Rebecca Long-Bailey
Rebecca Long-Bailey (born 22 September 1979), is a British politician and former solicitor serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Salford and Eccles since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, Long-Bailey served in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2016 to 2017, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2017 to 2020 and Shadow Secretary of State for Education in 2020.
Born in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, Long-Bailey studied Politics and Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. She worked for the law firms Pinsent Masons and Halliwells from 2003 to 2007. Long-Bailey was admitted as a solicitor in 2007, where she worked for Hill Dickinson specialising in commercial law, commercial property, NHS contracts and NHS estates.
Long-Bailey was elected to the British House of Commons at the 2015 general election. After Jeremy Corbyn was elected in the 2015 Labour leadership election, Long-Bailey was appointed as a Junior Treasury Minister and was nominated to sit on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.
Long-Bailey served in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet from 2016 to 2020. She served as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2016 to 2017, deputising for Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. She then served as Shadow Business Secretary from 2017 to 2020. She was a candidate in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, finishing second to Keir Starmer. She briefly served as Shadow Secretary of State for Education.
Expelled
July 24, 2024, Sir Keir Starmer has been condemned by union leaders for suspending seven Labour MPs for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, as independents including Jeremy Corbyn vowed to work with them to offer a “real alternative.”
Leaders of fire, education, civil service, bakeries and mail unions hit out at the Prime Minister’s “disgraceful” and “completely wrong” decision as they joined thousands backing a grassroots petition calling for their reinstatement.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, ex-shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Zarah Sultana and Imran Hussain were kicked out of the Parliamentary Labour Party for six months for backing an SNP amendment calling for the cap to be scrapped on Tuesday night.[1]
In late January 2025, Westminster sources indicated that Keir Starmer’s whips are considering readmitting to the parliamentary party five of the seven MPs who rebelled.
Under the scenario, members for Coventry South, Zarah Sultana, and Poplar and Limehouse, Apsana Begum, would not have their suspensions lifted.
The other five — Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long-Bailey and John McDonnell — would have the whip restored.
All seven were removed from the Parliamentary Labour Party for a six-month period, now almost elapsed, after their rebellion last July.
At a recent meeting of the left Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, those present agreed that they should seek to return to the Labour fold, though not all of the seven were in attendance.
There had been speculation that they might seek to regroup with the left-wing Independent Alliance of MPs, which includes Jeremy Corbyn.[2]
FightBack2021
FightBack2021 was held online January 2021. Thousands of Labour activists tuned in to be part of Arise Festival’s kickstart to a year of activism, ‘Fighting back in 2021: How Labour’s Left should respond to the current crisis’. Listeners heard from an impressive array of speakers, ranging from MPs in the Socialist Campaign Group, left journalists, trade unionists, and activists in the Labour Party and wider social movements. The message was loud and clear – the Labour left is here to stay, and will be at the forefront of both resisting the Tories’ reactionary agenda, and standing for socialist solutions to the crisis and democracy in the Labour Party.
In the first session, chaired by Laura McAlpine and entitled ‘Understanding the crisis – the Tory agenda and the alternative: for #ZeroCovid and a #PeoplesPlan’, speakers discussed the Government’s response to the crisis, and what the Left’s strategy should be. Diane Abbott, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Jon Trickett, Ben Chacko from the Morning Star, Andrew Murray from Unite the Union, and Amy Smith from Arise Festival agreed that the public health crisis had to be understood in class terms – the Government response had most adversely affected working class people, especially Black communities.
In concluding her initial remarks, Diane Abbott said ‘the Tories, through their mishandling of the crisis, have turned what was a public health crisis into an economic crisis, so we have to fight for the correct strategy to fight the virus – a Zero Covid strategy – but we also have to fight for equality and the right economic measures to make sure that the poorest and most vulnerable do not pay the price for fighting coronavirus’.
Socialist Campaign Group
In 2021 Rebecca Long-Bailey was member of the Socialist Campaign Group in the House of Parliament.
Green New Deal comrades
Jeremy Corbyn, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Zarah Sultana, Grace Blakeley, US Network for Democracy in Brazil, Teach the Future.
Socialist women
Angela Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey.
"Socialist Solutions"
Labour Party conference fringe. Sponsored by Labour Assembly Against Austerity and Arise.
With Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, John McDonnell MP, Richard Burgon MP, Dave Ward, Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, Ian Lavery MP, Sarah Woolley, Holly Turner, Ruth Hayes, Mark Serwotka, Steve Turner, Nadia Jama.
Socialist Campaign Group
Rebecca Long-Bailey was endorsed Campaign for Socialism for Labour Party leader.
A Green New Deal for People and Planet
Rebecca Long-Bailey, Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana MP, Scarlett Westerbrook, Grace Blakeley, Lela Allen, Juliana Moraes.
"Dying to Work"
Communist Party connections
Morning Star conference: Fightback
With Prof. Lydia Hayes, Lord John Hendy KC, Andrew Murray, Sarah Woolley, Jeremy Corbyn, Chris Kitchen, Fiona Edwards, Ian Lavery MP, Ben Chacko, Sevim Dagdelen, Helen O'Connor, Alex Gordon, Pete Lazenby, Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, John Rees, Kate Hudson, Sam Browse, Hugh Lanning, Tom Greenwood, Terry Renshaw, Erkan Ersoy, Matt Willgress, Heather Wood.
"Only when it's safe"
Amanda Martin, Mick Cash, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Kevin Courtney, Mark Serwotka, Sarah Woolley, John McDonnell MP, John Hendy QC, Laura Pidcock.
Education webinar
Gawain Little April 19 2020.
Really pleased to have hosted this event today with the amazing Jess Edwards and a superb panel, including Elaine Bennett, Emma Mort, Mary Bousted and Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Thank you to the 1100 educators who took part and the 2.9k who watched on Facebook. Thank you for the passion you have for your students!
We really want this to be the beginning of a conversation and are encouraging people to sign up to our Facebook page (Celebrating Education) and website CelebratingEducation.org to help us take this project forward.
Together, we can change education for the better!
Morning Star Labour
John McDonnell, Richard Leonard, Diane Abbott, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Richard Burgon, Salma Yaqoob.
Joined on platform by Ian Lavery, Ben Chacko, Len McCluskey, Paddy Lillis, Mick Whelan, Mick Cash, Manuel Cortes, Carolyn Jones Morning Star Management Committee.
Communist supporter
August 2021 tributes are being paid to a Salford councillor who died following a sudden illness aged 57.
Labour councillor for Blackfriars and Trinity Ray Walker, has been described by friends and colleagues as a ‘selfless’ man, ‘enthusiastic’ councillor and a trade unionist who was ‘deeply passionate’ about the city.
He served as a shop steward for two trade unions before becoming the branch secretary for Salford Unison and rising up the ranks in the local Labour Party.
He was an executive member of the Communist Party of Britain before joining the Labour Party and working for Salford and Eccles MP Rebecca Long-Bailey.[3]
Tribute to Ray Walker
Rebecca Long-Bailey. Facebook, August 12, 2021.
- It is with great sadness that I inform you that Councillor Ray Walker has tragically passed away after a sudden illness.
- Ray was a lovely man, dedicating his life to public service and improving peoples lives both through his trade unionism and the Labour Party. He was proud to represent his community as councillor for Blackfriars and Trinity ward and put his proud socialist beliefs at the heart of everything he did.
- For 31 years he worked for Salford Council, working as librarian at the Working Class Movement Library and also served as a Shop Steward for NALGO and UNISON later becoming Salford Unison Branch Secretary and also joined Unite the Union. He also served as Chair and Secretary for the Irwell Riverside Labour Party branch (now Blackfriars and Trinity) for many years and served as Salford and Eccles Constituency Labour Party Treasurer.
- I am personally proud and grateful for the support he gave me and my office over the years as a caseworker where he was kind, diligent and moved heaven and earth to give people the support they needed. He made our office team feel like a family and he will be desperately missed by all of us and all those who have worked with him over the years.
- I know you will all have so many fond memories of Ray. In his early years he was on the executive of the Communist Party of Britain before joining the Labour Party. Few know that he began training as a priest but lost his faith after a fellow trainee priest sadly died in a tragic motorbike accident at 19 years old. He enjoyed reading about Salford’s political history and was a dedicated reader and supporter of the Morning Star newspaper. He loved his wife Jan and his family, and few know that he absolutely loved Elvis (he was an occasional attendee at Elvis conventions and was a brilliant Elvis impersonator)
Marxist backing
Back in June 2013, the political department of Unite, Britain’s most powerful union, produced a confidential report for its executive.
Then, Unite was led by the Liverpool-born Marxist bruiser Len McCluskey and was keen to exert maximum influence on the direction of the Labour Party.
That meant pulling as many strings behind the scenes as possible. But, as the report cautioned, it should not be seen to be doing so.
It decided that the best way to seize Labour’s helm was to secure Unite’s chosen placemen — and women — on the party’s list of prospective parliamentary candidates.
‘As some will have noticed, the work of the Political department and the Union regionally in (Labour) candidate selections is a little bit like a swan,’ the document confided. ‘All that can be seen is indication of support here or there, while below the water activity is furious!’
The report showed 41 would-be Labour MPs had been identified by Unite as ideologically worthy of its active support.
Today, seven years later, two names from that list stand out.
One is Karie Murphy, then the prospective Labour candidate for Falkirk who became Jeremy Corbyn’s chief of staff and head of his disastrous 2019 general election campaign.
The other is Rebecca Long-Bailey.
According to the latest polling of party members this week, Ms Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, is now front runner to succeed Corbyn as leader on 42 per cent, ahead of fellow candidate Keir Starmer on 37 per cent.
Crucially, she has also secured the backing of Momentum, the hard-Left grass roots pressure group. In a ‘democratic’ Momentum poll — in which she was the only recommended candidate — she secured 70 per cent of members’ votes. So far, 33 Labour MPs, including leading Left-wingers John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon have endorsed her.
Her leadership bid, formally launched in Manchester, was not unexpected. She has been seen as a leading contender since last autumn, when Corbyn and his Marxist shadow chancellor McDonnell indicated that ‘Our Becky’ — as the latter calls her — was their anointed successor.
Of course, that was before last month’s Tory landslide and Labour’s worst general election performance since 1935.
Such a rejection would usually lead to wholesale changes in a political party’s leadership and direction.
But the Corbynistas believe they can still hang on to power at the top of the party. Not with their 70-year-old namesake in charge, but his 40-year-old adoring acolyte who last week caused mirth and incredulity by giving Corbyn ‘ten out of ten’ marks for his disastrous leadership.
But aside from her unwavering loyalty, just who is Rebecca Long-Bailey? She has risen without trace, been an MP for less than five years and was only thrust into the shadow cabinet in 2016 after dozens of colleagues resigned following a failed ‘coup’ against Corbyn.
The official line is that Long-Bailey is a breath of fresh air. This, however, is the unofficial, untold story of the Cheshire lawyer with scant political experience, who has been groomed by the hard Left to carry the torch of Corbynism into the new decade.
She is indeed the ‘continuity candidate’, as former deputy leader Tom Watson has acidly observed.
And as this Mail investigation into her rise reveals, this political ingenue serves as a blank piece of paper upon which the hard-Left kingmakers and union bosses hope to write another chapter of Marxist control of the Labour Party.
Rebecca Long-Bailey’s understated appearance, small stature and ready smile might well suggest the dawn, at last, of a kinder, fairer politics. But, as the Mail can reveal, at her back stands a former Unite official and alleged ‘Stalinist’, Alex Halligan.
Background
Long-Bailey was born in Withington Hospital, Manchester, on September 22, 1979, only child of working-class Irish Catholic parents.
Her mother Una is from Galway, her father Jimmy Long from Belfast. On his Facebook page he has ‘liked’ the hard-line Republican newspaper An Phoblacht, which used to be accused of being the ‘mouthpiece of the IRA’.
He declined to comment when approached by the Mail, but a close source said: ‘Rebecca’s father is Irish and supported the peace process. He does not support the IRA.’ Now retired, Mr Long worked on the Salford Docks and then for Shell at the vast Carrington petrochemical plant a few miles to the west.
In 2014, while campaigning to be the Labour parliamentary candidate for Salford, she told the Manchester Evening News: ‘My Dad, Jimmy, worked on the Salford Docks and I grew up watching him worrying when round after round of redundancies were inflicted on the docks.
Industrial relations were indeed fractious at Carrington in the neighbouring constituency of Stretford & Urmston. The plant had its own branch of the Communist Party and a reputation for militancy.
In November 1983, the Socialist Organiser reported how unions defied Government injunctions to organise a wave of all-out strikes, overtime bans and secondary picketing.
But in 1988, the Long family left Manchester behind. Jimmy, a ‘lucky survivor’ of the layoffs at Carrington secured a new position at Shell’s Stanlow plant near Ellesmere Port, 35 miles away.
She attended a Catholic secondary school in Chester — an hour’s bus journey away — and aged 16 worked part-time in a pawn brokers where she has said that she saw the ‘real desperation’ of the poor. She also worked in a sofa factory, a Royal Mail sorting office and a bar, fending off bottom-pinching drunks and the ‘inappropriate’ attentions of colleagues.
After Manchester Metropolitan University, where she studied politics and sociology, she joined a law firm as an administrative assistant and pursued her own legal studies in her spare time. In 2006, she married Stephen Bailey, son of an industrial chemist from Cleethorpes. (Stephen, 46, who studied chemistry at Sheffield Hallam university and worked overseas, is the Audi A5-driving global sales director for an additives firm).
The following year she began work as a solicitor at the Manchester law firm Hill Dickinson, specialising in NHS contracts and commercial property. In 2009, the couple bought their first house — a large detached property with views over countryside — in Frodsham, over 20 years after she had first moved to the town with her parents.
And there they would probably have remained in middle-class obscurity if Ms Long-Bailey had not discovered — rather belatedly — political activism.
She became involved with the party, she has said, after accompanying her mother to local Labour events. She only joined in 2010, but was soon asked if she would put herself forward to be a parliamentary candidate in the local Weaver Vale constituency, a marginal seat. She agreed, although she had only just given birth to her son Ronan.
It was while on the all-women candidate list that her name appeared in that confidential Unite report. A Unite spokesman told the Mail: ‘Becky was on our future candidates programme back in 2013. We did support her in Weaver Vale. She came through our training as someone we would say had the potential to be a fantastic MP.’
She came third in the contest, the successful Labour candidate subsequently losing in the election to the Tories.
But she was not disheartened. She approached close family friend Bill Moores, a veteran union activist who then recommended her as a potential candidate to Salford’s ‘Unite mafia’.
Moores was a former Salford mayor, Transport and General Workers’ Union shop steward and a contemporary of her father in the bitter industrial disputes of the Eighties. He became a referee for her candidacy to replace Salford and Eccles MP Hazel Blears who was stepping down.
Prominent among Salford’s current ‘Unite mafia’ was a young dynamo named Alex Halligan, who had already risen to become secretary of the city’s TUC. The burly Halligan was born in Yorkshire, brought up in Birkenhead and now lives in Greater Manchester.
On his Facebook page (now unavailable), he posted a photograph of himself giving a clenched fist salute in front of a poster of Hugo Chavez, the authoritarian Left-wing leader of Venezuela much admired by Corbyn.
He has also been photographed apparently wearing a ‘Stalinist’ lapel badge celebrating the brutal ice-pick murder of the dissident Trotsky, although his supporters insist the badge was simply being held against his chest.
Whatever the case, the stage was set in Salford and Eccles for a contest so bloody as to be almost Shakespearean.
‘Halligan is completely ruthless and as hard-Left as you can get,’ former moderate Salford Labour councillor Howard Balkind told the Mail this week.
‘I was told that he was ringing round other councillors saying I was useless and they shouldn’t support me. He then personally turned up at the meeting to make sure the ward councillors voted the right way [to deselect him in favour of Long-Bailey’s local political adviser]. That is a typical Union tactic — to pack a meeting in their favour.
Among the seven-strong all female selection shortlist Long-Bailey faced in 2014 were those who had lived in the constituency — she hadn’t since she was nine — and possessed impeccable Labour credentials. Strongest among them was Sue Pugh, local councillor and the party whip at Salford council, and Sarah Brookes, ‘a proper Salford girl’ and secretary of a local party branch.
Pugh, then chair of the party’s North West regional board, and her supporters are bitter about how Long-Bailey’s team allegedly conducted the campaign.
‘Sue is properly local and did most of the campaigning herself with friends,’ a close friend of Pugh’s told the Mail. ‘Long-Bailey had the full Unite machinery behind her. There was even a call centre put at her disposal to lobby local party members.’
‘They had people knocking on members’ doors and being very disparaging about Sue,’ adds the friend.
She’s originally from Ellesmere Port and Long-Bailey’s supporters were asking people: ‘Do you really want a Scouser as your MP?’ (Salford is a hotbed of support for Manchester United, arch rivals of Liverpool FC.)
The allegation was independently confirmed by Mr Balkind, who was appalled by the tactic. A spokesperson for Long-Bailey said: ‘This claim is false’.
It was a strange question to be asked by Labour Party activists about one of their own comrades.
It is not clear if this was sanctioned by Halligan, but it would be strange for such a sentiment to be encouraged by a union official from Merseyside whose then boss McCluskey happened to be the most influential Liverpudlian in the political landscape.
What’s more, Long-Bailey had grown up and at that point still lived in Frodsham, which is closer to Liverpool than Salford, though both towns are in Cheshire rather than Merseyside.
No matter. If stirring up local prejudices helped their then unknown protégée win selection, so be it.
Pugh’s friend said of Halligan: ‘He’s a total chameleon. Apparently, he can put on a Scouse accent himself when it suits the situation.’ (A Long-Bailey spokesman denied the ‘smear’ allegation.)
Of Long-Bailey’s own image of a local working-class hero, the friend said: ‘She bent the truth. She emphasised her working-class credentials while living in a very nice house in Frodsham.
‘She’s a nice enough girl but seemed to lack political conviction. Nobody knew what her politics were. Nobody who knew her was aware that she had any Left-wing politics at all. But she was being backed by powerful friends in Unite and she was fine when she had a script in front of her.’
Salford council, led by Left-wing mayor Ian Stewart, also threw impartiality to the wind and backed her, though the local authority press officer had to quit in a row over bias.
By mid-summer Long-Bailey had secured the support of seven local party branches, with Pugh and Brookes getting four each. But when the three-woman final shortlist was drawn up, Brookes was not on it. Another candidate who had attracted only one vote was selected instead. Brookes took legal advice but was told there was no appeal.
Her supporters cried ‘fix’ and the local press reported alleged ‘skulduggery’, but to no avail. In August, Long-Bailey won the day.
‘It was hijacked by Unite,’ says Howard Balkind. ‘McCluskey and Halligan walked in and then walked all over us.’
In the general election of 2015, Long-Bailey won the constituency. Of that campaign she remarked primly: ‘I’ve never had anybody being nasty on the doorstep, even if they don’t support Labour.’
Long-Bailey has since made good on her promise to move to the constituency with her husband and son, albeit into a newly-refurbished £600,000 semi-detached house in the upmarket district of Monton — known as ‘Monton Carlo’ by less fortunate locals.
For his part in her success, Halligan was brought south to help Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership bid. He was credited by some sources as being a major factor in Corbyn’s subsequent rise to be leader. He is now on Long-Bailey’s staff and remains just as combative.
According to The New Statesman, Halligan recently told John McDonnell he was a ‘f****** idiot’ when the shadow chancellor tried to take charge of Long-Bailey’s leadership campaign.
Caught between these two alpha-Marxists, Ms Long-Bailey’s mouth reportedly ‘opened and shut silently during the clash’.
And now she stands on the cusp of succeeding her political idol — Corbyn, whose own unexpected win can be traced back to the events of 2013 and the aforementioned Karie Murphy’s selection as the prospective candidate for Falkirk.
Allegations of Unite-orchestrated vote-rigging on a massive scale to secure Murphy’s candidacy saw the then Labour leader Ed Miliband move to overhaul party rules on voting. The changes were supposed to diminish the power of the unions, yet the new rules only served to allow Labour to be taken over by Corbynistas within Momentum.
They, rather than the Parliamentary Labour Party, now hold the balance of power in the leadership election.
Howard Balkind, who was ousted by Long-Bailey supporters in Salford and subsequently resigned from the party, is pessimistic about his party’s future.
‘I’m aged 68 and if they elect Rebecca Long-Bailey, I personally believe I will never, ever see Labour return to power,’ he said last night. ‘It would be an absolute disaster. They’ve got to realise they’ve got to come back to the centre.’[4]
"End of Austerity"
May 2015 Richard Burgon MP, Louise Haigh MP, Harry Harpham MP, Imran Hussain MP, Clive Lewis MP, Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, Rachael Maskell MP, Kate Osamor MP, Cat Smith MP, Jo Stevens MP.
Backing Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn wrote 13 September 2015 "Thank You All For Making This Happen (The Morning Star)".
THANK YOU to the Morning Star and its readers for the most incredible support throughout this leadership campaign — and for the detailed coverage of the policy proposals that we have made and the debate that these have encouraged. The campaign began in the aftermath of the Labour election defeat in May, when the party opted for the election of a new leader, rather than an extended policy debate.
After much discussion, supporters of the Socialist Campaign Group in Parliament decided that we should attempt to put up a candidate for leader, and I was duly nominated.
The 99th event was held on Thursday night in my own constituency in Islington in the biggest church we could find. Over 1,000 people crammed in to hear from Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, my great friend and colleague John McDonnell and newly elected MPs Kate Osamor, Clive Lewis, Richard Burgon, Cat Smith and Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Touching speeches were made by a number of others, including Neil Findlay MSP and longstanding Islington members and supporters including Jan Whelan, George Durack and others. Both Jan and George nominated me when I first stood for selection in 1982.[5]