Labour youth representative slates Keir Starmer's "disastrous" policy

17 January 2020, 18:52 | Updated: 17 January 2020, 18:54

The Labour youth representative slated Sir Keir Starmer's "disastrous" Brexit policy and told Andrew Pierce why she is backing Rebecca Long-Bailey as Labour leader instead.

Lara McNeil said she's backing Ms Long-Bailey because "she's got a real vision" and has "the policies that are going to inspire people to remain members of the Labour party."

She said she thinks the policies themselves were popular but the reason Labour didn't get in to power was because there was a lack of trust from the general public.

"I want to support a candidate who is going to keep those transformative policies that will be genuinely good for working class people in this country, said Ms McNeil, "and I think she's shown the strongest commitment to keeping them.

"The front runners are Rebecca and Keir," she said, referring to Sir Keir Starmer, "and I think Rebecca has some of the most popular policies that we saw in the Labour manifesto and Keir had what we saw as the most disastrous policy." The youth representative referred to Sir Keir's second referendum policy.

"Polls have shown the top reason people didn't vote for Labour was because of our Brexit policy and the lack of trust and confusion around that," she said, "I think that we should support someone who's been on the right side of history with the policies and was popular in part even though we lost."