Labour are finished if they elect Rebecca Long-Bailey, warns former adviser

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn alongside Rebecca Long-Bailey. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA. - Credit: PA Archive/PA Images

The Labour Party will be ‘finished’ if Rebecca Long-Bailey takes charge, a former party adviser has warned.

Lance Price was asked about the possibility that a joint ticket of Long-Bailey and Richard Burgon could become the Momentum faction’s choice in the leadership election.

“I saw a possible ticket from the Corbynite wing of the party and I thought to myself, they wouldn’t would they?

“But then I looked at Miliband and I thought they wouldn’t, would they?

“And I looked at Jeremy Corbyn, they wouldn’t would they? And this is Rebecca Long-Bailey and Richard Burgon and I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me?”

He added: “Well, if that was the leadership team, then Labour would be finished.”

Asked why he thought that Price continued: “Because they come from such a narrow section of the Labour Party, in terms of in terms of its thinking, never mind anything else and because they represent the kind of politics that has led us to being in the position that it was back in 1935.

“Worse than it ever was under Margaret Thatcher and when Michael Foot was the leader of the Labour Party, and it suggests that the party simply hasn’t listened to the message that the electorate gave them this week, last week.”

Price did not say who should take the job, but in a nod to Jess Phillips said: “It should definitely be a woman, it should definitely be someone outside of London.”