What do the Labour leadership candidates need to do to win?

As the race to replace Corbyn begins, John Rentoul examines the hurdles facing each of the frontrunners

The long haul to 4 April has started (PA/Reuters)

The contest for Labour leader is taking shape. The first stage began yesterday, as the six declared candidates started signing up the 22 MPs and MEPs they need in order to advance to the next stage. It is now becoming clearer what each must do to win.

Keir Starmer

As the early favourite, he needs above all to avoid mistakes. That plays to his strength as a cautious and precise personality, but he also needs to inspire party members enough to prevent Rebecca Long Bailey in particular from stealing his supporters.

He has become quite good at working local Labour parties, having spent much of the past few years on the road. As Long Bailey reminded members in an acid aside yesterday, he has been preparing his leadership bid for some time: “I didn’t emerge from the election with a ready-made leadership campaign because my every effort during the election went into campaigning for a Labour victory.”

Rebecca Long Bailey

She is the main challenger, and so needs to tear Starmer down without appearing divisive, while fixing the weaknesses in her pitch. She was notably aggressive in her Tribune article yesterday, saying, as well as that jibe about Starmer’s ready-made campaign, that she wasn’t a millionaire (Starmer owns houses in north London and Surrey) and that the party had turned its focus “inwards on parliamentary manoeuvring for the last year” (Starmer led the guerilla war against Brexit in the Commons).

She needs to use the next phase of the campaign to convey more of her personality by deploying her deadpan humour and developing an easier public speaking style.

Lisa Nandy

As the third favourite, Nandy needs to disrupt the frontrunners. She is likely to win the nominations she needs to stand, but has also to find some space among Labour members who want to get further from the Corbyn legacy, and who want a woman leader. Her focus on towns has already become an internet meme, and could form the core of a thoughtful pitch to reconnect with Labour Leave voters.

Jess Phillips

Phillips came third among Labour members in last month’s YouGov poll, but with only 12 per cent of first preferences. She has the ability to shake up the race, with her risk-taking, truth-telling persona, although her campaign could equally well collapse if she speaks too much truth.

Emily Thornberry

The shadow foreign secretary, despite being well known, has suffered from her apparent disloyalty to Corbyn, in calling publicly and too early for the party to back a second EU referendum after the European elections in May. She now needs not just Starmer to stumble but one of Nandy or Phillips to fall as well.

Clive Lewis

The shadow minister for sustainable economics is running on a platform of working with other parties. His priority is getting the nominations to get on the ballot paper. Even if he gets enough MPs and MEPs to nominate him, he will still need at least one big trade union or 33 local Labour parties, which is quite a high hurdle. In the end, members are likely to be presented with a choice of four or five candidates.