modeled and estimated breakdown of Labour membership and Affiliate Votes for potential Leadership elections both in terms of electorate and vote turnout

• A "polling average" from the current 3 Labour member pollsters for hypothetical leader elections with all the data provided too so you can do your own estimates.

• A full report and modeled analysis for the 2025 Labour Deputy Leader election

• A rare place online that tries to estimate when people actually vote in an online balloting period (eg start, middle, end etc) with 2 models of this and seeking to add more to increase clarity - useful for any campaign pacing its communications during a balloting period.

• Collated segmentation polling of the Labour Membership (5 different segmentations) including all the potential future Leadership polling 

• The only place where  past "misled members" narratives are actually quantified and a 12% number is indicated, plus very simple practical suggestions as to how that narrative can be avoided in future.

• The only place where a wide range of different tactics for the different wings of the party for Leadership elections are set out.

• NEW: An early Labour NEC composition assessment after the forthcoming NEC elections (covered in detail on the Labour Almanack page) with its possible small changes and the increased complexity we may also see moving away from the quite simple 28-11 NEC composition assessment of recent years.

• New hypotheses as to what MP, member & ex-member behaviours may say now and in the future about the narratives they follow based on all the data aggregated here.

• NEW: A new hypothesis that the PLP 20% threshold now has more impact on the Labour right than it has on the Labour left (who would not get near a candidate now even on the 2018-21 10% threshold) and that may change other behaviours across the whole PLP & elsewhere covered by the other hypotheses.

• An annual estimate of CLP delegate composition at conference going back nearly a decade - helpful for knowing how CAC, NCC and NPF results will turn out.

• The only place to have an online experience of Labour Conference & some of its fringes with a set of collated links - sadly the Tories do this better than other parties at present

• The only place that shows you how to do an actual legitimate point of order at Labour Party Conference.

• A sequential training and induction aggregation of links for new members

Labour Almanack

• A calendar/almanack of Labour Events/deadlines 

• Overarching data on Labour internal contests with links to more data.

Labour Archive

• A full history of Labour membership back to 1928 and a regular estimate of current membership that I have been calculating  from a small sample of CLP trends since 2010. The aim being to de-factionalise membership numbers (as it has risen & fallen under all sides of debates over the last 100  or so years as the data shows) and treat it far more as a useful "feedback loop" that it should be to national and local Party officers.

• A rough current estimate that 2,800 members may have resigned since Keir Starmer announced he has was standing down but 2,000 have joined the Party.

• A regional breakdown of Labour membership to help calculate regional membership, plus some comparator data from the Coop Party. If people have any regional level data for other major parties I would add as a further comparator.

• Motivational Join Date of Members estimates as we know membership rises & falls when various internal & external political events happen. In the mid 1990's and late 2010's rising membership was often wielded as part of a factional argument when in the past people seemed to be more sanguine that it inevitably rose but also often fell due to the politics of the particular time.

• The only place where ALL Labour rules are collated on one page, not just the Party Rulebook document but also the PLP SOs and the NEC TOR all brought together perhaps helping to in future reduce fruitless crowdfunded legal challenges which rarely succeed because of how comprehensive Labour rules actually are but also because the attitude of the Courts to not interfering  much in the activity of political parties.

• The only UK Citrine ABC of Chairmanship "Cheat Sheet" to challenge all the US Robert's Rules Cheat Sheets on how to run a meeting including updates from recent Labour sources to cover how to run modern online meetings that the last updated version of Citrine in 1982 does not cover.

In other words I have put together my extensive knowledge of the Labour Party all in one place for all of you to use. This is the sort of data that factions on all wings of the Party sometimes "hoard" both when in internal power or internal opposition so the aim instead is to set it all out for everyone to understand the background to debates. This enables new narratives that emerge to be deconstructed based on both present and past data before any become sometimes inaccurate "received wisdom".

The focus is on transparency as knowledge should be power for all but it also importantly contributes to long-term "institutional resilience" when all party members can feel they understand what is going on and don't feel excluded from deeper processes within it. In the old days of the one-way pager, 5 TV channels and 13 million reading Mainstream Newspapers arbitrating on news & low internet access it was actually quite easy to convey an air of hidden esoteric political knowledge and public trust did not decline, but in a world of two-way social media and alt-media from all political wings, multi-online broadcast channels & two minute videos, AI generated memes and newspapers with less than 2 million reading newspapers public trust is far lower, so far better to be far more open about things nowadays -  especially lots of useful data - that can more helpfully rebut angrier low trust narratives that emerge very quickly and get spread by modern horizonalist networks across the political spectrum.

One of the lessons of all this is I believe much more induction into a party is important because what I have learned over the last 45+ years of activism is some new members, whatever their ideological placing, can see the Party in quite simplistic and generally non-institutional terms, often about a simple relationship that is positive or negative towards a Leader (as the membership rise and fall data tends to show) and that applied as much in 1994-2007 as in 2015-2019. Or some members may see things in quite Dialectical/Manichean ideological terms (when the party and its own internal institutions are clearly a wide range of shades) so sometimes some may have an expectation that the whole party has to immediately change and have a broad consensus in line with their own views if they are in it, whether leftwards or rightwards, when the Party is a very complex distributed federal body with over 900 separate units, eg CLPs, TUs with different political positions, Soc Socs, PLP, Lab Grps etc, which as shown below generates a lot of data. 

I am always surprised when a narrative from any wing of the Party (and all sides do it) starts with "we won an election through a contest and are now really shocked that our opponents are seeking to depose our person and create another future contest", whatever their additional explanation of any specific wrong-doing (which on its own without the initial narrative may be a perfectly proper claim) on top of the initial narrative they may then claim of others. Surely, regarding the base narrative, that is what happens with contested politics in a large federated institution with varied ideological niches - especially one where its all important unions are split politically? We saw this with the left of the party post 2020 "we were undermined" narrative why they lost and now seeing it from the other side over the Andy Burnham "we are shocked he spent a year planning for this" succession. This is politics after all.

Thus people expecting a Party to be a "just right" "Platform" for them to express their views with (a post-2010 social media self-publishing driven change that I first commented on in Feb 2015 after the then post Scottish referendum "Green surge" in their Party membership) are always going to be disappointed as it will be full of niches they may disagree with, which will inevitably seek to win their case so the Party will always change through time. An opposite example to this mindset is people, whatever their politics, tend to fully accept a trade union as an "institution" in its own right and take it as it is when they join it, but joining Labour does seem to raise some expectations that it then has to be exactly the politics they want. 

Most Labour Party movements/factions/cabals etc whether Bevanism, Gaitskellism, Bennism, Blairism, Corbynism and Starmerism do peak and burn out in the end ("political entropy" so to speak) as will most likely Burnhamism and/or Streetingism and whatever comes after them. Whilst at the same time trying to simplify a range of movements above into wider, perhaps "Dialectical or Mancichean mindset" framing simplicities of just a broad right and left is generally disproven by the sheer complexity and variance of the party I have flagged above and set out to describe a lot more on these pages. 

All I can say is I joined Labour many years ago at 17 and came from an era when most saw the Party not as a "Platform" but more as a "Gateway" to an "institution" to practice practical associationalism and be collectively inducted into (so even at a very young age I always expected it as an institution would naturally change me too) and like any long-term relationship I can certainly testify it has its ups and downs.

A quick insert here. The current Labour NEC elections in the Autumn and other internal elections in the Spring and Autumn are on the Labour Almanack page. I am also running an X/Twitter feed on the Autumn elections here at present - to be updated soon. This information will add to the information on current internal views of Labour members at the start of a new Leadership, after no contest for the post.

I have also used the NEC elections analysis and some potential frontbench changes to do a very early rough estimate indeed - see below - of Labour NEC composition from September. My initial hypothesis there is it may be more "complex" and "stakeholder" based rather than the simple 28-11 basic NEC composition over the last few years, but I look forward to other takes on it in due course.

This is now a detailed analysis of the current leadership election with not just updates on news about it but also polling based modeling of a potential contest, benchmarking of the leading candidate's campaign targets and analysis of the process. From all that aggregation it even explores current MP/member/ex-member behaviour hypotheses that may mean this is not simply a "coronation" like 2007 but possibly an evolution in Labour Leadership Election informal/formal processes & also further explores whether that might even add to the evolution of a post-2019 cultural dividing line between left of centre parties due to differing forms of ideological "consensus" they may now operate? 

Official Documents

The Labour Party has now set up an official election page here.

Livestream of the Announcement of the result is likely to be shown here.

MP Nominations

Official list of who has nominated so far. As this lists everyone who has nominated there is no point repeating it here, so below I list all the other MPs not on that list for ease of data access. What the list focuses on is the intention/action here not any reasons. I may add further segmentation below the basic data later.

Total eligible Labour MPs able to nominate: 403 

• Andy Burnham: 326 (Early report of 322 here and Burnham Statement in response here)

• No Nomination so far: 71 (This is less than the 81 not shown on the official list and may reflect confirmations of Burnham support to Labour List from a few MPs who have not formally nominated yet). Apologies in advance: it is possible due to the lag of names being confirmed after reports of total numbers being declared some names will remain on this part of the list below until the National list is confirmed each evening. I will remove any that are wrong as soon as I spot a change or am notified of one.

• Unlikely to Nominate due to Role: 5 (Details of roles shown below & explained here.)

• Confirmed Non Nominator: 1  (Simply factually listed for the list below. If "reasons" can be segmented into groups of MPs rather than individual views later then this may be added to PLP segmentation models below.)

Note: MPs not nominated so far: Those who won't for various reasons such as holding a role are listed separately to those where intention is unclear. Important to note MPs may have many reasons for not nominating but the segmentation simply shows the outcome of their decision. Socialist Campaign Group membership is also shown as a publicly self-declared and promoted well known group (with a historic commitment over 40 years to running candidates for Leader) and their overall distribution is analysed further down.

No Nomination So Far: Abbott Jack, Ali Tahir (SCG), Asser James, Baxter Johanna, Begum Apsana (SCG), Brickell Phil, Burgon Richard (SCG), Byrne Ian (SCG), Campbell-Savours Markus, Campbell Juliet, Collins Tom, Cox Pam, Craft Jen, Davies Jonathan, Dean Josh, Duncan-Jordan Neil, Edwards Sarah, Evans Chris, Fookes Catherine, Francis Daniel, German Gill, Glindon Mary, Gosling Jodie, Hack Amanda, Harris Carolyn, Hendrick Mark, Hillier Meg, Hinchliff Chris, Hinder Jonathan, Hodgson Sharon, Hussain Imran (SCG), Ingham Leigh, Jones Gerald, Josan Gurinder Singh, Kirkham Jayne, Kitchen Gen, Leishman Brian (SCG), Mayer Alex, McDonagh Siobhain, McDonnell John (SCG), Minns Julie, Moon Perran, Mullane Margaret, Murray Katrina, Myer Luke, Niblett Samantha, Oppong-Asare Abena, Osamor Kate (SCG), Paffey Darren, Phillips Jess, Quigley, Richard, Ribeiro-Addy Bell (SCG), Rimmer Marie, Sandher-Jones Louise, Scrogham Michelle, Sewards Mark, Siddiq Tulip, Slinger John, Smith Cat, Smith Nick, Stringer Graham, Taylor David, Toale Jessica, Trickett Jon (SCG), Vince Chris, Walker Imogen, Ward Chris, Western Matt, Whitby John, Whittome Nadia (SCG), Witherden Steve (SCG). 

Unlikely to Nominate due to role: Cummins Judith (Deputy Speaker), Morden Jessica (PLP Chair), Starmer Keir (Outgoing Leader), Turley Anna (Labour Party Chair), Mahmood Shabana (Chair of Labour NEC).

Confirmed Non Nominator: Coyle Neil. 

The Manchester Evening News did an article on MPs who had not nominated on the first day. This is merely added here to confirm names listed in the segments.

Main Source: Labour List but other sources below if ahead of it's number

MP Nomination Benchmarks

• 300 - A symbolic "over 300" number and close of a 75% figure too.

• 323 - Means only 80 MPs did not nominate - that will include those who have reason not too - see above. 

• 356 - Above Gordon Brown's 88.2% (313 MPs) in 2007.

Useful sources are:

• Official election page here  which should list names after 7pm each working day.

• Labour List have a live list of MP announcements.

• Labour Elects is collating MP announcements

• Election Maps sometimes run a spreadsheet

• Guido Fawkes website sometimes runs a spreadsheet but has an "anti-Labour" political agenda.

Segmentation of MP Nomination Data

The Independent looked at how many Cabinet Ministers had nominated Andy Burnham, though the list may be out of date now and not reflect some people having formal roles which mean they are unlikely to nominate.

Daniel Green of Labour List has done some analysis covering some PLP Groups and Coop Party MPs. I have also added a bit more information on one segment just below.

Socialist Campaign Group "Voter Pool" Analysis - 31 MPs

As the one very public group of the PLP (which strongly seeks to promote its view with candidates in the past and statements in the present) that we can analyze, here is some data on their support base within the PLP. If anyone has any other data on PLP groups/factions I would also add that too.

The SCG had a potential "voter pool" of 31 for this Leadership election based on the recent Deputy Leader election and the segmentation below breaks down what happened to it:

SCG Members -24 MPs

• Andy Burnham : 12 - Olivia Blake, Dawn Butler,  Marsha de Cordova, Mary Kelly Foy, Kim Johnson, Ian Lavery, Clive Lewis, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Rachael Maskell, Andy McDonald, Grahame Morris, Kate Osborne.

• No Nomination Yet:  12 - Tahir Ali, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Brian Leishman, John McDonnell, Kate Osamor, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Jon Trickett, Nadia Whittome, Steve Witherden.

• Confirmed non Nominator: 0

Non SCG Member 2025 Bell Ribeiro-Addy nominators -7 MPs

• Andy Burnham : 6 - Stella Creasy, Barry Gardiner, Afzal Khan, Peter Lamb, Euan Stainbank, Kenneth Stevenson. 

• No Nomination Yet: 1 - Cat Smith.

• Confirmed non Nominator: 0

Commentary

At present a Socialist Campaign Group nominated person would only get 13 nominations at most as my estimate suggested earlier below, so no surprise they would only issue a statement this time - see also below. However this data is important not just for the present 20% MP nomination threshold (eg 81 required) era, but in the politically unlikely event the Party went back to the 2018-21 10% MP nominations threshold (eg 41 required) era (Note also it was 12.5% and 15% thresholds for a far longer period so any change might consider those options first?) the SCG would still very much struggle to get anywhere near under even a 10% threshold.

The data above is no surprise as the SCG is significantly split over some major international issues such as EU-Brexit/Ukraine-NATO even if it is generally united on a lot of economic/domestic policy. If a formal Mainstream Group of MPs develops further it is possible some current SCG MPs may move over more to that?

Affiliate Nominations Process

Eligible Electorate: 11 Affiliated Trade Unions and 20 Socialist Societies. 

Note: The Cooperative Party has endorsed Labour & Cooperative MP Andy Burnham like it did for Lucy Powell in the Deputy Leader election but this will not count as a nomination under Labour Rules as the Coop Party is counted as a sister party with an electoral agreement that reaches its centenary in 2027.

Trade Unions

• Andy Burnham: 5 - FBU, USDAW, Unite, NUM, TSSA, 

• No Nomination so far: 6 - Unison, GMB, CWU, ASLEF, Community, MU.

• Confirmed non Nominator: 0

Socialist Societies

This will be updated as nominations are announced

• Andy Burnham: 0 - None yet as far as is known.

• No Nomination so far: 20 - Black, Asian Minority Ethnic Labour (BAME Labour), East & South East Asians for Labour (ESEA), Christians on the Left, Disability Labour, Fabian Society, Jewish Labour Movement, Labour Animal Welfare Society (LAWS), Labour Business, Labour Campaign for International Development (LCID), Labour Housing Group (LHG), Labour Movement for Europe, Labour Party Irish Society (LPIS), Labour Women's Network, LGBT+ Labour, National Union of Labour and Socialist Clubs, Scientists for Labour, Socialist Educational Association (SEA), Socialist Environment and Resources Association (SERA), Socialist Health Association (SHA)

• Confirmed non Nominator: 0

The post 22 June Candidate Landscape

Running News Commentary

Important Note: With the withdrawal of Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting at the launch of the contest on 22 June 2026 and other "soft left" candidates falling in behind Andy Burnham we now have a new situation. Whilst there is a lot of data on Andy Burnham's support within the Party there is little polling data on other remaining contenders. For example Al Carns (and in the unlikely scenario he is nominated) Richard Burgon.

Before this happened and when both Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting were still considering running, a three-way contest based on "Starmer runs" polling average from members (shown further down) might have possibly been: Burnham 55%, Starmer 36%, Streeting 9% and depending on TU nominations - see some assumptions below based on Labour Unions call for "change" - the overall Burnham win might have been closer to 60%.  

However a Leadership contest with Andy Burnham with other candidates could theoretically still occur, so the following material attempts to estimate "benchmarks" for nominations as well as result estimates based on proxy data from recent member polling. These numbers are marked in red below. As this is a moving situation a number of updates to this initial note follow.

Update 1: Some MPs have also argued that a woman should stand but no specific name has so far been suggested. Bridget Phillipson and Emma Reynolds are both claimed to have ruled out running.

Update 2: Darren Jones has confirmed he is not standing but claimed he had the numbers to stand and says over 100 MPs are "not happy" so whether Andy Burnham crosses the 300 nominations figure is the first benchmark for this election. 323 is the second benchmark as that means there were not 81 MPs to challenge him anyway. Third Benchmark is 356 MPs which is proportionately more than Brown's 88.2% (313) in the 2007 Leadership Election.

Update 3: Al Carns may meet with Andy Burnham over policy before he decides his view on whether he tries to stand or not.

Update 4: The Socialist Campaign Group have now published  "A Manifesto to Save Labour" with no reference to any candidate of their own which suggests they won't even put a name forward which in any case may have had difficulty getting even near the 24 nominations they got in the Deputy Leader election. 

Update 5: Confirmation of full "3 stage" nominations process by Labour NEC: a) 403 MPs, b) 31 TU/Socialist Society Affiliates, c) 648 CLPs where successful candidate needs both of first two and if not the second needs the third. Raises new Benchmarking scores - how many of 20 Socialist Societies does Andy Burnham secure (likely most) and how many of 11 Trade Unions -where the Chancellor appointment issue is controversial and an early announcement on that post could end with some TU abstentions. Timetable confirmed as:

• 9–15 July – PLP nominations

• 15 July – Affiliate nominations open

• 16 July – Affiliate nominations close (if there is no contest)

• 20–31 July – CLP nominations (if candidate does not secure 3 affiliates, but not arranged if candidate secures them)

• 17 July Special Conference if single candidate achieve the first two stages of nomination

Certain political views on  the use of a "3 stage" process are set out below for completeness.

Update 6: Al Carns potential campaign seems to be fading as MPs become less keen to back him. The increased likelihood of a coronation means the Burnham nomination Benchmarking numbers set out above and below become more important.

Update 7:  Al Carns has not yet ruled out a campaign, but no evidence he has a ground game (or even a campaign website) which might be pre-requisite of obtaining 81 MP nominations and asking members to encourage MP backing.

Update 8: As the Coronation looks even more likely, Labour post-NEC meeting is planning online Q&A sessions for members to replace hustings perhaps to placate the 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 (see my estimates below) members who may be sceptical of the change in Leadership.

Update 9: Al Carns says he can't yet back Andy Burnham (eg perhaps nominate?) but does not say he will now run?

Update 10: Labour member polling by YouGov on who should be Chancellor gives Andy Burnham a lot of flexibility over choice as no comminding lead for anyone: 

• Ed Miliband - 21%

• Rachel Reeves - 20%

• Wes Streeting - 6%

• Darren Jones - 5%

• Yvette Cooper - 5%

• Don't know - 28%

Probably  a lower percentage of Labour members in support of Ed Miliband than Unison General Secretary (The key deciding Unison Labour Link Committee & its NEC seem to be neutral on issue so not a definitive Unison view) and TSSA might have hoped for at this stage of the public debate whilst GMB and Unite may see it strengthening their view more. 

Update 11: The YouGov member polling data also provides extra proxy data on other potential member views which will be more fully added to this site in due course. An important proxy question for member views is over amount of welfare spending (a key issue in the 2015 Leader election when Andy Burnham last ran and lost) and currently member views are: 

• Increase welfare spending: 35%

• Keep it about the same: 34%

• Decrease welfare spending: 27%

Update 12: Hustings with possibly only Andy Burnham scheduled to attend confirmed to be on Monday 13 July.

Update 13: FBU union executive has unanimously nominated Andy Burnham.

Update 14: Al Carns will now not challenge Andy Burnham the day before MP nominations open (8 July) and says he is backing Andy Burnham. Interview with Al Carns is here. Burnham camp sources claim he only had 3 backers.

Update 15: Andy Burnham issues statement to MPs before MP nominations open on Thursday 9 July. 

Update 16: USDAW confirm their support for Andy Burnham. A little bit significant & symobolic in this contest because they nominated Bridget Phillipson as Deputy Leader. In the last 16 years they have nominated the following for Leader: 2010 David Miliband; 2015 Andy Burnham; 2016 Owen Smith; 2020 Keir Starmer. I would as a result speculate here what looks like strong USDAW support for Burnham this time helped convince both Keir Starmer & Wes Streeting teams they would not poll as well as Bridget Phillipson in the approximate 27% affiliate vote to offset any Burnham member lead - see past estimates in Deputy Leader section below.

Update 17: MP nominations have opened (9 July) and are covered in a separate lead section above.

Update 18: Unite the union are giving a "conditional nomination" to Andy Burnham and also an X posting here. Important to note this is now a 42-18 pro Sharon Graham Executive. In October the Executive (which was more hung in terms of Unite internal factions then) missed nominating Lucy Powell by 4 votes.

Hypothetical Contest at Present - Vote Estimate

Whilst a "Coronation" looks most likely we can infer for any general "Right/Starmerite" candidate standing an estimate (definitely not a poll) of their potential vote based on a range of proxies and contrast it with Andy Burnham.

This estimate below is based on an average of:

• The Wes Streeting polling average against Burnham.

• Al Carns own score against Keir Starmer (see data further down) more to test how much he might get in terms of name recognition and personal support.

• The early May range of candidates without Starmer standing Survation poll (see below) re-estimated for a two candidate contest: "Burnham v Other" with transfers assumed to follow in broad right/soft left terms. The average for that assumes that the part of the more loyalist "soft left" vote Keir Starmer previously "locked up" (see hypotheisis below) if he stood himeself would now transfer to Andy Burnham.

As a result of that and all the wider Burnham data it might be currently reasonable to assume the following potential result:

• Burnham 81% v Carns/Other 19% - Burnham Win

• This figure seems plausible as the sheer size of the Makerfield by-election majority and big defeat for Reform would likely mean the "without Starmer" member polling below would possibly now see a bigger Burnham result. 

• However to be fair here, a slightly different estimate if one only uses the early May without Starmer standing Survation poll would suggest Burnham 76% v Carns/Other 24% - Burnham Win. But at present I think the broader average I have used is the better choice for what is now seen as a "coronation" even if it were a contest and the very limited opposition outside a few social media outriders with the Party's broad range of federal institutions/affiliates not raising any formal objections at all.

Important to stress the numbers above are just an estimate based on reading all the polls and collating a group of relevant proxy polls and averaging them. Others may well have a different take on those numbers which are all below along with the raw data. Having consistently looked at the numbers for the last 16 years of member polling and the last 46 years of Labour internal elections, I do feel I have a reasonable insight into what the overall member polling might be saying to us.

At the same time those numbers are also just based on Membership polling data too. Assuming 27% of the vote in any contest would be cast by affiliate Trade Unions it is quite possible that all 11 (eg even USDAW which has already come out in Support of Andy Burnham having nominated Bridget Phillipson for Deputy and also Community who might be the least supportive 2 unions of a non-right candidate based on their historical nominations) would be actively encouraging a vote for Andy Burnham. Thus it is possible the overall result of members and affiliate votes together would be an even higher score for a strongly TU endorsed Andy Burnham which, based on the member estimate above means he could secure perhaps 90%+ from affiliate voters. An example of this sort of outcome due to strong TU backing for a candidate but with a smaller overall majority is the 2010 London Labour Mayoral candidate selection. On that basis the overall score might be:

• Burnham 84% v Carns/Other 16% - Burnham Win

It is possible the level of social norm now might mean he polls even higher as any opponent vote simply does not vote, so this may be an overestimate of it?

Future Considerations

It is important nowadays to produce a "for the record" estimate due to the fact not producing one actually in the past had an impact in subsequent years to previous coronations or elections on different electoral systems.

None of this was done in the 2007 Leadership election "coronation" and there was no polling of members then. There was also a lack of detailed analysis of the result in 2010 too. For example on raw votes of members and affiliates Diane Abbott came third out of five in the 2010 ballot ahead of Andy Burnham and Ed Balls but the then electoral college gave her a fifth place result. I still recall  no one at any level in the Party or even on any wing of it (eg important to remember the now big irony that SCG/CLPD were opposed to the Collins Review changes) picked this up when the Collins Review -see Archive - was agreed so those "raw votes of members and affiliates" would be the future ballot result) so important membership vote trends were clearly not studied then. 

By Conference it is possible Labour List and Survation will have polled Labour members on Andy Burnham's first 6 weeks in power and that along with the May member polling may mean we can use more proxy polling questions to further update the current estimate for this Leadership election given above in order to improve the current model for this election so it exists as a baseline for the record.

Past Considerations

Such a potential result may be seen a bit like the result that John Smith (with a pre full OMOV & still delegate voting system) secured in the 2 candidate contest against Bryan Gould in the the 1992 Leadership election when he officially won over 90% of the delegate cast votes but likely polled around 80% of members voting at CLPs based on a rough Cube Rule estimate. 

Out of interest using a Cube Rule estimate one can also calculate that in the other two candidate Leader election in 1988 Neil Kinnock with his official result of an 80% to 20% win in terms of CLPs backing him likely won individual members as delegates mainly voting at GCs by around 61%-39% over Tony Benn. That compares with the by then slowly increasing sample of actual full OMOV contests held in likely more pro-Kinnock CLPs which were around 70%-30%. 

Whilst Tony Benn would have polled better with members than his actual result in 1988, it was likely the other way round in 1981. A Cube Rule back calculation can also be used for other delegate vote era elections such as the 1981 Deputy Leader election where for his 78% official CLP vote share Tony Benn likely secured 51% of individual GC delegate votes to Denis Healey's 31% and John Silkin's 18% which can be compared to the very small number of OMOV elections then (in either Pro-Healey or non-aligned CLPs to be fair) that showed Denis Healey on 52%, Tony Benn on 39% and John Silkin on 9%.

MP Nominations Situation

Andy Burnham

Whatever happens his team are clearly organised with a website set up here.

Whilst a Coronation looks far more likely with presumably Team Burnham possibly already over 200 nominations based on the photos from Westminster Hall and MP statements and perhaps now aiming for over 300? Darren Jones has confirmed he is not standing but claimed he had the numbers to stand and says over 100 MPs are "not happy" so whether Andy Burnham crosses the 300 nominations total is the first benchmark for this election. 323 is the second benchmark as that means there were not 81 MPs to challenge him anyway. Third Benchmark is 356 MPs which is proportionately more than Brown's 88.2% (313) in the 2007 Leadership Election.

No doubt that will become clearer in the next few days as more MPs declare. At some point Election Maps and others will start to run spreadsheets on public MP nomination declarations which I will list here.

Right of Andy Burnham

The media view expressed above seems to be that it will be hard for or Al Carns or another to secure 81 nominations and rumours of people standing may be more about negotiating a future Ministerial role? However, unlike the SCG nomination position (see below) it is not impossible for one from that wing of the Party to stand with enough backers drawn from the claimed previous 150 Starmer support and some of the claimed 50 Streeting support shown below. 

Darren Jones was claimed to have had support from 40+ MPs from the Starmer loyalist camp though he claimed before he withdrew that he had the numbers. It may also be assumed the core of the 50+ speculated Wes Streeting support base are likely in following him in backing Andy Burnham. After being speculated over it was clear Darren Jones was not keen to stand either and was more waiting to hear of any decision over the Chancellor of the Exchequer appointment.

Meanwhile Al Carns has set out his views on what the next Leader/Prime Minister should do, but whether it is a Leadership pitch or not is still yet to be seen? He has also set out 5 Tests which may relate to his decision on seeking to declare? The latest is Al Carns may meet with Andy Burnham over policy before he decides his view on this. 

As of 29 June Al Carns has not yet ruled out a campaign, but no evidence he has a ground game which would be pre-requisite of obtaining 81 MP nominations.

Left of Andy Burnham

So far it is also now assumed that like in 1992 there may not even be a Socialist Campaign Group (SCG) candidate seeking 20+ nominations to "widen the debate" (see explanation of that in Leadership tactics below) as quite a few of them plus the other MPs who backed Bell Ribeiro-Addy in the Deputy Leader Election seem to be backing Andy Burnham already (eg Andy McDonald, Dawn Butler & Barry Gardiner) and to be fair some SCG or adjacent MPs may well be hoping on some ministerial appointments under a broad Burnham Ministry?

Looking at the SCG's 24 members eligible to nominate plus the 7 non-SCG MPs who nominated Bell for Deputy Leader in 2025 (Kenneth Stevenson, Euan Stainbank, Cat Smith, Afzal Khan, Barry Gardiner, Stella Creasy and Peter Lamb), out of that "voter pool" of 31 potential names it is possible they might well struggle to get above 10-15 nominations for anyone to stand this time against Andy Burnham? 

The lack of any "widen the debate" candidate campaign this time may also be down to Andy Burnham's commitment to not use the whip so heavily over rebellions, after a number of whip suspensions in the last 2 years, and may also mean some SCG MPs, in positive response to that, will be less keen on running any challenge? An interesting discussion by former party whips on the whole party whip situation is here.

The Socialist Campaign Group have now published  "A Manifesto to Save Labour" focused on influencing the policy debate with no reference to any candidate of their own which seems to confirm the assumptions above.  So at present they may have shifted to a "widen the policy debate" strategy which may actually work better with no candidate in the way for many MPs not to even look past. Some of the domestic policy ideas may well contribute to the new debates, but they may be less influential on some foreign/defense issues. 

On organisational issues no evidence yet of any soft left interest in reopening many of those issues (Collins Review is still a deep scar) even if they would be far less likely to block more politically diverse candidates.

Important to note that with the SCG call for a reduction of the nomination threshold down from 20% and 81 MPs, if one looks at the three previous % threshold figures used since 1981 (see dates used for them below): 15% (61 MPs), 12.5% (51 MPs) & 10% (41 MPs); on its current numbers and even with adjacent MPs it would still very much struggle to nominate a candidate. 

I cover more on the unintended consequences of the "threshold debate" in a specially written hypothesis below.

Affiliate Nomination Situation

Assuming a likely coronation this then raises new Benchmarking scores - how many of 20 Socialist Societies does Andy Burnham secure (likely most) and how many of 11 Trade Unions - where the Chancellor appointment issue is controversial and an early announcement on that post could end with some TU abstentions.

CLP Nomination Situation

Assuming a likely coronation then with a 3 stage nomination process of: a) 403 MPs, b) 31 TU/Socialist Society Affiliates, c) 648 CLPs where successful candidate needs both of first two and, if not the second, then needs the third, then the third stage of CLP nominations looks unlikely. See timetable below for full details of its timing. 

Whilst NEC CLP reps across Left, Soft Left and Right expressed concerns over CLPs being pushed into a new third stage (no doubt of use to all of them politically in the current NEC elections!), there is no evidence of any CLPs expressing much anger (eg CLP motions, joint letters from CLP Chairs & Secretaries etc).  In theory, with the "amount of advance notice given" with clear dates set already in this election by the adopted timetable it could have been possible for the NEC to agree all CLPs had the choice of meeting on the evening of 15 June to send in a nomination. We all now know even if a room booking was difficult most CLPs could have used Zoom and Anonyvoter online tools so perfectly feasible to do now. If 31 TUs and Socialist Societies (also many likely meeting online) could do it in one evening, no one has yet said why it would be imposssible for 648 CLPs to do it too? The fact this option was not even considered and the later quite traditional and default mindset "2 week CLP period" was accepted by all on the NEC as a "timescale for CLPs" without much thought and the argument was simply on whether or not to hold off a result until after CLPs met, would suggest more that NEC members on all wings of the Party were behaviourally more "going through the motions" in this "CLPs in third stage" debate with both a wide acceptance of the likely election outcome plus more of an eye on NEC election positioning. 

Of course we may see a review of the  now "3 stage process" and some minor changes made in the coming years and that may be timed this year or possibly at the following conference in order for either NEC/CAC to rule out any other rule change proposals in that Rule Book section  under the usual "NEC Rule Change Precedence Rule" - see links to all the Party Rules (more than you may think as not just in one document) on the Archive page.

Ballot Situation

Its looking highly likely that there will not be a ballot. However in modeling a Leadership election it is important to estimate what might have happened as the estimates above tries to do. There is a good reason for this,

None of this was done in the 2007 Leadership election "coronation" and along with lack of detailed analysis of the result in 2010 (for example on raw votes of members and affiliates Diane Abbott came third out of five in the ballot ahead of Andy Burnham and Ed Balls but the then electoral college gave her a fifth place result and I still recall  no one at any level in the Party or on any wing of it (eg important to remember the now big irony that SCG/CLPD were opposed to the Collins Review changes) picked this up when the Collins Review (see Archive) was agreed so those "raw votes of members and affiliates" would be the future ballot result) so important trends were clearly not studied then. 

By Conference it is possible Labour List and Survation will have polled Labour members on Andy Burnham's first 6 weeks in power and that along with the May member polling may mean we can use more proxy polling questions to further update the current estimate given above to improve the current model for this election so it exists as a baseline for the record. 

Timetable

More here and here. Was proposed by the NEC Officers Group and went to full NEC on Thursday 25 June. A full timetable is now listed here and the procedues document is now also accessible to Labour members. Some of the dates here assume a single candidate with over 81 MP nominations and the most likely important ones are as a result marked in bold.

Timetable Commentary

Confirmation of a full "3 stage" nominations process by Labour NEC: That is

• First stage: 403 MPs and a requirement of securing 20% eg 81 MPs.

• Second Stage: 31 TU/Socialist Society Affiliates and a requirement of securing 3 affiliates (at least 2 of which shall be trade union affiliates) comprising 5 per cent of affiliated membership.

• Third Stage: 648 CLPs and a requirement of securing 5% eg 33 CLPs

Under the Rules adopted in 2018 and retained in the 2021 changes, a candidate needs to pass the nomination threshold in 2 out of 3 sections above. Thus a successful candidate needs enough nominations from both of first two (eg: a) 81 MPs and b) 3 affiliates of which 2 should be unions)  and if they do not secure enough in the second stage then needs the third. 

Some in the Socialist Campaign Group/Momentum/CLPD will not be happy with a "3 stage" nomination process (it was 2 stage of MPs and Affiliates/CLPs for the  Deputy Leader in 2025 so this is actually a significant NEC decision over interpreting the rules) because their political preference would be for all three nominations stages to be "concurrent" rather than "consecutive". This is because of its "social norming" benefits to what would be an "insurgent campaign" and they will argue that the rules adopted in 2018 implied that and the NEC is interpreting them a certain way. In the end those writing the rules during the Katy Clark Review (see Labour Archive page) in 2018 should have perhaps made the rule more explicit if "concurrent" was the intention then as the NEC will always have the power to subsequently interpret rules & people need to be aware of that when writing rule changes. Important to also note the Affiliates/CLPs nominations process was added in 2018 and kept in the rule changes of 2021 so they have become widely accepted as part of the process, which they did not before. 

However it is unlikely we will see a return to the 2020-2022 crowdsourced legal challenge era with any legal fight over this sort of interpretation as people better realise now the NEC interpretation will most likely be upheld by the Courts.  

Also Unite (a union perhaps with the level of money to do this) are far less likely to spend money on such legal challenges nowadays. However attempts still go on to try to change that. Momentum and CLPD backed NEC members seem to be backing Simon Dubbins (possibly for the practical reason one can assume that he will not actually want to disaffiliate from Labour despite some public campaign ambiguity on that issue in the GS election and have a more active political strategy in Labour) against incumbent Sharon Graham's "back to the workplace" approach in the Unite General Secretary election. 

Based on the Unite EC results where Sharon's slate polled 54% to 45% against in the regional vote (probably the best proxy of 3 votes for a union wide election compared to industrial votes with lots of incumbents) & won all three EC sections plus past results in Unite, it may suggest a first term incumbent may win 2-1, & thus it currently seems unlikely Unite will change their current relationship towards Labour. The recent announcement that Sharon had 695 nominations to 342 for Simon can be compared to 2021 Nominations: Steve Turner 525 (the Dubbins faction candidate of then), Sharon Graham 349, Howard Beckett 328, Gerard Coyne: 196. Also useful 2 compare McCluskey's1st term 2013 nominations of 1089 to Hicks 139 after he won a multi-candidate election for his first term. Thus if one looks at 2026 Unite nomination total, 2021 nominations & 2013 nominations for a 1st term General Secretary plus consider the March EC result (3 diff vote totals in diff parts of EC) it may suggest a possible Sharon Graham 55%-60% vote at this stage of election. However 6 weeks still to go in that election, so the situation could change?

Timetable

• NEC meeting to agree formal timetable & 6 month Freeze date for members/affiliate supporters (ie joined by 25 December): Thursday 25 July

• MPs nominate: Thursday 9 July to Wednesday 15 July

• MP hustings: Monday 13 July

• Affiliated organisations nominate: Wednesday 15 July at 6pm to Thursday 16 July at 6pm 

• Special conference to confirm result on Friday 17 July (This may be at Labour Party HQ as per the Deputy Leader result or more possibly a larger Westminster venue with most "delegates" invited by Zoom like the Deputy Leader result. It will also likely be livestreamed on the Labour Party Youtube channel and live on TV. History of Labour Special Conferences for Leadership announcements is on the Deputy Leader election section)

• If a candidate does not secure 3 affiliate nominations (unlikely) there will be a "third stage" CLP Nomination process Monday 20 July to Friday 31 July

• Special Conference would only be held if only 1 candidate aprroved by CLP third stage on Saturday 1 August. However this is unlikely

• If a contest a member ballot would be held Thursday 6 August to Thursday 27 August. 

• If a contest and ballot the Special Conference would be Sat 29 August (Note Bank Holiday weekend) so likely to be smallish event with mainly online delegates.

• Not stated here but as per the Prime Minister's announcement if there is a contest, then the aim may be to wrap it up by first few days of September so possibly 1-2 weeks of hustings and then 4-5 weeks balloting. 

Current assumptions being made:

• Burnham is now expected to become Leader of Labour on Friday 17 July and PM on Monday 20 July as there is a precedent he does not become PM on the same day.

• Even if he is the only candidate, he needs both MP and affiliate nominations (ie he needs 2 out of 3 of MPs, affiliates and CLPs nominations under the rules (as they state affiliates or CLPs after MPs nominate) and there being only 31 affiliates who have authority to nominate at their Executive/NEC level compared to 648 CLPs so NEC Officers see it as easier for them to organise their meetings in one day as is explained here.

• Even if all MPs nominate before 15 July or more than 80% back Burnham, the window won't be shortened

New Hypotheses: 

• The 20% Threshold may change Labour Right candidate running behaviour

• "Not just a Coronation" but the potential development of an 80%+ "PLP Consensus" for MPs electing Leaders in future hypothesis

• The "different types of consensus"/"confortability" hypothesis?

Having suggested in Feb 2015 a "Party as a Gateway"/"Party as a Platform" hypothesis of how members perceived their involvement in a political party which seemed to understand the rise of social media networked relationsships and also mapped well with Instrumentalist/Expressive typologies actually used to poll members, immersing oneself in the data and also reporting on behaviour with party internal elections, I have come up with a number of connected hypotheses that relate to this election but also seek to answer questions I pose in this website introduction. They are suggested more from an "institutional" perspective rather than an internal politics perspective and are obviously tentative but are set out here so it encourages others to think about what has actually happened (not just what is said) in this election but also the last few years that perhaps have led up to it.

The 20% Theshold may change "Labour Right" candidate running behaviour Hypothesis

This was triggered by this Morning Star article which seems firmly stuck on a 4.5% narrative not based on any detailed analysis as use of it is nowadays just a motivating/mobilising framing for its side of a debate.

It is correct on its current conclusion but misses the key point of its report that a candidate may have struggled to have got 81 nominations - ie reach a 20% threshold.

Key points to flag:

• If Team Kendall had done early polling (more regular in last 9 yrs) they may well have pulled as more of right vote in 2015 went to Cooper. Indeed, if one thinks about it more as a motivator to action, it may be the lack of early polling for Kendall that may have driven all the "secret polling" for Keir Starmer in 2019? However as I say now with YouGov, Survation and Find Out Now polling Labour members, it should be far easier (as this site shows) to do it all far more publicly now.

• Wes Streeting would have polled 25-31% last year, but his numbers faded to an average of 14% against Burnham by May (a mini-hypothesis would be did Mandelson stories have an impact on who might have been associated in past?). That and "MP consensus against a full contest" may have been bigger drivers for not running.

• What this "4.5% comfort narrative" does not cover for a fuller historic overview is Hazel Blears 12% in 2007, Caroline Flint's 23% in 2015 & Ian Murray's 14% in 2020. In other words "4.5%" is a very inaccurate assessment of any faction's vote.

• Oversimplifying the framing here to "4.5%" is understandable for both its comfort zone and its political motivators (a bit like "100% members misled" when it was 12% - see below), but it does not look at recent Labour internal elections as a whole & how significantly current rules may change future behaviour.

• What might be missed is the 20% MP threshold does not just impact on the left (who would even fail with a 2018-21 10% threshold now - see above) but on future right candidates as the threshold does require an MP to widen their base, but also now regular public polling means MPs will use that as a judgment on any candidate too. Thus this hypothesis is a combination of the 20% threshold plus early public candidate polling may impact on behaviour of the Labour right in future with possibly less Blear's Kendall, Flint, Murray candidates.

• This hypothesis suggests a rule designed to stop left candidates (who would likely fail under 10% threshold now) may now have bigger impact on right candidates, but also may contribute drivers to strengthen the next hypothesis on an 80%+ "PLP consensus" - see more on that below.

• This leads also to the massive irony that if the SCG wants to "stop a right candidate" in future, they might end up having to consider, since they can't get a candidate even under 10%, that they back the 20% threshold, though it would force them to admit they are more a sub-group of the wider Tribune/Mainstream bloc of MPs - in other words the 20% threshold, if it stays for a long period could downgrade or even end the 1982 Tribune/SCG split

"PLP Consensus" Hypothesis

In the run up to this current election it was clear many MPs wanted to avoid a full election and some of that may be driven by many MP (and some then activists who are now MPs) "scar tissue" of their perceptions of local member relations with MPs in the 2015-19 period which may be underestimated by some & which SCG/Momentum/CLPD have not so far developed any framing strategy to engage with some soft left MPs over the issue. Another view of it on the right of the party is encapsulated by this quote: "I think a contest would be a catastrophe for the Labour Party that would see all the contenders get dragged to the left with no time to make their way back to the centre by the time they landed in No 10, which is what normally happens"

This hypothesis also responds to the occasional media commentator call for "MP only contests of Party Leaders", how that suggestion was "punted around to the media as a rule change" and allegedly "pulled back from" as an idea in the Labour Party in late 2024, but also how recent MP behaviours may be inadvertantly creating a weaker version of it through existing rules and currently informal actions.

It may not have been fully noticed but in the recent May/June Leadership crisis period, former Deputy Leader Harriet Harman suggested that leading candidates should be locked in a room to sort out a consensus with the subtext there and circulating around too being MPs holding an indicative vote to sort things out rather than put a vote to the membership.

At the same time with a number of potential candidates being claimed to "not have the numbers" at various points some MPs may have realised that the 20% MP nomination threshold (unlike past 15%, 12.5% and 10% thresholds) can  effectively turn a "membership ballot" contest into more of a "last resort" process and that the 20% threshold possibly helps drive its MPs unintentionally towards more of a 80%+ "PLP Consensus" of either informal or formal PLP developed institutions over choosing a future Leader which does not require any party rule changes as all any institutional development is within the PLP. 

The terms "informal", "formal" and "last resort" can be described in the following ways:

• Informal: A process where a widely trusted group of senior or ex MPs or Peers or other grandees like trade union general secretaries act as "honest brokers" within the PLP so candidates and MPs can test out MP support to decide a consensus.

• Formal: A process such as an agreed PLP ballot or a formal PLP backbench or senior MPs committee handling it which winnows it down to 1 agreed candidate who 80%+1 MPs can live with.

• Last Resort: If the above informal/formal system fails then the PLP recognises a candidate with 20%+1 support can still "take it to the membership/affiliates" so those party institutions become "arbiters of last resort" due to a failed "PLP Consensus".

Labour lacks a backbench "1922 Committee", like the Tories have for their leadership election to initially winnow down candidates, to run any such consensus process. It's Parliamentary Committee of 25 is a Leadership body and its MP factions like the Tribune Group of MPs are just a faction rather than a backbench body. Thus at present it does not have either informal or formal processes for managing a "PLP Consensus". However it is possible after this election is over when MPs review what happened in the last few months potential informal/formal PLP processes may be an emergent outcome of this current election?

At the same time, whilst the Socialist Campaign Group look a long way away from standing any candidate under a smaller 15%, 12.5% or even a 10% in 2018-21 threshold, they may see reducing the MP threshold as reducing the chances of  the development of such a PLP Consensus process giving them more leverage on other candidates in future even if it does not directly benefit themselves due to their small numbers? 

The above is a hypothesis based on recent behaviour (and the strong Wes Streeting welcome for the big Burnham speech on 29 June reaffirms it so far), but it is of course possible at a later stage the current level of consensus is short-lived and some future challenger from right or soft left focuses on a member ballot as an outcome of their campaign. That is of course when this hypothesis will be fully disproved.

A wider hypothesis: "Different type of consensus" parties - PLP or membership "comfortability"?

The above point about 80%+ "PLP Consensus" for MPs leads to an interesting further point about what are members of a political party at various levels nowadays looking for? This leads to an added hypothesis that perhaps answers some of the questions about members in political parties I posed in this website introduction about increasing member expectations that a party should substantially reflect views similar to oneself & members shock when other members seek to overturn the sort of party they think they are in. If MP's may be partially evolving an "80%+ consensus" position on some things, is it no different to members expectation that a party should more than 80%+ reflect an ideological consensus if they are in it? This might be part of a wider process applicable across the political spectrum from right to left that the rise of social media since 2010 onward has led to people wanting to be in narrower more consensus values "Platform" parties, with little internal ideological opposition. Such "Platform Parties" then enable them to express their online views from and this is a further smaller contribution to political fragmentation we have seen in the UK on top of broader voter dealignment and the seeking by some of more cultural values based parties (ie Reform/Restore and Greens) to vote for to more strongly reflect their "morally certain" or "ethically certain" views rather than just retail/valence politics of older parties generally operating with "moral complexity" or "ethical complexity"?  The following paragraphs explore that in more detail, but more narrowly from a left of centre perspective starting with Labour and looking more widely.

On top of the threshold reality of even 10% not being that directly helpful to them in standing a "widen the debate" candidate, it is possible the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG) may not have yet come to terms with a change in the Labour Party since 2020 due to both PLP institutional memory in response to the 2010-2020 "widen the debate" era, but also because of member exit and the existence now of a 230,000 Green Party and 40,000+ Your Party, both full of ex-Labour members with (like MPs) their own "scar tissue" experience of their time in the Labour Party. That may be a critical mass in its own right & may have long-term implications? 

That is important both as sheer numbers "organised to the left of Labour" but also an anger driven recognition by those people now in another party that a substantial chunk of Labour has very different views to them; eg Jeremy Corbyn in 2016 actually had a 38% vote against him at his time of peak popularity so when you really think about it now, it was no real surprise organised factionalism would likely continue to seek to bring him down with such a big size opposition within a party? Whilst at the same time Zack Polanski only had 15% vote against him in his 2025 Leadership election so in comparison with Labour there was a much wider "membership consensus" (above 80%+ too) within the Greens. Thus those new Green & Your Party members who have moved from Labour will probably feel far more ideologically "comfortable" & "ethically certain" within their new parties as few now will reject their ideological views in their new party or actively oppose the Leader they identify with or are "inspired" by.

Expecting an entire party to be in an 80%+ ideological consensus with you as an individual member may well work with the institutionally simpler Greens or the actually more centralised than Labour CEC run Your Party, but achieving 80%+ ideological consensus within Labour was always less likely due to its well established 900+ institutional spaces (see introduction above) with lots of potential opponent niches and strong institutions like the PLP, 200+ Labour Groups of Cllrs, 1.5m card vote but clearly politically divided 11 trade unions, 20 socialist societies including the 7,000 member Fabian society & 4,000 member JLM as well as the 13,000 member Coop party?

The above flags the different wishes of different groups in different parties that I implied a bit in my introduction to this website. Many ex-members of Labour may want to be in a "membership consensus" party where 80%+ broadly ideologically agree & any minority opposed is very tiny (not an experience they will ever get in Labour at membership level, as many have clearly learned and not found it to their liking). At the same time Labour may also be evolving into a "PLP consensus" party where 80%+ MPs broadly agree on their role over Leadership selection and may have to bring in informal/formal institutional rules to make that element work because the Party membership tends not to operate with an 80%+ consensus due to its historically wide mix of members and its strong but politically divided trade union link as its internal body elections data confirms.

When a self-described "socialist activist" talks with anger about the 2015-19 period in Labour featuring "vileness  to its members" then if people are now all in parties they now feel more "comfortable" in with "different 80% consensus spaces" (eg members or MPs) & now also perceive a lot less "vileness", wherever they are a member now, then it may just be that the political fragmentation and values driven "assortatative politics" we have seen in last 6 years (as 1m ex- 2019 Lab voters had already voted Green/Left Indy even in 2024 & perhaps another 1m+ shift to the Greens in the two years since) has quite unintentionally sorted people into the "right places" (ie more "comfortable" ones) to where they are currently now members of a Party perhaps? 

Because the outcome described above has been mainly unintentional (eg no one in Labour ever specifically said, "lets try to grow the Greens from 55,000 to 230,000 members in 6 years"), but will inevitably be perceived by some with low trust mindsets to be part of a longer term "grand plan" to frustrate their political hopes, understandably there will naturally be some anger/relitigation over how it all happened. But we are also now talking about many events which are mainly 6-11 years ago now, whilst at the same time it is also now worth exploring what its implications are in the actual present, and in the future too, as I try to do in a broad based way exploring the various narratives here.

The above hypotheses may in the end be a big lesson of experiences of the 2010-2020 era of Labour. We can now wait and see how that plays out to test these new hypotheses for Labour but also the Greens/Your Party too?

Pre- 22 June Situation Sections - For Reference

Polling Averages of Labour Members for previously assumed main contestants

This simply aggregates recent member polling data from YouGov, Survation and Find Out Now into a very basic Polling Average so we have a basic Dashboard figure. This should be considered as only a rough estimate with not many polls and people should look at the source data below too. YouGov is the historic "Gold Standard" back to 2010, but Survation's ongoing polling puts them equal with YouGov now as their Deputy Leader polling seemed to show. Find out Now have only done a few member polls so may still be honing their samples but their final member poll for the Deputy Leadership did align with other polls and CLP nomination estimates so it seems reasonable to include them in an average for that reason which I have done.

Note: Important to remember these are member only polls and do not include affiliate political levy payer votes. Based on the 2020 Leader & 2025 Deputy Leader votes Labour members  may possibly be between 82% and 73% of any eventual vote. More likely the lower 73% figure now due to the 6 month rule reducing last minute Member sign-ups after an election is declared & the "default" size of what may be a 700,000+ affiliate electorate. It's still possible we could see a return of large-scale affiliate voting and see members reduce to 38% of the vote cast as they were in 2010 under the old electoral college system. In the March 2024 Welsh Leadership election on the same system as present members were only 53% of the vote, but that may more reflect the smaller size of Welsh Labour. Historic data back to 1994 set out below does show a long-term shift to members comprising a far larger bloc of those voting nowadays from 18% in 1994 to 83% in 2020 compared to affiliate votes being a majority of the votes cast up until 2010.

Most likely Main Two candidate only contests:

• Burnham 60% v Starmer 33% - Burnham win

• Starmer 59% v Streeting 19% - Starmer win

• Burnham 76% v Streeting 14% - Burnham win

Possible Candidates with Keir Starmer standing:

• Andy Burnham   44%

• Keir Starmer  36%

• Angela Rayner 7%

• Ed Miliband  3%

• Wes Streeting  3%

• Yvette Cooper  3%

• Shabana Mahmood  1%

• Al Carns 1%

• Other   2%

Possible outcome: Assuming broad ideologically similar transfers is Burnham wins 54% to 44%. This assumption works on the basis that someone voting for a soft left "change of leader" candidate against Keir Starmer actually on the ballot are more likely to transfer to another one. Looking at the numbers at present, one might come to the conclusion that whilst Wes Streeting seems to be running a Leadership campaign after his resignation, much of the Labour Centre-Right still sticks with Keir Starmer as they don't think Wes could win and instead see Keir Starmer as having more chance of holding on to the more "loyalist to the Party" soft-left votes if challenged by Andy Burnham - in other words the above is a "Keir Starmer soft-left vote retention hypothesis".

Possible Candidates without Keir Starmer standing:

• Andy Burnham 42%

• Angela Rayner 11%

• Wes Streeting  11%

• Ed Miliband  10%

• Yvette Cooper  5%

• Shabana Mahmood  4%

• Al Carns 1%

• Lucy Powell  1%

• Lou Haigh  1%

Possible outcome: Assuming broad ideologically similar transfers Burnham wins 65% to 21%. The significantly different numbers here to the polling above with Keir Starmer standing reinforce a "Keir Starmer soft-left vote retention hypothesis" explained in the "Keir stands" data above.

Note: All the data on this is below to do your own estimates.

Previous MP Gatekeeping estimates for Any Ballot to Happen

05/06/26: Claimed PLP Support for Leading Candidates.

• Keir Starmer - 150

• Andy Burnham - 150

• Wes Streeting - 50

• Undecided - 50

This data has also been added to the other data on MP segmentation and gatekeeping data below.

The aggregation of polling data is below in a section called Polling Segmentation Models for Internal Labour Elections after the next 3 sections and also after a subsequent 6 sections covering the Deputy Leader Election Polling Models and Analysis which acts as a useful introduction to recent internal Labour and voter polling.

It currently has 5 segmentation models covering different ways to understand the Labour membership, 1 segmentation model covering Labour MPs as "gatekeepers" for a Leadership election and also 3 sections looking at member/voter perceptions of potential leadership candidates and possible "change"/dividing lines (whether of Leader or Policies) as they may influence MP perceptions as gatekeepers to any contest.

Following it there is also an explanatory section over the tactics of any future leadership campaign explaning differences for all the various wings of the Party based on the history of good and bad tactics in Leadership campaigns back to 1994.

Note: Latest Member Polling Data is further down this page

Key recent articles over speculation before the Leadership Election started on 22 June are here:

2025 Articles

• 24/05/25: Tom McTague of New Statesman on Andy Burnham's Plan for Britain

Jan-April 2026 Articles

• 14/01/26: New Statesman overview of the current speculation

• 15/01/26: New Statesman on Wes Streeting Pitch and also his interesting comments on the SCG. More on that from LabourList here.

• 25/01/26: Wes Streeting supporting MP claims Wes has backing of 200+ MPs

• 27/02/26: New Statesman on what MPs are saying after Gorton and Denton By-election

• 06/03/26: Peter Kellner on 5 actions for a future Labour Leader: Preparation for Role/Grid; Big/Controversial economic decisions early; Pride in Past Lab Government action; Admit mistakes; Have a clear & coherent future/hope narrative

• 20/03/26: Sienna Rodgers on main factions for the NEC elections

• 26/03/26: Kevin Schofield on Why Starmer might well survive beyond May - 3 quite possible reasons based on post-May timing, international events and bad timing for all potential opponents

• 28/03/26: Kitty Donaldson on will Keir "go long" and what role are others seeking?

Post May 2026 Local Elections Articles

General

• 10/05/26: Robert Peston Can Starmer be replaced in an orderly way?

• 13/05/26: Caroline Wheeler. Inside the Burnham Campaign and the seat he is targeting

• 13/05/26: The Times PM's Team thought Streeting had bottled it

• 14/05/26: Tony Diver Number 10 Loyalists say Streeting only had 44 MPs to nominate him

• 23/05/26: I Paper long read on will Starmer run if challenged.

• 23/05/26: Stephen Swinford on Burnham preparations but will Keir Starmer budge?

• 23/05/26: Anne McElvoy on why Team Starmer thinks it can "Keep Keir in"

• 31/05/26: Inews article on "Wes Streeting Doomed Masterplan"

• 01/06/26: Times article on whether Darren Jones will run?

Rules for the Election

• Understanding Labour's Leadership Election Rules by Richard Johnson (old article from 2025)

• 14/05/26: Labour Current Rules for Leadership Election article from Labour List.

Policy

• 21/05/26: Labour Leadership Policy Tracker from SMF Think Tank.

• 22/05/26: Pippa Crerar of Gaurdian Interview with Wes Streeting on his policies & campaign.

• 22/05/26: Daily Mirror interview with West Streeting on his policy agenda.

• 23/05/26: Manchester Mill on Burnhamism and Manchesterism

• 26/05/26: Tony Blair intervention on policy in the current Leadership speculation

• 27/0526: Wes Streeting response to Tony Blair.

• 27/05/26: Two Andy Burnham responses here and here to Tony Blair.

• 28/05/26: Keir Starmer response to Tony Blair.

• 28/05/26: Rachel Silvester interview with Andy Burnham

• 29/05/26: Dan Carden with Blue Labour response to Tony Blair

• 31/05/26: Inews article on Burnham/Streeting on Electoral Reform.

• 02/06/26: Jonathan Rutherford Blue Labour reponse to Tony Blair

• 07/06/26: John Rentoul helpfully listed all the key essays following the Tony Blair intervention which are also listed here: 

  • 1. Tony Blair essay, “The Labour Party is ‘playing with fire’ over its future and the future of the country,” published 10pm 26 May 2026, 5,600 words. Reproduced in Independent https://independent.co.uk/voices/labour-party-tony-blair-save-itself-keir-starmer-b2983834.html 

  • My commentary here https://independent.co.uk/voices/tony-blair-whirlwind-change-essay-brexit-keir-starmer-b2983861.html 

  • 2. Wes Streeting’s response, The Guardian, 17 May 2026, 840 words https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/27/tony-blair-labour-wes-streeting-markets-democracy 

  • 3. Andy Burnham’s response, The Times, 28 May 2026, 1,600 words https://thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/andy-burnham-tony-blair-labour-essay-n5p0d960j 

  • 4. Keir Starmer’s response, substack, 28 May 2026, 2,900 words https://keirstarmer.substack.com/p/tony-blair-might-not-like-my-plan 

  • 5. Tony Blair reply to Keir Starmer’s reply, The Observer, 31 May 2026, 1,000 words https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/tony-blair-the-future-demands-a-radical-response-based-on-understanding-the-world-we-live-in 

Note: Latest Member Polling Data is further down this page

Membership data in detail with annual and other more regular numbers back to 1928 when first compiled is set out here. This includes regular current estimates from me based on a basket of data gathered from a range of CLPs. The page also breaks down Labour membership by region as well as by motivational date of joining to understand where members are and why they may join?

I am covering the NEC elections on the Labour Almanack Page & estimates of results will appear there.

This is a first attempt to estimate the new NEC Composition after the Leader election assuming some change in frontbench roles and some small changes in the NEC elections - at present the assumption is possibly 3 changes expanding the soft left?

Instead of a simple 2 or 3 group segmentation I have generally used since 2015 this composition estimate is broken down into 5 initial segments based on an early hypothesis that the team around Andy Burnham will likely have a more "stakeholder" based approach to reconciling at least some disagreements: The 5 segments and their numbers currently suggested by analysis after the September NEC elections analysis may be:

• LTW/LF leaning CLP/Cllr/Scot/Soc Reps - 10 

• Right leaning Trade Union Reps/Equality Roles/Officers - 11

• Burnhamite/Mainstream - 8

• Left leaning Trade Union Reps/Equality Roles - 7

• Momentum/CLPD/WLG? leaning CLP/Wales? Reps - 4 (It's possible half this Group are pretty pro-Burnham anyway due to their past politics)

These numbers will be revised after the NEC elections as for example 1 of the CLP seats and Wales may be too close to call and my current analysis on numbers may in the end be incorrect.

The advantage at this stage of creating more segments compared to recent years is it makes it easier to refine segments more after we have had a few recorded votes at NEC.

Overall the initial assessment from the above is Burnhamite loyalists calve out a significant bloc from the previous 28-11 Pro-Starmer Majority on the NEC, however those further to the left do not gain and indeed some of the traditional "Left" will be more defined by their actual long-term Burnhamism if you look at their past support. As a result of this spread of support Andy Burnham supporters have the choice of either simply co-opting the previous majority to their project depending on their actions or working across the board with different politics trade union reps and that with them will likely hold the balance between specific political wings of the party.

From these numbers I would also assume whilst we may well see some significant policy changes work through Labour's NPF policy process, any internal organisational changes by the NEC may be far more cautious and evolutionary than radical. Having in the last 12 years gone through Collins Review/Katy Clark Review & then seen a post 2020 "institutional turn" that actually strengthened unions' formal role (eg TULO direct appointments at LGC/EC level), there may be little appetite to revisit any past organisational debates in the near future?

Annual CLP Delegate composition is here. Annual Conference helpful information and analysis is towards the bottom of this page.

Details here. Live stream recording here. Also live reporting by BBC and Guardian. 

Result

Lucy Powell elected Labour's 19th Deputy Leader & follows in the footsteps of Attlee, Morrison, Bevan, Jenkins, Foot, Healey, Hattersley, Beckett, Prescott, Harman, Watson and Rayner.

The ballot for Deputy Leader was conducted between 8 October 2025 and 23 October 2025.

Turnout was 16.6% of 970,642 eligible voters. 50 votes were spolit ballots. Total valid vote: 160,943. 

Candidate ----------Number of votes -- % of votes

Lucy Powell                          87,407                      54% - Elected

Bridget Phillipson             73,536                       46%

Lucy Powell 54.3% Bridget Phillipson 45.7%. Modelling showing Member poll outcome but with smaller lead due 2 TU votes seems to have been right. Vote a bit lower than expected, but electorate of 970,642 is far larger than other parties or mailing lists! 

Analysis

Turnout

Important to note the turnout for this election at 16.6% (161k out of 971k) and despite some media coverage as to how low it was actually comes between the 14% turnout (338k out of 2,478k eligible votes) for the 2010 Miliband's battle & the 22% turnout (951k out of 4,240k eligible) for the 1994 Tony Blair victory.  of course the previous two elections were electoral college with three different turnouts of MPs, Members and TU levy payer voters so at that time no one ever did a simple turnout estimate of cast votes compared to eligible votes as one figure. In 2015, 2016 and 2020 self selected opted in "Affiliate supporters" vote of only 150k-210k meant the eligible vote compared to 1994 and 2010 was far lower so turnouts of eligible vote higher. A return to TU levy payer votes since 2021 rule changes means turnouts of any decalred electorate (which is now much larger again will be far lower that the 2015-2020 period.

Vote Share and Polls

Polling Model 6 below which showed a 53%-47% result looks closest to the outcome of 54%-46% and will be used along with this analysis to create a new "Model 8" to to help long-term understanding of the voting system for future leader elections.

Member and TU Votes

Below is an attempt to breakdown the electorate into its two main parts to look at their voting behaviour:

• We don't have an electorate breakdown by section, but a reasonable split from past data might be 260k & 700k. If so then turnout wd have been 45% of member (117k) & 6% of affiliates (44k). Member turnout would then be lower than final polls claimed.

•  If the electorate & turnout figure split above is correct and we use the final YouGov/Find Out Now/CLP Nominations cube rule similar 56%-44% figures then vote split was as follows: Members: Powell 66k (56%) Phillipson 51k (44%). TU's: Powell 21k (48%) Philipson 23k (52%).

• If we use the final Survation poll figure on the above then vote split was as follows: Members: Powell 69k (58%) Phillipson 48k (42%). TU's: Powell 18k (41%) Philipson 26k (59%) 

• Actual result is probably between those 2 sets of figures above. An equal 1/3rd drop in Members & TU turnout from detailed 2010 data seems sensible to apply here unless some think TU dropped more & turnout was Members 48%, TU 5%? 

• Some have suggested a 52% Member and 4% TU turnout. This is possible but would mean a much larger proportional drop in TU votes compared to members compared to 2010 Leader election and 2024 Welsh Labour Leader election. One reason that might happen is if USDAW voters (4% in 2010 and potentially 2.5% now) might be a higher proportion of the vote in this election compared to higher turnout unions. More on this is explored below in the trade union vote modelling.

Trends in people voting

My models followed 2024 Welsh Leader turnout (58%/9%) & assumed 60% & 9% meaning a 55%-45% Members/TU vote proportion but this looks more like 73%-27% (a trend of 2015 & 2016 & 2020 different vote system) so important to note 4 future elections.

In Tony Blair's 1994 win 172k (18%) out of total 951k Member/TU votes were member vote. In 2010's Ed Miliband win 127k (38%) out of 338k total Member/TU votes cast were members so there is a long term trend of members being a higher % of the vote each election since 

This Member % over TU vote rose higher during 2015/2016/2020 elections with a different more self-selecting 150k to 210k "affiliate supporter" status (which had 49% & 35% turnout in 2015 & 2020). The details of that were: 

• 2015: Member 58%, Affiliated Supporter 17%, Reg Supp 25%. 

• 2016: Member 56%, Affiliated Supporter 20%, Registered Supporter 24%. 

• 2020: Member 82%, Affiliated Supporter 15%, Registered Supporter 3%. 

In 1994 members were 18% of all actual votes & in 2010 they were 38%. In 2015 they were 58% of all votes and in 2020 they were as high as 82% of all votes cast. In 2025 they are approximately 73%. Members and the polls of them are now much more important for future Leader elections.

Understanding the above trend is actually important for future leadership elections & also means when we see future Survation, YouGov & Find Out Now Labour member polls we will know more what % of the cast vote it may cover 

Note: This also adds to the hypothesis in the TU model below of "14% more left-wing 2007-10 political levy vote" joining Labour in 2015/16 meaning by 2020 RLBs best vote was 29% in member section,  but it has now passed out of the Party and are also not so much Lab levy payers now as Phillipson's likely 52%-59% TU share shows. The 2015 to 2020 data above also illustrates how Labour in 2014 created a wider "low initial commitment" system where people who might have lower commitment to a party, but a strong commitment to a candidate with distinctive views had their gateway into the Party expanded beyond having to join a TU and pay a political levy. It's likely if their candidate had not won they would not have taken up full membership. It's also clear that when their candidate/view did win they would then sign up to membership as the substantially increased membership proprtion of the vote (82%) at 2020 compared to 2015 (58%) and 2016 (56%) shows.

Messaging

One thing that happened as a result of Labour's comms message wanting to only give an overall turnout (presumably in order to draw attention to current member numbers which I still estimate below to be ahead of Reform) is they missed the chance to point out that the likely 45% turnout for Labour members to vote for Deputy Leader was still far higher than the 38% turnout for the election of Green Party Leader Zack Polanski itself an advance on the average 25% turnouts for most Green Leader elections back to 2010.

Model 8. The likely breakdown of the 2025 Labour Deputy Leader Vote

This is a new Model of the voting that uses the actual 2025 result and add in what we have learned from the campaign and the 7 previous models that are set out below.

This model assumes the following:

• "Paid up" membership eligible to vote at 260,000 after recent media reports. "Paid up" membership is lower than "total" membership given by Parties which includes arrears. For example the current Green Party 175k membership is a "Total" one and has at least 4,000 in arrears as we know this as when the announced their leader election they gave a 68k figure but also flagged the electorate was 64k would be paid up membership only as all parties use internal elections as an incentive to attempt to reduce arrears. Thus if one wants to brandish a Green membership of 175k then to be consistent you would want to give comparative "Total membership" for Labour. For what it is worth my estimate of Labour "Total membership" is 270k-280k so those motivationally interested in all this data below for a narrative that "Labour has less members than Reform" will be disappointed as I have not implied that. Full details on Labour membership  to come to your own conclusions is here.

• As a result of the above the Trade Union element of the 961k electorate subtracting members and the small socialist societies can be rounded to 700,000. This is around half the 1.4m affiliated unions political levy payers that are shown in card votes as labour Party conference.

• Member Turnout of 45% (eg 117k) votes in order to make way for some TU votes to be cast

• Trade Union Turnout at 6% (eg 44k) in order to fit these in the 161k total vote. In both this and the member turnout the aim has been to broadly reduce the turnout equally by a third for members and TU votes compared to the 71% and 9% of the detailed 2010 results once you have calculated this it then becomes clear there are few other options:

  • A member 48% and TU 5% turnout 

  • A member 42% and TU 7% turnout. 

• Thus the two electorate  numbers above could be adjusted for two further models if you want which would slightly change the candidate vote % in member/TU sections. I am going for this based on my experience but those who want to generate a Lucy Powell or Bridget Phillipson slightly bigger vote in either section can choose to to follow their experience or bias.

• Some have suggested a 52% Member and 4% TU turnout. This is possible but would mean a much larger proportional drop in TU votes compared to members compared to 2010 Leader election and 2024 Welsh Labour Leader election. One reason that might happen is if USDAW voters (4% in 2010 and potentially 2.5% now) might be a higher proportion of the vote in this election compared to higher turnout unions. More on this is explored below in the trade union vote modelling.

• However to be cautious it is perfectly reasonable for people to say the likely turnout is 45%-52% for members and 4%-6% for trade unions. 

Possible Votes Cast under assumptions above:

• Members: 117,000

• Trade Unions: 44,000

• Total Vote: 161,000

• Assumptions for the vote in each type of trade union by nomination decision:

  • The breakdown of this still being added to this analysis and will attempt a 3 segment breakdown based on possible electorate and turnout by 3 groups of trade unions based on candidate nomination or no nomination. It will likely be too hard, without other data to give an individual (or even Big 5 union) trade union electorate or vote 

• Totals from the TU assumptions above: 

  • To be added.  

• Total of 44,000 TU Vote: Bridget Phillipson 64,000  (52%), Lucy Powell 60,000 (48%)

Possible Vote Shares based on data above

• Member vote share based on YouGov/Find Out Now/CLP Noms cube law: Bridget Phillipson 44%, Lucy Powell 56%. This number is used but it could be the Survation 58%-42% vote split is correct. That would likely change  the numbers to Members: Powell 69k (58%) Phillipson 48k (42%). TU's: Powell 18k (41%) Philipson 26k (59%) 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 52%, Powell 48%. If the Survation 58%-42% vote was used, that would likely add 7% to the Phillipson Trade Union share as the numbers would be Members: Powell 69k (58%) Phillipson 48k (42%). TU's: Powell 18k (41%) Philipson 26k (59%) 

Member Votes % based on those % assumptions:

• Member: Phillipson 44%, Powell 56% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 52%, Powell 48%

Member votes based on those assumptions:

• Member: Phillipson 51,000, Powell 66,000

• Trade Union: Phillipson 23,000, Powell 21,000

Total Vote: Phillipson 74,000, Powell 87,000

Total Vote %: Phillipson 46%, Powell 54%

Full explanation of how Labour's TU electorate in Leader elections changed from 4m in 1994 to 2.3m in 2010 & then down to 150k in 2015, then 210k in 2020 and is now 700k in 2025 

A Twitter Thread on this is here. 

A further Twitter Thread on the history is here.

Note: Some tweets refer to an 18% turnout for eligible voters in Tony Blair's election in 1994. This was an error and the figure is 22% & 4m TU electorate as the data on this site makes clear.

Percentage initially given below is the size of their card vote among the 1.5m TU card vote at Labour Conference. The % of the electorate in the likely 700k Deputy Leader TU electorate may have been different and the analysis below uses a proxy measure to make a rough estimate. 

The initial estimate is a rough one and I will do more work on the weightings using the proxy used here. More on that in the Analysis section below.

TU Online Promotion of the Ballot

If you look below you will find 4 of the 6 Phillipson Unions (Including the 3 biggest with 57% of the 59% nominating TU card vote she secured) gave details online of the process. 

Only 1 of the 3 Lucy Powell unions did this and it was her largest supporters the CWU.

 Of the 2 No nominations unions they only stated their position on nominations and put nothing of the voting process online.

Judging by the online material of which the key text from each is below the following may have happened:

• Some unions may have emailed the majority of their levy payers with an email address with a ballot.

• Some unions may have emailed levy payers and asked them to complete a form to "opt-in" and this would likely lead to a lower proportion of levy payers from them being part of the ballot electorate.

Thus some unions will have a far smaller proportion of ballot electorate than their Labour Party confererence card vote.

Details of each union below with analysis after:

Bridget Phillipson Nominating Unions -6

• GMB - 24%. Are you a GMB member and do you want to cast your vote in Labour’s Deputy Leadership election? To be eligible, you must have been a member of GMB Union and paying into the political fund since March 8 2025. If you have an email address registered with GMB, you should be sent a ballot automatically. These will start to be sent out from 8 October. If you don’t have an email address registered but would like to add one to get a ballot, please fill in this online form: www.cesvotes.com/labourdeputyleaderonline. You can add an email address right up until 5pm on Monday 20 October. If you need to request a postal ballot, either because you don’t have an email address or for access reasons, you can request one here: www.cesvotes.com/labourdeputyleaderpost no later than 5pm on Friday 3 October. 

• USDAW - 18%. All Usdaw members will be receiving information from the Politics Team about the election for the Labour Party’s next Deputy Leader. All Usdaw members who are eligible to vote will receive a ballot paper by email. Please make sure that your details are up to date with Usdaw, including your email address.  You can do this on the Usdaw website or by contacting the Politics Team on their email, politics@usdaw.org.uk or you can call them on 0161 249 2452. The ballot is now open, until 23 October. 

• Unison - 15%. UNISON members who have been members of the union since 8 March 2025 and are full Labour Link levy payers will be entitled to an individual vote in the contest as long as they meet the Labour party’s eligibility criteria (eg members will have to declare that they support the aims of the Labour party and must not be a member of any other political party) and are on the electoral register at the address held by UNISON. If you have an email address registered with us, you should be sent a ballot automatically. These will start to be sent out from 8 October. If you don’t have an email address registered with UNISON but would like to add one to get a ballot, please fill in this online form. You can add an email address right up until 5pm on Monday 20 October.

• Community - 1%. Only a reference to the nomination

• Musician's Union - 1%. MU members who have been members of the Union for at least six months and who pay into the political fund will also be entitled to an individual vote in the contest, as long as they meet the Labour Party’s eligibility criteria:

• You must support the aims of the Labour Party

• You must be a British citizen or have lived in the UK for a year or more

• You must not be a member of any other political party 

• For a full list of voting eligibility criteria, visit the Labour Party website.

The election will be run by the Labour Party, so all enquiries about the ballot itself will need to be addressed to them. Contact details can be found on their website. 

• NUM - 0%. - Nothing found online

Lucy Powell Nominating Unions -3

• CWU - 8%. Branches may also be aware that the CWU levy-payers are entitled to vote in this Deputy Leadership election (provided they meet the voter eligibility requirements) as a result of our affiliation to the Labour Party. We will be in touch with levy-paying members in due course to explain more about this process and how to secure a ballot. Branches should encourage all levy paying members to use their vote if they wish. 

• ASLEF - 1%. - Nothing found online.

• FBU - 1%. Only a reference to the nomination.

No Nomination Unions - 2

• Unite - 29%. Only a reference to the nomination

  • One of Unite's factions, The United Left did back Lucy Powell

• TSSA - 1%. Only a reference to the nomination

Analysis

It's possible to use level of online publicity of the process as a proxy for the size of the various union votes in the ballot. This is an initial estimate but is very rough and will be adjusted in the coming weeks as we look at the data in more detail. I am placing it here more to stimulate feedback. Once it is improved with a logical proxy weighting the model can be tested by applying the individual TU turnouts from 2010 to it. Unions with a more "opt-in" approach may be given a turnout that is closer to the 2020 35% opted-in "affiliate supporter" era turnout, less a one third drop to take account of the likely one third member drop in turnout from 2020 to 2025.

Model 9 - A draft initial Trade Union Electorate assessment

Note: This is a highly tentative estimate of how many of each union may have signed up or been signed up to vote. It is not how many in each union voted which may actually average 6% across those unions and will have varied from 2%-20% across different unions assuming a two-thirds turnout of the individual union 2010 turnout data shown below.

Bridget Phillipson Nominating Unions -6

GMB - 200k

USDAW - 140k

Unison - 200k

Community - 10k

Musician's Union - 15k

NUM - 0

Lucy Powell Nominating Unions -3

CWU - 70k

ASLEF - 10k

FBU - 10k

No Nomination Unions - 2

Unite - 40k

TSSA - 5k

A useful set of links to explain process and candidate campaigns:

Candidates listed in alphabetical surname order

Procedure

Procedure for the 2025 Deputy Leadership Election The most definitive guide for future elections.

Parliamentary Research Report on History of Labour Leadership elections

2020 Leadership Election Procedural Rules A number of rules are now superceded by 2021 Rule Changes

Nominations

MP Nominations

MP Nomination Crowdsourced Spreadsheet coutesy of Election Maps

Regional MP breakdown

Final MP Nomination Totals:

Bridget Phillipson 175 (55%), Lucy Powell 117 (37%), Bell Ribeiro-Addy 24 (8%). Total: 316 out of 399 PLP MPs (Turnout 79%). This is very low by MP standards of nomination and voting in elections and I understand was caused by complex absent/proxy voting rules that the PLP and NEC might want to review. There also might have been a degree of political abstention too after recent PLP unrest over Government decisions.

Note: Of the 20 at the time eligible Socialist Campaign Group (Total membership 25 with 2 readmitted since nominations closed and 3 suspended) 17 nominated Bell Ribeiro-Addy along with 7 other MPs: Kenneth Stevenson, Euan Stainbank, Cat Smith, Afzal Khan, Barry Gardiner, Stella Creasy and Peter Lamb. The 3 SCG members who did not nominate her were: Dawn Butler, Marsha De Cordova & Kate Osamor.

Labour MP Nomination Thresholds: 1981-2014 12.5%; 2014-2018 15%; 2018-2021 10%; 2021-present 20%.

According to recent YouGov polling roughly half of Labour members (53%) feel the field of views represented by the two candidates is about right, while 29% do feel the contest has been too narrow. 

CLP and Affiliated TUs and Socialist Society Nominations

My TU and Socialist Society baseline assumptions before nominations - proved right

Labour Affiliates Explainer from LabourList

Final CLP and Affiliate Nomination Totals:

CLPs: Bridget Phillipson 165 (38%) , Lucy Powell 269 (62%). Total: 434 out of 650 CLPs (Turnout: 67%).

Affiliates in total: Bridget Phillipson 10 (48%), Lucy Powell 11 (52%). Total: 21 out of 31 Affiliates (Turnout 68%). This nomination turnout is a little down on 2020

of which:

• TUs: Bridget Phillipson 6 (67%), Lucy Powell 3 (33%). Total: 9 out of 11 TUs (Turnout 82%) (Note: In terms of TU conference vote share of all 11 unions it is: Bridget Phillipson 59%, Lucy Powell 11%, Abstention 30% )

• Socialist Societies: Bridget Phillipson 4 (33%), Lucy Powell 8 (67%). Total: 12 out of 20 Socialist Societies. (Turnout: 60%)

Note: Based on 67% of CLPs nominating (some others might have been held but were not quorate?) & assuming a 5-8% participation rate at least 9,000 to 14.500 Labour members have already taken part in this election process.

Useful Nominations Mapping courtesy of Samuel Barnes and a New more detailed map from him here.

MP Nomination to CLP Nomination Analysis

My "X" thread on the Deputy Leader Election

Background Historical Comparison Note on Nominations

CLP nominations totals since 2007: 

• Leader: 2010 396; 2015 387; 2016 338; 2020 641.

• Deputy Leader: 2007 303; 2015 367; 2020 640; 2025 434. (Best nomination totals apart from 2020)

CLP Electoral College Vote Turnout - 1981 to 1992

CLPs directly voted (a minority of them doing so after local member OMOV ballots) in the old pre-OMOV Electoral College & data for that is:

• Leader: 1983 634; 1988 608; 1992 609. 

• Deputy Leader 1981 626; 1983 623; 1988 608; 1992 609. 

Comparison Organisational Nominations 

2020 was the first time when nominations other than MP's directly counted towards a candidate getting on the ballot following 2018 rule changes. These were not changed in 2021 when the MP nomination threshold was increased from 10% to 20%

• 2020 Leader Numbers and Details

• 2020 Deputy Leader Numbers and Details

Candidate Campaigns

Bridget Phillipson Campaign

• Candidate Statement

• Campaign Website

• Campaign X Feed

Lucy Powell Campaign 

• Candidate Statement

• Campaign Website

• Campaign X Feed

Hustings

• Hustings at end of Labour Conference. My question to candidates was picked.

• Fabian Society Hustings.

Interviews of Candidates 

• Bridget Phillipson

• Lucy Powell

Leadership Election Results Announcement

Previous Leadership Election Announcement Venues at Lab Annual or Special Conferences

• 1981: Deputy - Lab Annual Conference, Brighton

• 1983: Leader/Deputy - Lab Annual Conference, Brighton

• 1992: Leader/Deputy - Special Conference, Methodist Central Hall, London 

• 1994: Leader/Deputy - Special Conference, Imperial College, London 

• 2007: Leader/Deputy - Special Conference, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester 

• 2010: Leader - Lab Annual Conference, Manchester

• 2015: Leader/Deputy - Special Conference, QEII Conference Centre, London 

• 2016: Leader - Lab Annual Conference, Liverpool

• 2020: Leader/Deputy - No conference due to the Covid Pandemic. Announcement simply held Online. 

• 2025: Deputy - Special Conference. In effect a Hybrid one with a small number at Labour HQ and 2025 Conference delegates invited to attend online.

I attended 1983, 1992, 1994, 2007 & 2015 and watched 1981, 2010, 2016, 2020 and 2025 on TV.

Candidate Campaign Spend

A small update is here. 

Up until 2015 there was little polling data on Labour members apart from a few academic exercises in the 1990's and more recently by Professor Tim Bale with a useful document here. This led to a clear air of complacency on the side of the party  Blairite right (as opposed to its perhaps more cautious TU based right) in favour of "de-institutionalising" the party from 1998 onward through querying the "Trade Union Link", abolishing General Committees, creation of supporters lists and seeking to introduce primaries at a period when the party membership was in a rarely researched period also changing as well to a far more expressive mindset compared to the instrumentalists Blair had won with in 1994. 

However the big surprise of 2015 plus Brexit debates led to an upsurge of member polling during 2015 and 2019 by various groups, so by 2020 both the Keir Starmer campaign and Rebecca Long Bailey campaign were polling members. Since then Labour Together (using YouGov) has continued to poll members (eg here, here and here) and also now Labour List using Survation.

This is good as it should end any complacency on all sides of the party. This site now aims to aggregate the data to make it more easily available to members in a Party that, in reaction to the "scar tissue" felt by MPs & leading people currently in the party towards  2010 to 2019 events, has made quite a substantial "Institutional turn" back to the structures that the Blairite right of the party termed as "old fashioned" from the 1990's to early 2010s.

Below is all the current known polling on the Deputy Leader campaign and it has also been used to model a range of results based on various assumptions.

What do Labour Voters want from a Labour Deputy Leader?

Whilst it is Labour voters shown here candidate teams will find this useful when "framing" their backstory and forward offer narratives to members and trade union voters:

• Is from a working class background: 62%

• Is from outside London/South: 48%

• Is from left of the party: 42%

• Is a current cabinet minister: 29%

• Is a woman: 26%

• Is from an ethnic minority background: 18% 

Data from here and here.

Deputy Leader Election Member Polls

Note: No polls so far have covered the Trade Unionist vote

• 8/9/25 Find out Now - multiple candidates

• 9/9/25 Survation Deputy Leader Favorability Polling

• 15/9/25 Labour List/Survation Phillipson 39%, Powell 61%

• 26/9/25 Labour List/Survation Phillipson 31%, Powell 69% 

• 29/9/25 YouGov Phillipson 44%, Powell 56% 

• 23/10/25 Labour List/Survation and also full data here Phillipson 42%, Powell 58%

• 24/10/25 Find Out Now Poll Phillipson 44%, Powell 56%

Estimated Cube Rule calculation on CLP Nominations

• Phillipson 44%, Powell 56% 

The cube rule or cube law is an empirical observation regarding elections under the first-past-the-post system. The rule suggests that the party getting the most votes is over-represented (and conversely, the party getting the fewest votes is under-represented). Thus if Lucy Powell was leading members by 69%-31% one might expect her to get 92% of CLP nominations? This law held in the past, so for example in the 1988 Leader election Neil Kinnock was polling over 60% of known CLP votes over Tony Benn but won 80% of CLPs.

If anyone has a useful spreadsheet of individual CLP votes (even anonymised) this data could be used to calculate more from CLP nominations.

Modelling of the Deputy Leader Polls and Data

These are not predictions but just projections based on known data. You can make your own predictions from the choice of data.

Some of the inputs may be inaccurate (eg TU data overstated), and some of the assumptions too so if anyone has better data, let me know and it can be added to the models.

Assumptions for the models

Electorate:

• Members: 270,000 paid up - this is based on a small basket of CLP membership trends

• Trade Unions:  1,400,000 (though could be quite a bit lower due to Lab Members duplicate vote weeded out)

Assumed Potential Turnout. 

• Members: 60%

• Trade Unions: 9%

Explanation of turnout assumptions. 

Member turnout draws from two sets of data 

• 2010 Labour Leader election (data here) where member turnout was 72% and affiliate turnout was 9%. This was part of a 3-way electoral college but if you take away the MP's the electoral system is broadly similar to the current one except with a higher MP gatekeeping threshold of 20% compared to 12.5% then.

• Feb 2024 Welsh Leader election (data here) where member turnout was 58% and affiliate turnout was 9%

Other Leadership Election turnout data is as follows that can be used to adjust turnout models:

• 1994 Turnout:  N/A. Members 72% (240k eligible voters) , TU political levy payers 19.5% (4m eligible voters). (Note: These were two of three sections of the then electoral college where MPs/MEPs had a 98% turnout. These are estimates from recalled data from the era as well a data from a Parliament Research Report derived from David Butler's British Political Facts

• 2007 Turnout: 50%? (89k out of 177k) This was a claim online but I have not been able to verify it. If proved it would show Deputy Leader elections on their own may poll 20% lower than Leader elections.

• 2015 Turnout: 76.3%. Members 83.5%, Affiliated Supporter 48.5%, Registered Supporter 95.5%- see here.

• 2016 Turnout: 77.6%. Section breakdown not given - see here and here. They were likely similar to the 2015 %.

• 2020 Turnout: 62.6%.  Members 72.6%, Affiliated Supporter 35.0%, Registered Supporter 93%- see here and here.

• Note: Under the Collins Review voting scheme approved in 2014, Affiliated Supporters  were a self-selecting subset of political levy payers and numbered 150,000 in 2015 and 210,000 in 2020 & thus as self-selected were likely to have a much higher turnout than when the wider 1.4m political levy payers voted. Unite the Union in its Affiliated Supporter Recruitment literature in 2020 claimed to have 50% of affiliated supporters which is a far higher percentage than it did of political levy payers.

Turnout assumptions

• Members: Turnout will be more like the Welsh Leader turnout than the Labour Leader turnout

• Trade Union: Phillipson 60%, Powell 40% - this is based on the 60% size of Ed Miliband's 2010 "Fourth" & final ballot result. Further affiliate nomination analysis here, and here.

Affiliate Turnouts in 2010

These do look pretty comparable to more recent union General Secretary and NEC turnouts so may be quite stable. 

• ASLEF - 25%

• Community - 12%

• CWU - 11%

• GMB - 8%

• MU - 12%

• TSSA - 15%

• Unison - 7%

• Unite - 11%

• USDAW - 4%

• Socialist Societies - 44% (Important to note these are only 1% of affiliate vote. Turnout among the 14 varied by 12% to 79%

Total Affiliate Turnout in 2010 - 9%

Note: FBU were not affiliated to Labour in 2010 but the turnout for their recent general Secretary election was 29%. TSSA's recent General Secretary election had a 33% Turnout.

Note: NUM only has 196 political levy paying members so there is no data on their turnout in a ballot but it could be quite a high percentage when so few are networked together.

Possible Votes Cast under assumptions above

• Members: 162,000

• Trade Unions: 126,000

• Total: 288,000

Useful caveats on these assumptions to bear in mind:

• The electorate data could be inaccurate more for the TUs than the Lab membership. It could be a lot lower thus changing the number of votes cast.

• We have a lot of data on member behaviour but much less on TU voter behaviour. It is quite possible that either Phillipson or Powell does better than the current TU vote share assumption given in the models below.

• Turnout for the TUs looks reasonably stable but member turnout will matter a lot. The assumption here is it will be close to Welsh Leader member turnout rather than Labour Leader turnout and that could be wrong? Alternatively  turnout, whilst likely much higher than an NEC election nowadays at 18%-25% could be at 50% or below? Or, on the other hand, the Campaigns manage to boost the turnout to Labour Leader vote turnout levels?

In th end the more data we collect the more we can adjust these models and from the final results develop more public models. The data here will also be useful not just for this election but also future Leader and Deputy Leader campaigns as the voting system is likely to be similar to this now settled process after the big changes since the Collins Review era and after. More on some of the political implications of this are below.

Three models have been produced below on the above assumptions but more can be produced on those assumptions or by choosing additional different assumptions. Thus the models should be seen more as current potential projections rather than predictions.

Candidates listed in alphabetical surname order

Current Deputy Leader Polling Models

Model 1. Polling Average Model 

This is a standard approach in polling, however it really works best with a lot of pollsters in order to overwight to outlier polls and pollsters.

Possible Vote Shares based on data above

• Member vote share is an average of last Survation and YouGov - Phillipson 37%, Powell 63% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 60%, Powell 40% - this is based on the size of Ed Miliband's 2010 final ballot result

Member Votes % based on those % assumptions

• Member: Phillipson 37%, Powell 63% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 60%, Powell 40%

Member votes based on those assumptions

• Member: Phillipson 60,000, Powell 102,000 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 76,000, Powell 50,000

Total Vote: Phillipson 136,000, Powell 152,000 

Total Vote %: Phillipson 47%, Powell 53% 

Model 2. YouGov only "Traditional Gold Standard" Model

YouGov has a strong record of getting Labour Leadership results right so have been seen in the past as "Gold Standard" polling, on Labour contests but this tends to be their final poll and they do not poll Labour members as often as Survation nowadays so their segmentation weighting adjustment accuracy may decline because of that.

Possible Vote Shares based on data above

• Member vote share just YouGov who have got last 4 Leader elections spot on: Phillipson 44%, Powell 56% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 60%, Powell 40% - this is based on the size of Ed Miliband's 2010 final ballot result

Member Votes % based on those % assumptions

• Member: Phillipson 44%, Powell 56% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 60%, Powell 40%

Member votes based on those assumptions

• Member: Phillipson 71,000, Powell 91,000

• Trade Union: Phillipson 76,000, Powell 50,000

Total Vote: Phillipson 147,000, Powell 141,000

Total Vote %: Phillipson 51%, Powell 49%

Model 3. Survation only "Regular Member Polling" latest Poll Model

Survation regularly poll members nowadays and that may help them adjust their segmentation weightings better to fine tune their results as they go along.

Possible Vote Shares based on data above

• Member vote share just Survation who are doing more polling on members nowadays

• Trade Union: Phillipson 60%, Powell 40% - this is based on the size of Ed Miliband's 2010 final ballot result

Member Votes % based on those % assumptions

• Member: Phillipson 31%, Powell 69% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 60%, Powell 40%

Member votes based on those assumptions

• Member: Phillipson 50,000, Powell 112,000

• Trade Union: Phillipson 76,000, Powell 50,000

Total Vote: Phillipson 126,000, Powell 162,000

Total Vote %: Phillipson 44%, Powell 56%

Model 4 - A Trade Union "Past Behaviour" Vote estimate

As we have little TU poll information apart from past votes and turnouts, I have added this extra model based on data already on this site. The assumptions here have not been added to the 3 earlier models, but will get added as an assumption to further models below once polls have closed.

Historic Assumptions from past Leadership votes:

• In 1994 TU votes can be estimated to be 3% to the left of member votes. A much higher % of members and trade unionists were more instrumentalist in those days.

• In 2007 TU votes can be estimated (eg Cruddas 3rd round vote) as 14% to the left of members as membership was only 180k and a lot of people who later joined after 2015 were just political levy payers.

• In 2010 TU votes can be estimated (eg Final round vote) as 14% to the left of members as membership was only 200k and a lot of people who later joined after 2015 were just political levy payers.

• In 2015 Affiliated supporters were 8% to the left of Labour members as some has joined the party but many were still just levy payers

• In 2016 Affiliated supporters were just 1% to the left of Labour members as many had joined by then and this trend continued as shown in the following 2020 election.

• In 2020 its interesting to note registered affiliates were more moderate (7% to the right of members in Leader ballot) and Rebecca Long-Bailey's vote was strongest among members as people who might have voted in previous TU levy ballots were in the party then.

• The above might suggest that since 2020 as people have left and Labour's membership has swung to the right, then its TU vote may be moving left again with ex-members voting as levy payers - see further analysis and assumptions below.

Current Assumptions:

• Current nominations in terms of size of levy payers: Bridget Phillipson 59%, Lucy Powell 11%, No Nomination 30%

• 2010 TU ballot turnout for unions supporting each candidate:  Bridget Phillipson 9%, Lucy Powell 22%, No Nomination 13%. In other words Lucy Powell has support of unions with a likely higher turnout in a low turnout ballot. The ballot turnout is old but evidence from more recent TU ballot turnouts seems to indicate it has not changed much across the unions.

• Readjusted support of candidate nomination unions based on ballot turnout by unions: Bridget Phillipson 47%, Lucy Powell 17%, Abstention 36%

• Assumed turnout of unions overall: 8% of 1.4m = 112,000 (this is slightly revised down based on estimates of member turnout so far)

• Assumptions for the vote in each type of union:

  • Bridget Phillipson 6 unions - 47% of 112,000 = 53,000: Bridget Phillipson 70%, Lucy Powell 30% (GMB NE dominance for Phillipson offsets a smaller majority in a more evenly balanced Unison)

  • Lucy Powell 3 unions - 17% of 112,000 = 19,000: Bridget Phillipson 30%, Lucy Powell 70% (Assumption with TU backing Powell does better than her polling with Labour members)

  • No Nomination 2 unions -36% of 112,000 = 40,000: Bridget Phillipson 35% , Lucy Powell 65% (Membership assumed to vote broadly similar to Lab members but now with a slightly more left bias similar to when TU levy payers were to left of Lab members before 2015 as shown above.

• Totals from assumptions above: 

  • Bridget Phillipson 6 unions - 53,000: Bridget Phillipson 37,000, Lucy Powell 16,000

  • Lucy Powell 3 unions - 19,000: Bridget Phillipson 6,000, Lucy Powell 13,000

  • No Nomination 2 unions - 40,000: Bridget Phillipson 13,000, Lucy Powell 27,000

• Total of 112,000 TU Vote: Bridget Phillipson 56,000  (50%), Lucy Powell 56,000 (50%)

Caveats on this model:

• This is a model not a prediction and if you put in different assumptions you will naturally get different outputs.

• TU electorate and vote turnout may be overstated due to duplication with Labour members.

• We do no know the impact of the rise of the 138k member Greens and even the so far badly organised but perhaps 50k member "Your Party". It's possible now that post 2020 ex-members who may have voted in TU ballots prior to 2015 may simply ignore the ballot or even vote for a candidate they most dislike with a personal aim to open up more political space for their new party? 

• Of the abstaining unions, the Unite 15% turnout may be overstated as unlike 2010 they may not be promoting the ballot so this estimate above assumes 10% turnout. However a lot of their levy payers now may be ex-members so those that do vote may well be quite left leaning as per historic data above. TSSA at 11% looks in line with their election turnouts.

• The vote % in each group is an assumption based on historic TU votes (ie tend to be more left when those people are not in the party) and the TU vote being more left when some ex-members are not in the party any more.

Model 5. An Initial Current Estimate based on the other Models - will change if any final polls come out

This model has been added to bring together what we know. If there are any final polls I will do a final estimate based on those. A post-election model will also be produced based on adjusting for the final result.

This model assumes the following:

• Paid up membership eligible to vote at 260,000 after recent media reports

• Member Turnout of 60% due to hearing of possibly higher member turnout than earlier assumed in recent days as perhaps a final surge of member votes and campaign GOTV may have lifted it from around 50% at the weekend to close to 60% at close of poll.

• Trade Union Turnout revised back up at 9% due to hearing of possibly higher member turnout than earlier assumed in recent days - see above

Possible Votes Cast under assumptions above:

• Members: 156,000

• Trade Unions: 126,000

• Total: 282,000

• Assumptions for the vote in each type of trade union by nomination decision:

  • Bridget Phillipson 6 unions - 47% of 126,000 = 59,000: Bridget Phillipson 70%, Lucy Powell 30% (GMB NE dominance for Phillipson offsets a smaller majority in a more evenly balanced Unison)

  • Lucy Powell 3 unions - 17% of 126,000 = 22,000: Bridget Phillipson 30%, Lucy Powell 70% (Assumption with TU backing Powell does better than her polling with Labour members)

  • No Nomination 2 unions -36% of 126,000 = 45,000: Bridget Phillipson 35% , Lucy Powell 65% (Membership assumed to vote broadly similar to Lab members but now with a slightly more left bias similar to when TU levy payers were to left of Lab members before 2015 as shown above.

• Totals from the assumptions above: 

  • Bridget Phillipson 6 unions - 59,000: Bridget Phillipson 41,000, Lucy Powell 18,000

  • Lucy Powell 3 unions - 22,000: Bridget Phillipson 7,000, Lucy Powell 15,000

  • No Nomination 2 unions - 45,000: Bridget Phillipson 16,000, Lucy Powell 29,000

• Total of 126,000 TU Vote: Bridget Phillipson 64,000  (51%), Lucy Powell 62,000 (49%)

  • See caveats in Model 4 above for how this could be wrong

Possible Vote Shares based on data above

• Member vote share at polling average of Bridget Phillipson 38%, Lucy Powell 62%. Feedback from some campaigners over the last 2 weeks suggests the poll average may be more accurate than the last YouGov or Survation polls, so this is being used for this model. This could change if any final polls come out.

• Trade Union: Phillipson 51%, Powell 49% as suggested by Model 4 but with a slightly higher turnout due to what now looks like a better member turnout than was assumed a week ago.

Member Votes % based on those % assumptions:

• Member: Phillipson 38%, Powell 62% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 51%, Powell 49%

Member votes based on those assumptions:

• Member: Phillipson 59,000, Powell 97,000

• Trade Union: Phillipson 64,000, Powell 62,000

Total Vote: Phillipson 123,000, Powell 159,000

Total Vote %: Phillipson 44%, Powell 56%

Model 6. Result based on October Survation Poll

This model has been added to take account of a smaller member gap between candidates than the previous polling average model. A post-election model will also be produced based on adjusting for the final result.

This model assumes the following:

• Paid up membership eligible to vote at 260,000 after recent media reports

• Member Turnout of 60% due to hearing of possibly higher member turnout than earlier assumed in recent days as perhaps a final surge of member votes and campaign GOTV may have lifted it from around 50% at the weekend to close to 60% at close of poll.

• Trade Union Turnout revised back up at 9% due to hearing of possibly higher member turnout than earlier assumed in recent days - see above

Possible Votes Cast under assumptions above:

• Members: 156,000

• Trade Unions: 126,000

• Total: 282,000

• Assumptions for the vote in each type of trade union by nomination decision:

  • Bridget Phillipson 6 unions - 47% of 126,000 = 59,000: Bridget Phillipson 70%, Lucy Powell 30% (GMB NE dominance for Phillipson offsets a smaller majority in a more evenly balanced Unison)

  • Lucy Powell 3 unions - 17% of 126,000 = 22,000: Bridget Phillipson 30%, Lucy Powell 70% (Assumption with TU backing Powell does better than her polling with Labour members)

  • No Nomination 2 unions -36% of 126,000 = 45,000: Bridget Phillipson 40% , Lucy Powell 60%  (If membership vote is closer with a 16% gap then membership is assumed to vote broadly similar to Lab members but now with a slightly more left bias similar to when TU levy payers were to left of Lab members before 2015 as shown above.

• Totals from the assumptions above: 

  • Bridget Phillipson 6 unions - 59,000: Bridget Phillipson 41,000, Lucy Powell 18,000

  • Lucy Powell 3 unions - 22,000: Bridget Phillipson 7,000, Lucy Powell 15,000

  • No Nomination 2 unions - 45,000: Bridget Phillipson 18,000, Lucy Powell 27,000

• Total of 126,000 TU Vote: Bridget Phillipson 64,000  (52%), Lucy Powell 60,000 (48%)

  • See caveats in Model 4 above for how this could be wrong

Possible Vote Shares based on data above

• Member vote share based on October Survation Poll: Bridget Phillipson 42%, Lucy Powell 58%. 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 51%, Powell 49% as suggested by Model 4 but with a slightly higher turnout due to what now looks like a better member turnout than was assumed a week ago.

Member Votes % based on those % assumptions:

• Member: Phillipson 42%, Powell 58% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 52%, Powell 48%

Member votes based on those assumptions:

• Member: Phillipson 66,000, Powell 90,000

• Trade Union: Phillipson 66,000, Powell 60,000

Total Vote: Phillipson 132,000, Powell 150,000

Total Vote %: Phillipson 47%, Powell 53%

Model 7. "Close Result" Scenario - this includes a TU vote assessment that can be easily adjusted 51%-49% either way but initially models a Lucy Powell 51%-49% win

This model has been added in view of media speculation of a closer result and also some analysis of the Phillipson "path to victory" here. A post-election model will also be produced based on adjusting for the final result.

This model assumes the following:

• Paid up membership eligible to vote at 260,000 after recent media reports

• Member Turnout of 60% due to hearing of possibly higher member turnout than earlier assumed in recent days as perhaps a final surge of member votes and campaign GOTV may have lifted it from around 50% at the weekend to close to 60% at close of poll.

• Trade Union Turnout revised back up at 9% due to hearing of possibly higher member turnout than earlier assumed in recent days - see above. This also likely benefits Bridget Phillipson. Also see the note below on potential mix of TU electorates which may change individual union turnouts but not necessarily the number of actual votes cast.

Possible Votes Cast under assumptions above:

• Members: 156,000

• Trade Unions: 126,000

• Total: 282,000

• Assumptions for the vote in each type of trade union by nomination decision:

  • Bridget Phillipson 6 unions - 47% of 126,000 = 59,000: Bridget Phillipson 75%, Lucy Powell 25% (GMB NE dominance for Phillipson offsets a smaller majority in a more evenly balanced Unison and USDAW Facebook operation has a bigger impact than some have noticed)

  • Lucy Powell 3 unions - 17% of 126,000 = 22,000: Bridget Phillipson 30%, Lucy Powell 70% (Assumption with TU backing Powell does better than her polling with Labour members)

  • No Nomination 2 unions -36% of 126,000 = 45,000: Bridget Phillipson 40% , Lucy Powell 60% (If membership vote is closer with an 12% gap then membership is assumed to vote broadly similar to Lab members but now with a slightly more left bias similar to when TU levy payers were to left of Lab members before 2015 as shown above.

• Totals from the assumptions above: 

  • Bridget Phillipson 6 unions - 59,000: Bridget Phillipson 44,000, Lucy Powell 15,000

  • Lucy Powell 3 unions - 22,000: Bridget Phillipson 7,000, Lucy Powell 15,000

  • No Nomination 2 unions - 45,000: Bridget Phillipson 18,000, Lucy Powell 27,000

• Total of 126,000 TU Vote: Bridget Phillipson 69,000  (55%), Lucy Powell 57,000 (45%)

  • Note: If on all these electorate and turnout assumptions Bridget Phillipson gets 58% or over of the TU vote (as Models 1-3 firstimplied with a 60% estimate) and assuming a YouGov/CLP 56%-44% noms member vote score for Lucy Powell, then Bridget Phillipson would win by 51%-49% under that 3% TU adjustment to this model

Possible Vote Shares based on data above

• Member vote share based on YouGov and CLP Nominations vote estimate of Bridget Phillipson 44%, Lucy Powell 56% rather than the more recent October Survation Poll of  Bridget Phillipson 42%, Lucy Powell 58% though vote shift is only 3,000 from one to the other

• Trade Union: Phillipson 55%, Powell 45% as suggested by Model 4 but with a stronger Phillipson showing in her nominating unions and No Nomination unions and a slightly higher turnout due to what now looks like a better member turnout than was assumed a week ago.

Member Votes % based on those % assumptions:

• Member: Phillipson 44%, Powell 56% 

• Trade Union: Phillipson 55%, Powell 45%

Member votes based on those assumptions:

• Member: Phillipson 69,000, Powell 87,000

• Trade Union: Phillipson 69,000, Powell 57,000

Total Vote: Phillipson 138,000, Powell 144,000

Total Vote %: Phillipson 49%, Powell 51%

Post Result Update Model Development - Pre-Result Early Notes

• Both Survation (67%) and Find Out Now (68%) final polls have shown a higher member turnout than the models above. If we r cautious & add Survation's extra 7% to turnout models that might mean 18k more memb voting & up to 3% more of final vote compared to TU turnout model. However we do not know TU turnout so it could be that is higher 2 in a higher turnout election? Since Lucy Powell has led in all 5 polls & CLP nominations too an 17k extra member vote wd look to benefit her. One final caveat is that in 2010 the Poll overestimated Ed Miliband member vote by 6% however it was more accurate in 2015, 2016 & 2020. At this late stage I don't think I would adjust models for turnout before the result as what is stated above looks like a clear trend so one can look at them in that context. However I will adjust them after in the light of results & any turnout data 

• TU electorate (USDAW look to have emailed 250k levy payers whilst Unite may have lower 75k to 105k "opt in") may not be very consistently developed. It may mean turnout of TUs will b higher than 9% but actual numbers voting may b less changed than people think due to a mix of "widespread but low turnout" and "self-selected opted in higher turnout" votes.

• To give an example if Union mix of some widespread emailed and some explicitly opted leads to an electorate of 500,000, then a 25% turnout reflecting a likely lower turnout score than the 49% and 35% of purely signed up "affiliated supporter" turnouts of 2015 and 2020 it would still lead to the 126,000 TU ballot vote suggested above.

Ballot Turnout Flow - Estimate Models

Whilst much of the campaign happens up until first ballots go out, the period after is sometimes seen as an anti-climax. However this assumption misses out when voters actually cast their vote as a result of candidate campaign GOTV which goes on all through the balloting period. The balloting period is not that well researched in terms of flow models of voter behaviour as to when they cast their vote. Here are two models that try to look at that aspect based on voting in other contexts with slightly different electorates. A lot depends on where campaigns target their GOTV. With postal vote campaigns there is a lot of effort just prior to ballot issue, whilst the Estonian model below suggests a slightly later GOTV effort.  

Model 1 - Postal Vote Return

This is an estimate based on postal vote turnout rule of thumb which shows the turnout flow during the two weeks of the ballot may be of follows: 

• First 3 days - perhaps 33% have voted 

• First 3rd of the ballot - perhaps 50% of those intending to vote have voted 

• Half-way through - perhaps two-thirds of those intending to vote have voted 

• Final 2 days - perhaps 10%+ vote

This may reflect voting behavior by an older electorate

Model 2 - Estonian Online Voting

This is an estimate based on evidence from a 7 day ballot period for online voting in Estonian elections.

• First 2 days of ballot time - 33%

• Middle 2 days of ballot time - 19%

• Final 3 days of ballot time - 48%

This may reflect voting behaviour by a younger electorate

Data here. 

And key chart from it below

Segmentation Estimates from Polling

There has been some recent Labour member demographic data published in the Times and YouGov recently and pre-conference polling of member views was published in YouGov. Both help contribute how we can break down Labour membership. There are also other ways and some are set out below.

Below are  a series of segmentation models of the current Labour membership. This is to give a flavour of the current member polling but also explore 2020's Instrumentalist v Expressive member polling with some current approximate estimates. CLP STV NEC elections in 2026 will also add to the data on member segments in future just as it has in the past. Past data on that will in due course be added to the Labour Archive webpage.

All the data that exists means more segmentation models can be created & current ones refined. The data that exists is below for you to create your own if you wish?

Segmentation Model 1: Instrumentalist v Expressive

This aims to draw from a basket of public survey data to identify broad segments of members. Media coverage on this segmentation often talks about secret polling but this sort of segmentation was well known as early as 2015 as this  article from Peter Kellner shows whilst others tried to imply a more simplistic view of the some segments.

There should be more transparency over segmentation in this or other elections thus reducing negative narratives on use of campaign segmentation, which is pretty standard when used for candidate Get Out The Vote (GOTV) campaign prioritisation.

More data will be added to tighten up this data.

• 5/6/25 Survation views on government policies 30-32% Instrumentalist

• 10/6/25 Survation poll on spending priorities 26% strongly expressive

• 16/6/25 Survation poll on Lab Foreign policy 23% strongly expressive

• 23/6/25 Survation poll on members expecting a Lab majority 32% instrumentalist

• 28//6/25 Survation political direction polling 31% Instrumentalist

• 14/7/25 Survation polling on migration policy 36% instrumentalist

• 03/9/25 Survation polling in Digital ID 30% expressive

• 26/9/25 Survation poll on Party Conference sovereignty 38% intrumentalist

• 08/12/25 Survation Poll on opposition to Fiscal Rules 20% expressive

• 24/2/26 Survation Poll on Defense spending/NATO: 74% pro defense spend increase & 88% pro-NATO

• 25/2/26 Survation Poll on Jury Trials: 41% back restrictions on Jury trials (instrumentalist?) with 48% against

• 09/5/26 Survation Poll on Party Members view of party 36% have considered quitting over last year

• 20/5/26. YouGov Poll on Member views on Immigration  26% want a more welcoming policy, but 44% support  current policy & 18% a more restrictive one

• 20/05/26: YouGov Poll on Member view on policy 53% want a more left wing direction,  21% keep where it is and 19% more centrist

Current member segments estimate: 

• Strongly Instrumentalist: 30%-38% 

• Mixed instrumentalist/expressive views: 32%-47% - needs to be broken down more

• Strongly Expressive: 23-30%

Note: Why relatively few members were "mislead" to vote Keir Starmer by Instrumentalist v Expressive polling in 2020

It is now more widely accepted by the media that some Labour members were misled as to the sort of Party Keir Starmer was aiming to lead and issues around polling and campaign support. The most detailed case made about all of this is in Paul Holden's book "The Fraud" which was published in October 2025 and serialised here and summarised here and Times and Guardian journalists have also covered it too with the Times covering much of the key points of the story as early as November 2023. As an investigative book it focuses on the period in question and does not necessarily claim to set out how this sort of situation can be avoided in future but this website by its existence and its analysis of the data does try to set out two potential practical approaches to reduce some of the issue: 

• More public regular polling of Labour members so everyone is more clear what they actually think and how they vote internally. This is likely to mean future Leadership candidates will simply not need to spend so much on polling thus issues with donation size or donor motivations is substantially reduced. In 2010-15 there was only 1 or 2 polls. Between 2015-19 there was a little more but it was mostly about Brexit views which tended to become internal partisan arguments. From 2021 thanks to Labour List and Survation but also to YouGov and Find Out Now we now have a lot more and the Deputy Leader outcome above shows all three pollsters polling looks to have been pretty accurate. This website is the only place where all the member polling from all pollsters is aggregated and whilst it has some commentary based on my experience of such polls provides the direct data so people can draw their own separate conclusions or even their own partisan narratives depending on their own motivations. 

• As will be stated in more detail below in the future tactics section, Party Leadership candidates might want to save the term "pledges" only for the General Election Manifesto. Then you are less likely to see members disappointed if what they get is not what some think they voted for. In some ways this has already been achieved as no significant "pledges" were made in the Deputy Leader election and I would predict now, no candidate will use the term in the next Leader election.

However even before that book was published there was for a number of years a more generalised narrative about a supposedly secret way to hoodwink members (despite the segmentation used in the member polling that was reported being well known) that often appears online but the narrative is often not thought through in any detail and in its angriest form has implied 100% of Labour members were mislead in 2020.  The Guardian in October 2023 had already set out what the segmentation was which was essentially using instrumentalist and expressive segmentation but breaking the expressive element into 2 sub-segments so you got the following 3 segments: 

• 40% - "Instrumentalists” would vote for whichever leader would be likely to win the next election, and tended to be older and joined Labour in 1997 or just before.

• 40% - “Idealists” made up the middle 40% of the membership and were often younger and projected on to Corbyn what they wanted him to be.

• 20% - “Ideologues” rejoined the party to vote for him having initially signed up in the 1970s and 80s before leaving or being kicked out.

That article set out more clearly what Pogrund and Maguires book "Left Out" had briefly mentioned in its final chapter as early as September 2020 and the whole story of that final chapter and beyond was covered further in their book "Get In" in March 2026.

Looking at that quite simple 3 part segmentation it can be clear that it was assumed the 40% Instrumentalists would likely mainly vote for Keir Starmer anyway (and even more so as most were likely strongly Remain/Peoples Vote where he had a strong narrative already), the 20% Ideologues would not and  thus the 40%  Idealists were the target audience for messaging. Important to also note 90% of Labour Members even in 2018 were Remain and 86% were in favour of a People's Vote and by Jan/Feb 2020 that figure was likely higher with 110k  people joining for the Leadership vote - see below.  This can also be cross-referenced with the 2018 Polling with Unison union members (68% Remain/66% Peoples Vote), Unite the Union members (61% Remain/59% Peoples Vote) and GMB union members (55% Remain/56% Peoples Vote). Looking at the those numbers as an experienced poll watcher as I did but few others bothered, the 110k member inflow in Jan 2020 and contempoary Brexit emotions actually polled on Jan 31 2020 - see below - it always seemed likely to me Keir Starmer would likely win.

Thus from the above most of the Idealists were also likely Remain/People's Vote supporters and more how they would have felt about the Brexit actual delivery in Jan 2020 is also below.  The fact that Keir Starmer - see below - won by 57% but had another 12% locked up second preferences in Lisa Nandy's vote - also see below - to win 69% in just a two person contest would suggest that whatever the rights or wrongs of the wider strategy (especially the use of 10 pledges) as documented in the books and articles above, in simple outcome terms it was effective with winning  more than three-quarters of the 80% of the member vote in two segments that votes were sought from.

The misled claim is thus important and the bigger claim of 100% of members were misled therefore needs to be seriously broken down by the significant data we do have to see who might have been misled and who might not have been and to actually quantify it as there is actually lots of other member vote data at the same time to compare numbers:

• Clearly the 38% 2016 Owen Smith voters were not mislead in 2020 as they did not vote Jeremy Corbyn anyway in 2016.

• Nor were the 27% who voted Rebecca Long-Bailey in 2020 in any way mislead as they voted for her and presumably were advocating for her as a stronger safe-guarder of the 2017 and 2019 manifesto's.

• The two above blocs of votes already comprised 55%-60% of the cast votes in 2020, and were clearly not misled in any way due to their voting behaviour, so what of the rest?

• Nominations by organisations in 2020 showed only two out of 32 affiliates shifted from left to right in 2020 from 2016: Unison and TSSA - mainly for their own internal political reasons and TSSA even balloted their members which then supported Keir Starmer. Most organisations stuck to their 2016 politics so clearly few experienced officers of organisations thought they were being mislead at any point.

• 110k joined Labour for the 2020 Leader election and around 90% voted Starmer or were Nandy 2nd transfers to him according to polling at the time & were clearly motivated for a different leader as many joiners were likely "People's Vote" supporters not necessarily expecting any candidate to quickly get them back into the EU, but more as instrumentalists driven by anger over the entire handling of the Brexit process by the Party. In many ways this surge of people was far more decisive than any specific candidate campaign & was driven far more by people within very large 500,000+ networks in over 250 active Local Groups acting mainly under their own volition to join Labour. This very big 2018-19 network development was not really registered by those close to 2015-19 LOTO as few apart from John McDonnell ever bothered attending a big People's Vote march to see the operation of those big local networks in action preferring to fall for a "Hampstead Guardian Readers" narrative instead. Those who did attend realised it was far more like a standard TUC march in terms of type of people (many Lab members & public sector worker types) but without the big TU balloons at the front and no IST-SWP or CWI-SPEW recruitment gazebos at start and finish. It's perhaps a surprise people who put value on "big movement events/rallies" did not spot this as in many ways as the 3 biggest People's Vote marches  of 2018 and 2019 & their networks had exactly the same mobilising/recruitment affect in the long-run as the 2015 People's Assembly march held on 20 June that Jeremy Corbyn spoke at and asked people to sign up for the 2015 election. That big mobilising event came in between his initial 9% polling just before it and his subsequent July 17-21 40% polling. What is also forgotten is that on January 31 2020 the data shows the emotional mindset of 2019 Labour voters was 61%-19% negative to Brexit and it was likely the 90% Remain voting Labour membership would have an even higher negative view. Thus those associated with  a strong oppositional view to Brexit would likely have benefitted from that at the moment people were voting in the Leadership election.

• The smaller & more left leaning franchise of 430k paid up members as at 12/11/2019 for the 2 NEC by-elections (it was a wider franchise of 550k members & Supporters voting for Leader) was held at same time as the Leader election, and showed the 3 left slates that stood combined vote was 46% compared to 56% & 62% single left slate votes in 2018 and 2019 for the NEC so there was already a clear swing for other separate elections at the same time as the leadership vote. No one nowadays talks of the complex left v left factional warfare for the NEC in early 2020 which is documented here, here, here, here and here. This is important as it shows the still under-researched 2018-2019  "Corbynite v Corbynite" battles (partly covered by Owen Jones in his book) which occurred when a perception of "left ascendancy" then led to older left factional battles to reassert. In the absence of a Labour right "unifying opponent" we are again seeing this factional warfare all explode again with the formation and founding of "Your Party". Thus 2020 Labour internal election battles were an early warning of the present.

• On top of that shift at the same time as the Leader ballot another smaller franchise selection with only 2019 members not the 110k Pro-EU joiners was taking in place in London (which has around 21% of Lab members) showing a shift away from the left especially in geographical seats.  In February 2020 - 2 months before the Leader ballot result -Labour right supported candidates won 8 out of 9 London Assembly consituency ballots and split the London-wide list vote 2-2. Bearing in mind London has around 20% of Labour members this was a massive sample showing the trends two months before the Leader result and I spotted that, but no one apart from me has ever commented on it.

• Liam Byrne's selection as West Midland's Mayoral candidate at the same time also showed that there was a shift going on with National Momentum and Unite backed Salma Yaqoob polling 26% quite similar to Rebecca Long-Bailey's result.  

• The 2020 Scottish Labour Deputy Leader Election Result held at the same time as the 2020 Leader election was reported the day before the 2020 Labour Leader election and few noticed at the time it showed a 15% swing from left to right from the 2017 Scottish Labour Leader Election similar to shifts in the NEC by-election and regional selections above showing further that these swings were independent from the nature of the Keir Starmer campaign. 

• The then 217,960 Affiliated supporter section was around 50% Unite members and had a direct Unite recommendation to vote Rebecca Long Bailey (& Richard Burgon for Deputy too) but then had a large swing from right to left between 2016 and 2020 at over 30% indicating a far deeper shift by affiliated supporters after two election defeats.

• It's likely also forgotten that Rebecca Long-Bailey came third to Lisa Nandy in the affiliated section vote which was then 50% Unite by their own 2020 claims. No one has, as such, accused Lisa Nandy of misleading members with her campaign or Unite of not actively promoting their preferred candidate so the big swing was real whatever Keir Starmer was doing.

• The similarity of the vote size for both Rebecca Long-Bailey in the leadership election (27% in a 3 candidate election & 31% if it had gone to a 2nd ballot due to 85% pro-Starmer Nandy transfers) and Richard Burgon in the different candidate Deputy Leader election (21% in 3rd ballot when down to 3 candidates and would have got 23% in a 2 candidate vote v Rayner if the 91% Starmer/Nandy voting Rosena Allin-Khan vote had been distributed) would also suggest the swings described above were pretty consistent in both elections and thus could not have just been achieved due to the policies of one candidate in one of two elections.

• The policy agenda that was argued over in the 2020 election clearly was - as the mislead narrative fairly points out - very popular with members as polling by the Rebecca Long Bailey campaign also showed, but the very high numbers for many positions also showed that a majority of 2016 Owen Smith voters voting in the 2020 elections would have backed those left policies too, but those voters still did not back Jeremy Corbyn before at the height of his support. This illustrates when people who may hold a mix of instrumental and expressive values nevertheless leant into their instrumental values which they didn't so much in 2015 but clearly did in 2020.

• At the same time 79% of members in poll at the time thought Keir Starmer would likely move the Party "towards the centre". and only 18% thought he would keep it "broadly the same". Asked about their “top issue or policy when it came to choosing who to vote for in the Labour leadership contest”, respondents were most likely to indicate that “credibility as a potential Prime Minister” was a priority. 34% picked the credibility option, while 14% picked “maintaining current Labour platform”, 12% “anti-austerity policies”, 11% “uniting the party” and a further 11% “winning back traditional Labour voters”. Evidence there of a plurality (45%) focused on instrumentalist outcomes compared to 26% focused on more expressive views. In November 2020, when many members who voted in the leadership election were still in the party, polling showed 58%, 63%, 55% instrumentalist responses to some questions yet at the same time 74% saw the 2019 Manifesto as "broadly correct" indicating a large number of members who voted for Owen Smith in 2016 and Keir Starmer in 2020 might like past policies but did not support the previous messenger of them.

• Something else that very few noticed at the time is that the very accurate final YouGov poll (page 4) did ask members, affilaites and supporters their view if Jeremy Corbyn has been on the leadership ballot, how they would vote and excluding Won't vote and Don't know the result was Keir Starmer 45%, Jeremy Corbyn 32%, Lisa Nandy 14%, Rebecca Long-Bailey 9%. As the poll gave 2nd preference data for the two main ballot we can do a final round and being reasonable and adding all the Long-Bailey vote to Corbyn and transferring 85% of the Nandy vote to Starmer and 15% to Corbyn we get a final result Keir Starmer 57%, Jeremy Corbyn 43%. It's important to know that if the actual ballot had gone to a second round the official result would have been Keir Starmer 69%, Rebecca Long-Bailey 31% showing that Jeremy Corbyn would have likely added 12% to the Long-Bailey vote share but would have been 14% behind Keir Starmer in a second round ballot. Those 12% who would have voted Jeremy Corbyn but in his absence voted Keir Starmer could well be the % who might have been misled. 

However trying to be very fair here, based on all the above points, at most 10-15% of Labour members might have been "mislead" by Keir Starmer messaging but that would not have a made a difference to the result as with 85% Lisa Nandy transfers Keir Starmer would have won by 69% in a two candidate election and thus with a 10-15% change to his vote share, he would have still won by 54%-59% in a second ballot without any of those votes. Using the Jeremy Corbyn polling to give us just a single number would suggest the 10-15% can be boiled down to around 12% misled.

The above mistaken 100% mislead narrative is known as a "unifying narrative" as it plays to some people's anger and avoids looking at the detail of a Leadership election loss and instead blames others campaigns for your own campaign's defeat thus uniting people against opponents but at the same time learning little for the future. 

Looking at all the data above the question no one answers since a still large 27% voted for Rebecca Long-Bailey (plus 5 trade unions backing her) and all her team and online and alt-media advocates were naturally in their campaigning saying "he's misleading you" (& if they claim they were not then they were then missing a major piece of political messaging which would be both gobsmacking and imply political amateurness), then why did their confident "he's misleading you" message of the time fail?

The fact there were 3 Left slates for the 2020 NEC by-elections (more on that above) & a relatively half-hearted Long-Bailey campaign, (which was also undermined when both first Ian Lavery and then Barry Gardiner were also promoted as alternative left candidates by some very senior sources at some points) illustrates how likely those left internal differences would emerge again in Your Party with no external opponents and how  a unifying narrative was good to paper over the cracks when there were external opponents to blame, but fails when you don't have a demonised opponent any more.

That narrative above, however inaccurately explained by some, will likely continue to exist though as it is likely to form one of the founding myths of "Your Party" to recruit it's members. 

Information on this model of motivations of a Selectorate for a Party Leadership Election in the context of the 2020 Labour Leadership election is here.

The central rationale of the Stark model is that the party (s)electorate, whether they are using parliamentary ballots, all-member ballots, hybrid parliamentary-membership ballots or electoral colleges using delegates or individual members, will be motivated by the goal of securing governmental power as a consequence of electoral success (Stark, 1996). 

This certainly applied in the 1994 Leadership election and the 2020 Leadership election. However the 2010, 2015 and 2016 Leader elections  possibly illustrated an "expressive" reaction by members over "instrumentalist" decisions leading to the compromises of 13 years in government as this  article from Peter Kellner suggests. 

Even before the ballot closes we can learn a lot from this election about issues for future leadership elections

Here are some general and specific points which I will continue to add to for the rest of the campaign and also after when we have the final data to update the models above and others have drawn lessons too.

The Candidate - Psychological Motivation to Run

This is important as experience of being a local elected politician and leading a Labour Group, work on various internal election, selection and leadership campaigns tells me over the years there are two overlapping approaches which nevertheless have extreme ends depending on the individual candidates mindset, their behaviour and political circumstance in the short and long-term. The two approaches are:

In a hurry - seize the day

This candidate is dynamic and in a hurry to prove themselves to their own mind but also to those around them who may be seeking preferment and egg them on (you can usually tell from the amount of unatributable briefing. This also may be the mindset of any first time candidate for the role as naturally they and their team cannot predict the future or have a set of learning experience if they do not win and consider "what next"?

Just to make it clear there is nothing ethically wrong with this Mindset. Some people do only get one chance. At the same time it not just about the candidate's own personal mindset but also how they might be perceived by MPs as gatekeepers to nomination, Labour members and the public. The polling above, whilst not yet covering motivation perceptions might give us a few clues as to how people are perceived?

At present Wes Streeting will likely be perceived as an "in a hurry candidate". However it is possible Angela Rayner might be seen in this position too as might Shabana Mahmood . However it should be said all are clearly young enough to run and lose and become a longer-term contender too - see next section.

Always a contender - for a long time

These have a mindset of getting on with things and being seen as competent which may be deeply embedded or come from learning from a first attempt at standing for the role.. Another driver is how a candidate takes a defeat which is very important. As my old adage states: "its not how you look when you win that matters but how you look when you lose that counts". Those that are "good losers" generally build respect and if their driver is ongoing competence they will keep being seen as a potential leadership candidate for a long period by people well outside their own team even if they lose more than once. 

Examples of this for Leader/Deputy stretch back to Herbert Morrison, Harold Wilson, Denis Healey, Jim Callaghan, John Prescott through to Yvette Cooper to Andy Burnham who if he stands in future would be on his third attempt. Others who may come under this are Ed Miliband (past leader) and John Healey (seen as safe pair hands compromise candidate?)

Organisational

• We now know the full procedure for a future leadership campaign. 

• Apart from the 2021 rule changes, the one difference from 2020 was the Procedures Committee required all CLPs (even those with GC structures) to have a quorate all members meeting. CLPs rose to the occasion and with 434 nominations, which was the second largest set of CLP nominations - see above - after 2020s.

• The one further clarification this time is that all affiliated voters have to have 6 months membership

• There is one anomaly in that members with 8 weeks membership can vote in a nomination meeting for a Leadership election but then don't get a vote in the ballot. One assumes the NEC will change this to bring in a consistent 6 month rule in future?

• Labour has been far more careful with candidate access to data in this election with the party sending out emails and text messages on behalf of candidates. Also an innovation is that member phone-banking is through a Labour party system (logged in via a standard Lab member access email & password a bit like Labour Dialogue but more restricted than that as the Party itself does the upload of phone data) with limited access across the membership list. This is likely a response to how the Jeremy Corbyn data handling companies were able to build a 100k+ Momentum mailing list in 2015/6, perhaps also how other campaigns subsequently built data too and also an outcome of any ICO investigation into alleged data issues around one parliamentary selection.

Campaign Related

What are the lessons for the Leadership campaigns of the future?

No candidate made the many "campaign mistakes" of 2010 and 2015 & the one political mistake of 2020, which had some impact over a number of years:

• Have a long election period of 5 months & not 2 or 3 - David Miliband & Andy Burnham

• Add a "widen the debate" candidate to the ballot who either transfers to your opponent (David Miliband) or beats you (Andy Burnham) 

• Waste time on setting up a "Community Organising" body that adds few votes to your campaign - David Miliband

• Only run any sort of campaign in the unions that nominated you - David Miliband

• Using the term "pledges" for internal elections. when Members and the media associate that very much with the sort of very strong pledges made at General Election so best kept for General Elections only. - Keir Starmer

Here are general and specific points for five types of campaign for leader:

Most types of campaign by candidates

• Avoid the term "pledges" for internal elections. Members and the media associate that very much with the sort of very strong pledges made at General Election so best kept for General Elections only. Better terms to use are "Commitments", "Future Plans", Early Plans" "Proposals" etc

The Early Favourite Candidate

• Have a short election of no more than 3 months - it worked for Blair in 1994. What is interesting with this election is it has been completed quite effectively in 2 months flat, so expect some to push for 2-3 months if they have a clear "early favourite" candidate they want to succeed by minimising mistake time?

• Don't waste time on projects that don't win you votes

• Ensure you have a campaign operation in all unions or at least: Unite, GMB, USDAW, Unison and CWU that cover 93% of the TU vote at conference and political levy payers.

• Focus on a turnout strategy simply encouraging members to cast their vote in the areas you are strong as you seek to "social norm" an "inevitable result" in the areas where you lead. 

Not necessarily the favourite candidates - key points for each type:

Below is simply practical political advice to each type of candidate campaign from what we have learned above so advice to one campaign may naturally contradict advice to another.

Right of Centre "Moderate" candidate

• If you are not the favourite at first going for a longer campaign may not help you as other campaigns to the left of you may benefit more. A no more than 3 month campaign is likely better as right of centre ground game in the CLPs from conference results is far better

• Never "widen the debate" to allow a Hard left candidate on the ballot as at the very least they will bring out extra votes and then transfer to a soft left opponent.

• Develop strong  practical "instrumentalist" messages to mobilise your vote with that segment. Expressive messages will likely work best when related to your backstory as you may be constrained in what you can say on policy if you are seeking to replace another person from your wing.

• Make the most of what seems nowadays to be a more united right of centre unions with 59% of the affiliated membership to engage with their members with a turnout strategy. This is different to 2010 when some of those unions split and like "soft left scar tissue" below may have also had a long-term impact on TU support behaviour?

Left of Centre "Soft Left" candidate

• If you are not the favourite go for a longer election period of 5 months as it will likely help you build your ground game.

• Do a full risk assessment of any suggested "widen the debate" strategy  to transfer extra votes to you and do it with lots of polling. If it shows an extra such candidate could do far better than expected, it is better not to take any risks at all after the substantial impact  was predicted in 2010 and actually happened in 2015. From a tactical cynicism perspective, one can always say after nominations closed that it would have been good to have had a wide debate without being too specific. In any case you can still pick up votes from your left especially if they particularly dislike the right's candidate and through your local volunteers applying a GOTV message. 

• If the right candidate does win the majority of TU nominations still ensure you have a campaign in the TUs that nominated you and the big 5 of Unite, GMB, USDAW, Unison and CWU which comprise 93% of the TU vote. At same time also focus on a high turnout campaign with party members.

• You will likely win a lot of "expressive" segment members with a positive hope message and some signature policies. However still have practical "Instrumentalist messages to win over some of that member segment too.

Left of Centre "Hard Left" candidate

• Go for a longer election period of 5 months as it will likely help you build your ground game. Bear in mind though that the Party will be giving you less access to data and managing it for you, so building the equivalent of a 100k+ Momentum mailing list of 2015 will be much harder.

• Be clear what sort of campaign you are running. Is it essentially promotional to make a strong political point about "widen the debate" followed later by a strong point about "exclusion from the ballot" or is it serious where you may need to make early compromises to win wider support? In this election SCG secured just 24 of the 80 (30%) of the nominations to get on the ballot with the 17 of the eligible 20 SCG nominating & securing another 7 MPs well below the % level of soft left support it secured in the "widen the debate era" of 2010-2020.

• The Socialist Campaign Group looks to be still split as it has been many times in the past. From McDonnell/Meacher to Ribeiro-Addy/Barker to possibly Lewis/Burgon/Butler in future. That may happen again so agreement on a single consensus candidate before any election is important. The polling here indicates  that future possible candidate option to be a pretty evenly split group in terms of member vote with a small Lewis lead overall with it being Lewis 4%, Burgon 4% if Burnham were to run, but Lewis 8%, Burgon 6% without Burnham running.

• Be aware there is a lot of "scar tissue" from soft left MPs from their experience of 2015-19 when they put a left candidate on the ballot but still got it heavily in the neck from their new local activists after. What are you going to do to apologise for that to longer-serving MPs and be able to say it will be different this time such as on issues as party political boundaries regarding any new members, which soft left MPs will be concerned over? Also using framing like "putting a "socialist on the ballot" implies others are "non-socialists" and many soft left MPs will dislike that framing. 

• Be aware unlike 2010 and 2015 there will be far more member polling so other candidates will be assessing your potential impact in a way they would not have done in the 1998-2015 "complacency era" when the SCG vote was often discounted. This may mean "widen the debate" is harder to secure for the next generation or more at least.

• The 2021 rule changes established the 6 month rule for member or affiliate voting. That change along with the lack of fixed term parliaments setting potential leadership election dates well ahead (2 things that were different in the 2010-2020 era and together uniquely & contingently created more scope for populist left political insurgencies within Labour) means inviting a vote into the party for an election is now far harder than then as you simply cannot be sure when a Leadership election may occur.

• If you do get on the ballot, much of your vote will be expressive segment members and your effort there will be more messages reaching out to members with mixed instrumentalist and expressive views seeking to accentuate the key values principles that often strengthen expressiveness within their decisions.

Below is a series of Sequential Lists that will maximise the involvement of those watching conference online. Other parties have hybrid conferences and it has to be said even the Tories encourage and online conference to a degree and Labour held "Labour Connected" in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, so this is an attempt to make you feel part of Conference more.

If using X, try to use the official #Lab25 hashtag to help find information easier. Other hashtag options are here.

1. Watch Labour Conference live

Livestreams Link

Individual days will be added at each link below when they come on stream:

Sunday  - Mainly Organisational reports and Consitutional dicussion

Monday - Chancellor Speech from 12 noon.

Tuesday - Leader Speech from 2pm

Wednesday + Deputy Leader Hustings debate at 12 noon to 1pm.

Live from Liverpool online 6pm Zoom Sun-Tues by Labour's Training Team - useful updates 

IPPR are livestreaming their fringe. Big up to IPPR who did over 30 fringe events shown online and did it quite simply with a stage & a mix of panels and interviews.

Let me know if there are any other livestreamed fringe events?

2. Reports and Documents

Main Reports

Annual Conference Reports all here - this includes all the CAC reports which covers the daily agenda.

The NPF Report and NEC Annual Report (not online) get approved. 

Treasurer's Report - this was published before conference and ends up in the NEC Annual Report

Delegates Report along with the CAC reports explain the business of Conference.

Conference Agenda

My X feed on conference process and results data analysis

My annual faction estimate 

Sunday - CAC1 and Addendum for Motions

Monday - CAC2 and Addendum for Composites and Emergency Motions

Tuesday -  CAC3

Wednesday - CAC4

Announcements

Labour One App launched at conference - a little more detail

Results and Ballots

Priorities Ballot result here  and faction vote score here.

NCC result and analysis

CAC result and analysis

Rule Changes - NEC proposed pages 21-37 (passed) & CLP proposed pages 38-41 (defeated) Results here.

Current 2025 Labour Party Rule Book - to see where the above rule changes impact

Other Materials

2025 Conference Timetable and Key Deadlines and Rules

2024 full conference report courtesy of David Boothroyd who has recreated the full conference reports produced from at least 1918 to the 1990s

In the next 4 sections we cover the 4 main elements that make up much of the institutional nature of Conference

• The factions and groups particularly affecting the CLP half of conference

• The CLP's themselves

• The affiliated trade unions and socialist societies 

• The organisations (eg think tanks) often operating much of the fringe along also with the factions/groups/TUs and socialist societies above 

Support Levels

My estimates of faction/group support among CLP delegations at conference far past years are posted here:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

My initial 2025 estimate will be posted here on Monday.

LabourList Labour Tribes graphic

This can be viewed here.

List of Factions/Groups

This is a useful list of all the internal Labour Political factions and political groups and what they are advocating for at conference. Where possible the link will go to any specific conference page. 

Quite a lege number will be holding fringe meetings too.

Labour First

Progressive Britain

Labour Together

Labour to Win & their X Feed lists vote recommendations

Labour Red Wall Group

Labour Future

Blue Labour

Labour Tribune MPs

Empower Labour

Open Labour

Mainstream

Momentum & their X Feed lists vote recommendations

CLPD

Socialist Campaign Group

Labour Black Socialists

Labour Representation Committee

Policy Subject Area Groups - these are not affiliated socialist societies 

Labour Yimby

Labour Growth Group

Rural Labour

Labour for Coast and Country

Labour Climate & Environment Forum

Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform

Labour Society for Sport

Labour for Trans Rights

Labour Women's Declaration

Labour Friends of the Forces

Labour CND