John Connolly John Connolly

Starmer and Long-Bailey fail to impress on Andrew Neil

At the beginning of the year Lisa Nandy became the first Labour leadership candidate to subject herself to a grilling by Andrew Neil. It took almost two months, but this evening the two other candidates left in the race, Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, finally appeared on the show as well. And while both survived the encounter, neither particularly impressed.

Keir Starmer appeared to have trouble defining his political relationship with Jeremy Corbyn. The Holborn and St Pancras MP admitted that Corbyn was a major issue on the doorstep at the last election, but then unconvincingly denied there were any rifts between him and the Labour leader over the party’s Brexit policy last year. At one point, Starmer even suggested that Corbyn was ‘utterly relaxed’ that his Shadow Brexit Secretary had gone off-script in calling for a second referendum, a month before it became official party policy.

Starmer looked most uncomfortable when asked about donations to his campaign.

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