LABOUR Party members deserve a real choice in the election, now under way, to replace Angerla Rayner as the party’s deputy leader.

The dire record of the government and Labour’s abysmal polling, trailing 15 per cent behind Reform UK in many surveys, mandate the most searching examination of the party’s policies and performance in office.

Clearly, Sir Keir Starmer is scared of that. He has ordered party officials to organise the election on a rushed timetable designed to minimise choice and debate.

Candidates have been given just a few days to secure the nominations required to stand. And the election will be held, of course, on rigged rules introduced by Starmer which require support from at least 20 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) before candidates can even put their name before the membership.

Downing Street is obviously hoping that these procedures, rightly described by Socialist Campaign Group secretary Richard Burgon as a “stich-up,” will lead to a swift coronation for his favoured candidate, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson.

Phillipson is fully complicit in the government’s agenda of austerity, authoritarianism and war preparations. She also claims “I’ve shown that we can beat Farage in the north-east.”

Given that Reform presently runs Durham County Council with 65 seats, while Labour retains just four in what was for generations a stronghold, makes that a truly bizarre assertion. The Starmer Cabinet in which Phillipson serves is preparing the way for Reform with almost every decision it makes.

Two other candidates have declared themselves at time of writing. Emily Thornberry is a second candidate of the Starmer establishment — she is not in government but certainly expected to be, and had Starmer appointed her attorney-general as anticipated even her present very nuanced criticisms would not be heard.

The only candidate who offers a real debate on the crisis which has engulfed Labour over the last year is left MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy. She is clear in her opposition to the government’s support for the Gaza genocide.

She also stands out against its attack on welfare and its pandering to Reform voters on racism.

Ribeiro-Addy urges a break with the Treasury orthodoxy which is mandating a renewed austerity, a reversal of the preposterous ban on Palestine Action, and an end to the authoritarianism with which the Starmer clique seek to control the party, starting with the restoration of the PLP whip to the seven MPs presently denied it.

It is possible that others will thrown their hat in the ring at the last minute, but no other contender is likely to view with Ribeiro-Addy as the standard-bearer of a real alternative to Starmer’s course.

She faces a struggle to get on the ballot paper, since the Socialist Campaign Group and its allies muster nowhere near the required 80 MPs needed to nominate — and it is their members, of course, who are among the suspended.

But all Labour members should be urgently pressuring their parliamentarians to nominate Ribeiro-Addy, whether or not they agree with all her criticisms of the government and her proscriptions for change.

The alternative is a tame, neutered debate which avoids grappling with the real crisis facing Labour, a crisis of its umbilical connection to the ruling class, its institutions and its outlook.

That will merely ensure that the government continues on its ruinous road, paving the way for Nigel Farage to take over following the next general election.

So the message to Labour MPs is simple – if you are happy with where things are at, go ahead and nominate Phillipson or Thornberry. But if you want to discuss a real shift, put Ribeiro-Addy on the ballot paper.