Who is still in the race to replace UK’s defeated Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn?

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s opposition Labour Party will elect a new leader after veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn said he would step down following his party’s general election defeat by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in December.

The Labour leadership ballot will run from Feb. 21 to April 2, with results announced on Saturday, April 4. The party will also elect a new deputy leader.

The next leader and deputy leader will be chosen by a vote of party members and other affiliated or registered supporters.

Following are the candidates who have received the required number of nominations from Labour lawmakers to go through to the next phase of the contest:

KEIR STARMER

Starmer, 57, has been Labour’s Brexit spokesman since October 2016 and is seen as having played a key role in pushing the party to back a second referendum on leaving the EU.

Starmer said he had spent his life fighting injustice, and was now ready to take on Johnson’s Conservatives. Seen as a party centrist, Starmer has warned against overreacting to the party’s election defeat by ditching Corbyn’s left-wing agenda entirely. He describes himself as a socialist.

Starmer is a barrister who served as a senior public prosecutor before entering parliament, and was knighted in 2014 for services to law and criminal justice.

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY

Long-Bailey, 40, is seen as a strong contender because she has strong ties with trade unions, who are hugely influential within Labour, and is close to Corbyn and his senior ally John McDonnell.

She represents the northern English constituency of Salford and Eccles and serves as Corbyn’s business spokeswoman. Her first job was working in a pawnbroker’s, and she went on to become a solicitor in the healthcare sector.

Announcing her candidacy, Long-Bailey said Labour needed a socialist leader committed to delivering the policies developed under Corbyn.

LISA NANDY

Nandy, a 40-year-old former Labour policy chief for energy and climate change, has said the party will become irrelevant unless it changes course.

A lawmaker who has represented the northern English town of Wigan since 2010, Nandy says Labour should focus more on towns, where, she believes “there is a strong feeling … that Labour stopped listening long ago”.

She resigned her energy post in 2016, one of several so-called “shadow ministers” who quit in protest against Corbyn. “He is unable to form a broad, inclusive shadow cabinet that draws on the best of our movement’s left and right traditions,” she wrote at the time.

EMILY THORNBERRY

Thornberry, 59, has represented the seat in north London next door to Corbyn’s since 2005 and is Labour’s foreign affairs spokeswoman. She is running for the leadership.

A strong supporter of a second Brexit referendum and of remaining in the European Union, Thornberry has said the question for the next leader should not be their position on Brexit but what their plan is for taking on Johnson.

Thornberry joined Labour when she was 17, saying she was motivated by her experience of being raised by a single mother in social housing. She went on to become a human rights barrister.

JESS PHILLIPS

Known for being outspoken, Phillips, a long-time Corbyn critic, has withdrawn from the contest, saying that she was not the right person at this time to unite the party.

“In order to do that (win an election) the Labour Party will need to select a candidate that can unite all parts of our movement … and I have to be honest with myself … that, at this time, that person isn’t me,” she told her supporters.

TIMETABLE FOR THE ELECTION

Jan. 15 – Second round of nominations opens, for local Labour Parties and affiliated organizations such as trade unions.

Feb. 21 – Ballot opens.

April 2 – Ballot closes.

April 4 – Special conference to announce the result.

(Reporting by William James, Elizabeth Piper and Kylie MacLellan)

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