Labour leadership: What are candidates doing to win over members as ballots open?

The coming days will be crucial in winning the support of the undecided, writes Ashley Cowburn

Long-Bailey, Nandy and Starmer at a leadership hustings in Glasgow on 15 February (Getty)

Tomorrow Labour will begin sending ballots to its half a million membership, registered supporters and affiliated supporters across the country as voting opens. It is likely a large proportion of members have already made up their minds – given the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn has already been going on longer than the entire general election campaign.

Ballots will be sent out by email, so members can theoretically vote online almost instantaneously. It is likely a significant proportion will do so. For those who don’t, expect a flurry of voting closer to the deadline of 2 April.

But for the three remaining candidates – Sir Keir Starmer, Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey – the coming days will be crucial in winning the support of the undecided and wavering voters, or those unsure who to mark as their second preference.

Starmer has maintained a cautious approach to the campaign, well aware of his status as the frontrunner. While not devoted to the Corbyn project, he has sought to embrace the radicalism of Corbyn’s policies – conscious of the left-leaning basis of the Labour membership.

In recent days, he won the support of the former Momentum chief and Corbyn staffer Laura Parker, who said she was backing Starmer for putting party unity “at the heart of his mission”. It is this message he will repeat in the coming days.

A source close to the the shadow Brexit secretary’s campaign said the next couple of weeks will be “incredibly crucial” as the ballots are distributed. “Unity is the watchword of our campaign, which reflects the fact that many members over the last few years we’ve been too divided,” the source said.

“Pushing that message of unity is important. Equally important is pushing the message we want to protect the radicalism of the last few years: we don’t want to push the baby out of the bath water and ditch all of the fundamentals.”

For Long-Bailey, her campaign team will focus relentlessly on her message of “aspirational socialism” and the Green Industrial Revolution – a policy she was instrumental in devising for Labour’s last manifesto for government. Her team believes this transformational policy can mobilise the party’s members, and attract support from the wider public in the long years of opposition that will follow the leadership contest.

“I think Rebecca is seen as the underdog, but she’s the only candidate who has put together a detailed path to power,” a source in Long-Bailey’s campaign said.

While aware that Starmer is currently favourite to win the contest, the source added: “I think the next week is crucial. Most people vote in the first week. Everyone will have had a ballot probably by Wednesday so the next seven days will be absolutely crucial. There’s seems to be a feeling that it will be closer than anyone thinks.”

In the coming days her team will be pouring resources into Facebook targeting and “persuasive content” – utilising the campaigning power of Momentum, which officially backed her leadership campaign in the initial weeks of the contest.

But one of the shadow business secretary’s greatest weaknesses is that she lacks the insurgent status that was critical to Corbyn’s first victory as Labour leader in the summer of 2015. Rather, the label of “continuity Corbyn” has proved hard to shake off.

Nandy’s campaign – well aware of her outsider status in the race – will attempt to focus members’ attention on who is the best candidate to take Labour into a general election. “She can win back the voters that we lost,” a source on her team said.

Her handling of the media, and a high-profile interview with Andrew Neil, also won her early plaudits in the contest, but she doesn’t have the appeal to either the left or the centre of the party that her rivals in the contest seem to have secured.

Her team believes, however, through phone canvassing sessions, that there are a considerable number of undecided Labour members in the contest. “Most of them are undecided between Lisa and Keir,” her team claimed. “It’s crunch time for us.”