Two more contenders joined the race to lead Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Thursday, after an election this month ended its 13 year grip on power.
Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black woman member of parliament (MP), threw her hat in the ring, while former health minister Andy Burnham also said he would stand, bringing the number of contenders to six.
Abbott said it was time to broaden a contest which critics have noted has so far focused on white men in their 40s.
“I am going to run. So many people in the past 48 hours have asked me to put my hat in the ring and I have finally agreed to do so ... I think we can’t go forward with a leadership where there are no women,” Abbott told BBC radio.
“I am today asking for the support of my colleagues to go forward as a candidate to lead the party I love,” Burnham said, Writing in Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper.
The center-left Labour party is searching for a new leader to succeed former prime minister Gordon Brown, who resigned earlier this month after an election defeat.
A Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance now governs Britain, the first coalition since 1974.
A Cambridge graduate and former TV reporter, Abbott is an outspoken MP and a regular television pundit. She is in her late fifties and became Britain’s first black female MP in 1987.
Also a Cambridge graduate, Burnham, 40, said he wanted to tackle Labour’s perceived shortcomings in its policies over immigration, anti-social behavior, help for pensioners and other issues.
This month’s defeat and the new political landscape it has produced have left the party searching for a new direction.
The frontrunner in the race is the cerebral David Miliband, 44, foreign minister under Brown. Once an adviser to Tony Blair, he is seen as the candidate of the party’s centrist wing.
His brother Ed Miliband, 40, a former energy and climate change minister, is also running. His supporters say he is a unity candidate who would end years of tension between Labour members more loyal to Brown or his predecessor as prime minister and Labour leader Blair.
Ed Balls, 43, Brown’s right-hand man at the Treasury before becoming education minister, declared his candidacy on Wednesday, saying he was standing to rebuild the support of voters who mistrusted Labour over issues like immigration and the cost of university education.
MP John McDonnell, 58, little known outside the party, also entered the race on Wednesday, pledging that under his leadership Labour, founded by trade unions in 1900, would return to its roots and advance a socialist agenda.
Labour has given itself four months to elect a new leader. Balloting will run from Aug. 16 to Sept. 22 and the winner will be announced at the annual party conference on Sept. 25.
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