The Labour Party leadership election: The Stark model and the selection of Keir Starmer

Abstract

This article considers the selection of Keir Starmer as the new Leader of the Labour Party within the context of the Stark model for explaining leadership election outcomes. The article seeks to achieve three objectives. First, to provide an overview of the nomination stages and the candidates who contested the Labour Party leadership election. Second, to provide an analysis of the underlying academic assumptions of the Stark model on leadership selection and to assess its value as an explanatory model. Third, to use opinion-polling evidence to consider the selection of Starmer in relation to the criteria of the Stark model—i.e. that party leadership (s)electorates are influenced by the following hierarchy of strategic goals: acceptability or select the candidate most likely to unify the party; electability or select the candidate most likely to expand the vote base of the party; and competence or select the candidate most likely to be able to implement their policy objectives.

Selecting Starmer: The Nomination Preferences of Labour Parliamentarians in the 2020 Labour Party Leadership Election

“…By using these methods our dataset identified 83 who nominated Starmer, 33 for Long-Bailey, 31 for Nandy, 22 for Thornberry and 21 for Phillips, and the remaining 12 who did not make a public declaration. The robustness of our dataset is evident given that we identified the nomination preferences of 94.1 percent of the PLP which compares favourably with similar studies on the leadership preferences of Conservative parliamentarians (Jeffery, Heppell, Hayton, & Crines, 2018, 2021. We used the same method to determine parliamentarians' deputy leadership nominations.…”

“…By providing a quantitatively-driven study on the choice of Labour parliamentarians in the Labour Party leadership election of 2020 we have provided different insights into the leadership-follower relationship, at the parliamentary level, than have tended to emerge from the qualitative dominated studies on previous Labour Party leadership elections, see for example, Alderman & Carter, 1993, 1995Dorey & Denham, 2011, 2016Quinn, 2016;Heppell, 2021; see also Heppell, 2010. By choosing a quantitively-driven study we have embraced methods which have been traditionally deployed when identifying what drives leadership preference in Conservative Party leadership selectionsee, for example, Cowley & Garry, 1998;Jeffery et al, 2018Jeffery et al, , 2021Roe-Crines et al, 2021.…”

Leadership election reform in the British Labour party: democratisation or power struggle?

“…While party leadership reform has only recently received broader attention as a topic of international comparison, especially through the extensive research around the COSPAL group (Cross and Blais 2012a, b;Hazan and Rahat 2010;Lisi et al 2015;Chiru et al 2015;Kenig et al 2015b), it has been a research subject with a long tradition in the UK. Beginning with the seminal studies of the 1970s to early 1990s by Drucker (1976Drucker ( , 1981Drucker ( , 1984, Punnett (1990Punnett ( , 1992Punnett ( , 1993, Alderman and Carter (1991, 1993, 1995, it has created an extensive body of literature (specifically for the Labour party see Quinn 2018Quinn , 2016Quinn , 2012Quinn , 2004Jobson and Wickham-Jones 2011;Bale and Webb 2014;Denham 2016, 2011;Denham and Dorey 2018;Heppell et al 2021;Heppell 2021Heppell , 2010aHeppell , 2010bCrines et al 2018;Stark 1996). This raises the question of what can still be learned from such an analysis, both specifically for the Labour party as well as party leadership elections in general.…”

“…When looking specifically at the British studies, we can identify two different strands of research. The larger part typically deals with reviewing the outcomes of either one or multiple elections and tries to explain how the results came about (for example Dorey and Denham 2016, Jobson and Wickham-Jones 2011, Quinn 2016, Heppell 2021, Crines et al 2018. The second part is more focussed on outlining structural features' consequences for the electoral process or their influence on other organisational aspects (for example Quinn 2018, 2004, Stark 1996, Heppell 2010b, Pemberton and Wickham-Jones 2015.…”

“…Both approaches are, however, strongly influenced by the seminal work of Leonard Stark (1996). In his comparative analysis of leadership contests since 1963 he reaches a number of conclusions which have either a direct impact or are at least used as contra points to justify deviating analytical approaches in the UK (Crines et al 2018;Heppell 2010aHeppell , 2021Denham 2016, 2011;Quinn 2016;Bale and Webb 2014). Stark's (1996, pp.…”