Indian-origin MP Lisa Nandy in race to replace Corbyn

London, December 15

Lisa Nandy, one of the Indian-origin MPs who was re-elected in Thursday’s General Election amid a disastrous performance by her Labour Party, on Sunday confirmed plans to throw her hat in the ring to replace party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The 40-year-old MP won her Wigan seat in the north-west of England, holding on to one of the key bricks in the so-called “red wall” which collapsed as Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won over traditional Labour Party voters across the region.

Corbyn has declared that he would not lead the party into another General Election and is under growing pressure to resign sooner rather than later following Labour’s crushing defeat. “The honest answer is that I am seriously thinking about it,” she said.

“The reason that I am thinking about it is because we have just had the most shattering defeat where you really felt in towns, like mine, that the earth was quaking and we have watched the entire Labour base just crumble beneath our feet,” said Nandy, born in Manchester to a British mother and Indian father.

“We need to think seriously now about first of all how you bring those lifelong Labour voters — who felt that they not only couldn’t vote Labour but actually in many instance chose the Tories — how you bring Labour home to them,” she said.

Nandy, who has held shadow Cabinet positions in the past, took a more backseat role in recent times amid growing criticism of the Corbyn-led faction of the Labour Party. Some of the others seen as frontrunners for a leadership contest include Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer and Birmingham MP Jess Phillips. And the so-called Corbynista hard Left wing of the party backs Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey. — PTI