Rebecca Long-Bailey

Following Labour's defeat in the 2019 general election, Jeremy Corbyn announced that he would stand down as Leader of the Labour Party. Long-Bailey announced that she would stand in an article for Tribune magazine on 6 January 2020. Her flatmate Angela Rayner ran for deputy leader, the pair having made an agreement to run on an unofficial joint ticket. She received 33 nominations from Labour MPs and MEPs, comprising 15% of members of the two groups, which is above the 10% needed to pass the first stage of the process. In the next stage, she received endorsements from 164 of 648 Constituency Labour Parties (25.3%) and 7 of 32 Labour Party affiliates, leading her to be one of three candidates listed on the ballot for leader, alongside Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy.

Starmer appointed Long-Bailey Shadow Secretary of State for Education on 6 April 2020.

In 2019, Long-Bailey contributed to the writing of Labour's manifesto for the 2019 general election. She said that "I don't just agree with the policies, I've spent the last four years writing them". Long-Bailey was re-elected in the 2019 election with a vote share of 56.8%, a reduction of 8.7 percentage points on the 2017 election result.

Long-Bailey said that she was unhappy with Labour's response to allegations of antisemitism within the party during Corbyn's leadership, commenting that "I don’t think we were dealing with complaints quickly enough". She said that if she was Labour leader then she would follow the recommendations of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Long-Bailey was Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2016 to 2017, deputising for Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. She then served as Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet from 2017 to 2020. She was a candidate in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, finishing second to Keir Starmer.

Long-Bailey was appointed as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury on 27 June 2016 after resignations from the Shadow Cabinet. On Clive Lewis's resignation from the Shadow Cabinet over Corbyn's whipping of the Article 50 vote, Long-Bailey was appointed as the Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 9 February 2017. She was re-elected in the 2017 general election with an increased vote share of 65.5% and an increased majority of 40.2%.

When Hazel Blears stood down as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Salford and Eccles at the 2015 general election, the Labour Party decided to have a woman-only shortlist to choose its candidate for this safe seat. Long-Bailey received the backing of Unite the Union, Mayor of Salford Ian Stewart and former Salford City Council leader John Merry. She was elected with a vote share of 49.4% and a majority of 20%.

Long-Bailey was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the 2015 Labour leadership election. On 18 September 2015, after Corbyn was elected as leader, she was appointed as a Shadow Minister for the Treasury as part of his first frontbench team. She was also appointed to Labour's National Executive Committee by Corbyn as one of three representatives of the front bench, replacing Hilary Benn.

Long-Bailey joined the Labour Party in 2010. A spokesperson reported that she was moved to attend a Labour Party meeting after seeing "dramatic plans to dismantle" the NHS in her work as a solicitor.

She studied Politics and Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, then completed "various part-time law conversion and solicitors' courses." She has worked for the law firm Pinsent Masons and in 2003, she began working in landlord and tenant law for the law firm Halliwells; she was admitted as a solicitor on 1 November 2007 and moved that year to work for Hill Dickinson, specialising in commercial law, commercial property, NHS contracts and NHS estates. On selection as a Labour Party candidate in 2014 she wrote that she had "been working as a solicitor with the NHS in Manchester for 10 years". The Sunday Times said that she was incorrect as she was only a solicitor since 2007, though she was a trainee solicitor and paralegal from 2003 to 2007.

Rebecca Roseanne Long-Bailey (née Long; born 22 September 1979) is a British Labour Party politician and former solicitor serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Salford and Eccles since 2015 and Shadow Secretary of State for Education since 2020.

Rebecca Roseanne Long was born on 22 September 1979 in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, to Irish parents. Her father, Jimmy Long, was a Salford docker and a trade union representative at Shell, Barton Docks. She attended Chester Catholic High School.