There have been nine Labour leadership elections since the formation of the Socialist Campaign Group:
1983,
1988,
1992,
1994,
2007,
2010,
2015,
2016, and
2020.
1983 leadership election The Campaign Group backed
Eric Heffer and
Michael Meacher in their unsuccessful bids for the leadership and deputy leadership in 1983.
Tony Benn could not stand because he was not currently in Parliament at the time, having just lost his seat.
1988 leadership election During his time as Leader
Neil Kinnock moved the Labour party to adopt
centrist politics. In the
1987 general election,
Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives won a landslide victory and were nearly 12% ahead of Labour in the popular vote. Following this defeat Kinnock introduced a Policy Review, which many on the left thought would lead to an abandonment of the party's commitment to
Clause IV,
public ownership and the transformation of society. At a meeting of the Campaign Group following this election defeat, it was agreed that
Tony Benn should stand against Kinnock in a leadership election, although Benn himself was reluctant to run. The decision to run led to a number of MPs leaving the Campaign Group including
Clare Short,
Margaret Beckett,
Jo Richardson and
Joan Ruddock. Labour's electoral college was weighted 40% to
affiliated unions, 30% to
Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) and 30% to MPs in the
Parliamentary Labour Party. Rules introduced following
Tony Benn's 1988 leadership challenge meant that candidates would have to secure nominations from 55 MPs to make it onto the ballot paper. Three candidates sought nominations:
John Smith, the favourite, regarded as being "from the right" of the party,
Bryan Gould, from the "centre-left" and
Ken Livingstone, the Campaign Group candidate.
1994 leadership election No candidate from the Campaign Group ran in the 1994 leadership election and the group did not endorse a candidate. However,
Margaret Beckett, who had been a member of the Campaign Group until 1988, was nominated by 18 Campaign Group MPs, with 5 nominating
John Prescott. Beckett's campaign was supported due to her position that Tory anti-union laws should be repealed and that anti-union changes to the party constitution should stop. No Campaign Group MPs backed
Tony Blair, who went on to win the contest.
2007 leadership election In 2007, only 24 of 353 Labour MPs were members of the Socialist Campaign Group and party rules required nominations from 45 MPs (12.5% of the Parliamentary Labour Party) to make it onto the ballot paper. Both
John McDonnell, then Chair of the Campaign Group, and
Michael Meacher, a member of the Campaign Group, sought nominations to run against
Gordon Brown. Both McDonnell and Meacher agreed that whichever of them had the support of fewer Labour MPs at the point of
Tony Blair's resignation would withdraw from the campaign and support the other. However, although Meacher gave his support to McDonnell following Blair's resignation not all of his supporters switched allegiance, leaving McDonnell short of the nominations required and leading to
Gordon Brown becoming leader unopposed. As part of his campaign,
John McDonnell published his manifesto as a book entitled
Another World Is Possible: A Manifesto for 21st Century Socialism. 2010 leadership election In 2010 nominations from 33 MPs (12.5% of the Parliamentary Labour Party) were required to make it onto the ballot paper. Socialist Campaign Group MPs
John McDonnell and
Diane Abbott both sought nominations to run; however, McDonnell withdrew from the race after it became clear he would not receive sufficient nominations, and instead supported Abbott to give her the best chance of making it onto the ballot. Abbott, the first black woman to ever contest the Labour leadership, secured the necessary 33 nominations after being 'lent' nominations from a number of MPs who were not supporting her campaign but wanted to ensure that the contest was not exclusively white and male. It has been suggested that this practice of lending nominations to left candidate to widen the scope of debate "set a precedent" for
Jeremy Corbyn's run for Leadership in 2015. Despite beating both
Andy Burnham and
Ed Balls in total number of first preference votes cast (35,259 individual first preferences for Abbott compared to 28,772 for Burnham and 34,489 for Balls), Abbott was eliminated in the first round of voting, as she received fewer votes from MPs, and
Ed Miliband went on to win the leadership election.. Abbott secured the first-preference votes of 7 MPs:
Diane Abbott,
Katy Clark,
Jeremy Corbyn,
Kelvin Hopkins,
John McDonnell,
Linda Riordan and
Mike Wood.
2015 leadership election The 2015 leadership election was the first held under new rules introduced by Ed Miliband following the Collins Review which recommended moving to a one-member one vote (OMOV) system. This reduced the previous weighting in favour of MPs and Trade Unions. The
Blairite wing of the Labour Party (including Blair himself) celebrated this reform, believing that the changes would mean that "the next Labour leader will be a Blairite". At a meeting of the Socialist Campaign Group on 3 June it was decided that, with McDonnell and Abbott both ruling themselves out after having stood previously,
Jeremy Corbyn should be the left's candidate for leader.
Margaret Beckett was one of those who nominated Corbyn despite disagreeing with him, and later described herself as a "moron" for doing so. Immediately following his success in getting on the ballot Corbyn attended a protest against the treatment of women detained at
Yarls Wood Detention Centre and against the 13-year detention by the US of British resident
Shaker Aamer in
Guantanamo Bay without charge. On 12 September 2015 Corbyn was elected
Leader of the Labour Party in a
landslide victory, with 59.5% of
first-preference votes.
2016 leadership election During the
2016 referendum Corbyn led Labour in campaigning to remain. Corbyn spoke at 15 rallies from London to Hastings to Aberdeen, reached more than 10 million people with his Remain messages on social media, made six statements in the Commons and put forward Remain arguments during interviews on Sky, BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Analysis from academics at
Loughborough University found that the BBC had excluded Labour voices during the campaign and instead covered the campaign as a
Conservative Party civil war. When the result of the referendum was announced Corbyn's opponents on the right and centre of the
Parliamentary Labour Party sought to trigger a leadership election on the grounds that they did not think he had campaigned sufficiently vigorously for Remain. MPs hostile to Corbyn leaked internal emails to the BBC which showed that Corbyn's team had resisted moves to pursue a more hostile line on immigration and suggested that this was evidence that Corbyn had sought to "sabotage" the remain campaign. Anti-Corbyn MPs had been briefing the media "for months to "expect movement" against Corbyn on 24 June", suggesting that the opposition to Corbyn was not primarily motivated by his actions during the referendum. In the days following the referendum a number of Corbyn's critics resigned from the
Shadow Cabinet and the parliamentary party passed a
vote of no confidence in Corbyn by 172 votes against to 40 for. Corbyn promoted a number of Campaign Group MPs to fill his Shadow Cabinet including
Richard Burgon,
Rebecca Long-Bailey,
Grahame Morris and
Clive Lewis, and with their support along with that of other left wing MPs and the mobilisation of members by
Momentum Corbyn refused to resign.
Owen Smith secured the required nominations to run against him. Corbyn's opponents in the
National Executive Committee were alleged by
Robert Peston to have sought to fix the results, by increasing the fee for becoming a registered supporter from £3 to £25 and excluding from voting the 130,000 new members who had joined in the previous 6 months.
2020 leadership election Following the
2019 general election, the Socialist Campaign Group reformed for 2019–2024. Campaign Group members
Rebecca Long-Bailey and
Richard Burgon ran for leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party, respectively. Both were defeated by
Keir Starmer and
Angela Rayner, respectively. == Views ==