Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey has been re-elected as the MP for Salford and Eccles with 28,755 votes and a 16,327 majority.
Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Rebecca Long-Bailey won a third consecutive election last night in the Salford and Eccles constituency.
A close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, she is widely seen as a contender to be the next leader of the Labour Party but today she said a leadership bid was “not something that I’m thinking about.”
In an exclusive interview with Salford Now she said: “One of the things that certainly struck me in the campaign was making sure that people actually understood what our policies were.
“We had such a fantastic manifesto, so detailed but I think sometimes it can be overloaded. Perhaps we could have made an attempt to explain the policies in more detail so that they understood the words more clearly on their doorstep.”
Earlier she said: “I think we’ll have to analyse in a lot of detail what happened.
“Certainly in Salford and across the north west Brexit consistently came up on the doorstep and we were a party that tried to bring together those who voted Leave and those who voted Remain and perhaps that wasn’t a position that satisfied many of our constituents and voters across the North particularly but that’s something we will look at in greater detail.”
Asked if she wanted to be leader of the party, the shadow secretary of state for business, energy and industry replied: “It’s not something that I’m thinking about, I think we need to get through tonight, see where the chips fall and then we will re-group as a party, assess what’s happened and what the next steps need to be.”
The 40-year-old was born in Old Trafford and attended Chester Catholic High School before becoming a Salford docker and trade union representative at Shell, Barton Docks.
Her career then branched into customer service at a pawn shop before working in call centres, a furniture factory, and a postal delivery before eventually studying Politics and Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan (MMU), with a string of conversion courses in her quest to become a solicitor.
Salford & Eccles: LAB HOLD #BBCElection #GE2019.
Full results: https://t.co/CcND4ld46Z pic.twitter.com/nh51TclVao— BBC Election (@bbcelection) December 13, 2019
Ms Long-Bailey worked at various law firms: Halliwells, Pinsent Masons and Hill Dickinson.
She then transitioned from lawyer to politics as she headed a women’s only candidate list and was elected over four and half years ago. Another election victory came in 2017 as she reinforced her hold on the Salford constituency winning nearly 66 per cent of the popular vote.
She studied law at Manchester Metropolitan University as she completed her solicitor training conversion course.
Last night’s outcome gives her a third consecutive election victory.
Before the result, the Conservative candidate Attika Choudhary said she felt that she might have picked up more votes than she expected, and the results showed this.
Her Party achieved 12,428 up just 394 from the 2017 election.
The Green Party also enjoyed an increase vote share as something its candidate is Bryan Blears, nephew of former Labour MP Hazel Blears, is attributing to the “David Attenborough effect” after his documentary Our Blue Planet. They received 2,060 votes up from 809 votes in 2017.
The Liberal Democrats also enjoyed an increase in votes from 1,286 in 2017 to 3,099.
By James Spencer (Web and radio package), Abdul Shikhmous (radio package) and Conor Whitely (interview and quotes).
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