Bridget Phillipson v Lucy Powell - behind the battle for Labour's deputy leader

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BBC

Of the 18 politicians to have been Labour's deputy leader, one has a dim view of the job. "Really ghastly," says Dame Margaret Beckett, who was number two under John Smith in the 1990s. She reckons it was a thankless task - important, but frankly, a bit dull. Well, it's not boring right now. Labour is in a mess, and the party has to choose a new deputy who might be part of Sir Keir Starmer's salvation or, if it goes wrong, make a bad situation even worse. So what's the job, who wants it, and what might happen next? "It's a bit of a funny, vague role," one party insider says. There isn't a precise job description. Technically, the deputy leader has a seat on Labour's obscure but incredibly powerful National Executive Committee. They attend what's known as political cabinet, not the weekly meeting of ministers, but the less frequent get together of the prime minister's top team where the civil servants are booted out of the room, and the party people come in. The deputy also attends the weekly party parliamentary meeting, along with the prime minister, some elected backbenchers and the leader of the House. The deputy leader is not automatically the deputy prime minister - the official government understudy - and won't be this time.