Chuka Umunna withdraws Labour leadership bid

Chuka Umunna has withdrawn from the Labour party leadership contest. The shadow business secretary was the front runner with the bookmakers to become the next leader of the Labour party.

However he has now announced that he no longer intends to stand for leader of the Labour party because of the “scrutiny and attention” the contest has brought him.

It comes just 71 hours after he made the announcement he would be standing on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

He said he always “worried” that his leadership bid has “too soon” and that “continued to have very real concerns and worry about this bid’s impact on those close to me”.

Sources close to Mr Umunna insisted that his withdrawal was not due to any negative story which he expects to appear in the media.

It is understood that he was uncomfortable with the increased level of scrutiny which had been directed at him and members of his family since he declared his intention to stand for the leadership.

That leaves Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, Liz Kendall, the shadow health minister and Mary Creagh, the shadow international development minister.

His team were confident that he would secure the 35 nominations from fellow MPs required to mount a leadership bid, but he decided that it was not the right time for him to press ahead. Mr Umunna is not at this stage endorsing any other candidate for the leadership.

Chuka Umunna upset press doorstepped girlfriend’s grandmother

Michael Crick has more news on the Labour shadow business secretary’s decision to withdraw from the leadership race.

Andy Burnham now in pole position for Labour leadership, bookies say

Labour’s shadow health secretary is now the front runner to become the next Labour leader following former favourite Chuka Umunna’s withdrawal according to Ladbrokes.

The bookies have reacted to the Streatham MP’s announcement by putting Burnham to 5/4 ahead of Yvette Cooper at 5/2, Liz Kendall at 6/1 and Tristram Hunt (8/1) while late entrant Mary Creagh is also slashed to 10/1 as a result.

His announcement means that Umunna’s odds of becoming the next Mayor of London have also been slashed to 8/1 from 50/1.

Labour has no idea who to elect, maybe they should all take a break?

• Krishnan Guru-Murthy Presenter

With Chuka Umunna out of the Labour leadership race perhaps all the candidates should do the same. The declarations so far have revealed that the party has no real idea who to elect.

The New Labour cohort (they still haven’t found an alternative name but essentially that is what they are) can’t agree on a leader, and neither can the slightly more traditional Labour side either.

Whether its Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper at one end or Liz Kendall or Tristram Hunt on the other nobody seems very convinced any of them would win the next election.

Horse and cart analogies are not much use here, but perhaps Labour should just share out the leadership duties for a while or agree on a caretaker.

If Alan Johnson didn’t keep saying no he’d be the obvious choice.  The party is going to be gripped by a battle over its direction. It probably needs a federal structure to allow Scottish Labour to move left while English Labour tries to recapture the Blairite coalition. And it will need all the while to be an effective opposition and pro-EU campaigner in the referendum.

That will be a bloody process for any leader and it is perfectly likely that whoever it is gets ditched in 2017/18. By then either the new generation will have yielded a more credible leader or the likes of Dan Jarvis and Chuka Umunna will be in better positions to lead. Or suddenly something that seemed implausible only days ago starts to seem more possible : by then, after five years in New York and time to have consigned his brother’s leadership to fading memories step forward David Miliband?

Stranger things have happened.

Labour figures dicussing ‘break clause’ for new leader

• Michael Crick Political Correspondent

The extraordinary thing about this leadership contest is how many MPs seem genuinely undecided. And many people in the party are worrying that it’s simply too early, in 2015, to pick a leader for an election in 2020, five years away. Especially when they know that the Conservatives plan to replace their leader in a few years time, probably around 2018, after the In-Out Referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

What’s more, there seems to be general consensus that none of the candidates the party is now being offered is very appetising. None looks like the obvious solution to Labour’s many problems.

The questions are obvious. What if the new leader turns out to be not up to the job? What if some dazzling new potential figure emerges between now and 2020? What if the Tories pick a new leader who is so much better than ours, and needs a clear, more suitable response?

With the sudden and unexpected withdrawal of Chuka Umunna, an idea is rapidly gaining ground in the party of having a “break clause” in 2017 or 2018, after the EU Referendum. All it would take right, now, according to a senior member of the Shadow Cabinet, is for one of the leadership contenders to offer right now, that if he or she is elected, to put themselves up for a genuine re-election in two or three years time – a review moment, an opportunity for the party to renew their contract as it were, or to seek an alternative.

The beauty of such an offer it would help ensure Labour doesn’t get landed with a duff leader for the next five years. And it would also allow new contenders to be considered further down the road, some who may only just have been elected to Parliament, and people who may be more suited to the rapidly changing politics of the times.

Who knows, by 2018, Dan Jarvis or maybe even Chuka Umunna may feel the time is right. And it could mean that Labour has a new, fresh leader for 2020, not somebody who has been ground down by five years as Leader of the Opposition, which is often described as the hardest job in politics.

And as soon as one leadership contender offers party members such a “break clause” I suspect they will all be obliged to do so.

370 MPs support a referendum on the EU, research shows

• Georgia Graham georgia.graham@itn.co.uk

Research by the The People’s Pledge – a campaign group for an EU referendum shows that 370 MPs back now back the vote, compared 345 backing it in the

Those figures are likely to include all Conservative MPs apart from Ken Clarke and then another 30 Labour MPs.

David Cameron: Another Scottish referendum is not ‘remotely on the cards’

David Cameron has said that another referendum on Scottish independence is “not remotely on the cards”.

The Prime Minister said that the vote was “decisive” and the choice is now “now is what sort of future for Scotland in the United Kingdom.”

Scots rejected independence last year by 55-45 percent, and Mr Cameron was pushed on whether he would veto another such referendum,

Mr Cameron was speaking after a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon, his first since he became Prime Minister and her party virtually wiped Labour off the map in Scotland.

In an effort to downplay the influence of Ms Sturgeon on his decision making Mr Cameron added in a separate interview: “Scotland has two governments, a government elected here in Scotland led by Nicola Sturgeon… but there is also United Kingdom government elected at the last election that I lead”

Mary Creagh: Chuka quit after ‘soul searching’

Mary Creagh, the shadow international development secretary who declared that she was standing for the Labour leadership this week has paid tribute to Chuka Umunna after he withdrew from the race.

She told Radio 4’s World at One: “I can only conclude that he has come to this decision after a lot of soul searching. It takes courage to stand for the leadership.

“It also takes a great deal of courage to withdraw from the leadership. He’s a big beast, he’s got a huge role to play both in the Labour party and in a future Labour government.”

Keir Starmer possible future Labour leader?

The former director of public prosecutions was elected as a Labour MP in Holborn and St Pancras last week.

Ukitten: Replace pictures of Ukip with kittens

• Georgia Graham georgia.graham@itn.co.uk

Fed up of all the Ukip infighting and the unresignation that may not have been a resignation in the first place.

Well there is this.

Who knew this was a thing?

Chuka breaks cover to wish well-wishers a good weekend