Wednesday 18 December 2019 12:43 pm | Updated: Wednesday 18 December 2019 12:46 pm

Emily Thornberry announces Labour leadership bid

Thornberry has criticised her party’s decision to agree to an election, which she said was always going to be about Brexit.

Emily Thornberry has all but confirmed she will run for the leadership of the Labour Party.

Thornberry criticised her party’s decision to agree to an election, which she said was always going to be about Brexit.

She said it was a “total delusion” that Labour could shift the ground of the election to the party’s favour.

The Islington South MP said she wrote to leader Jeremy Corbyn to tell him that it would be “an act of catastrophic political folly” to agree to a snap poll.

Writing in The Guardian, Thornberry said the next party leader needed to have the “political nous and strategic vision” to rebuild the party and defeat Boris Johnson.

“So when the Labour leadership contest begins, whoever is standing – and I hope to be one of the candidates – the first question shouldn’t be about their position on Brexit, or where they live in our country,” she said.

“The first question should instead be: what’s your plan for taking on Johnson over the next five years?

“And do you have the political nous and strategic vision to reunite our party, rebuild our machine, gain the trust of the public, give hope to our declining towns and smaller cities, and never again waste the opportunity to take back power?”

Talking up her own credentials, Thornberry said she got the better of Johnson in parliament when he was foreign secretary and she was shadow foreign secretary.

“I took the fight to him every day, and pummelled him every week,” she said.

“Each time, the mask slipped, and we saw the real man – a mendacious, lazy, dangerous charlatan, unable to hide behind the tiresome smokescreen of bluster he usually relies on.

“He hated it, especially coming from a woman.”

The Labour leadership race continues to heat up, less than a week since Labour’s worst electoral defeat since 1935.

Keir Starmer also wrote in The Guardian today to pitch himself as the next leader, while Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips have also begun to send out signals about potential bids.

Shadow business secretary, and Corbyn ally, Rebecca Long-Bailey is considered the favourite at this point.

She has the support of the left faction of the party, led by pressure group Momentum, trade union Unite and many of the powerful figures on the party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC).

The next leader will be chosen by a ballot of party members expected to take place by March next year.