Simon Danczuk backs Liz Kendall in Labour leadership contest

Photo: Journeaux

Simon Danczuk

Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk is backing Liz Kendall in the Labour leadership contest. 

Mr Danczuk said: "I'm backing Liz because she's the candidate that David Cameron most fears and is someone who won't be pushed around by trade union barons.

"Liz knows Labour lost touch with the concerns of far too many people under Miliband and she's honest about the mistakes we made.

"The biggest challenge for the Labour Party is the need to drag us kicking and screaming out of our comfort zone. I know Liz can do that and win back the trust of millions of voters who turned their backs on us at the last election."

Mr Danczuk's backing of Ms Kendall will be a disappointment to fellow north-west MP, and leadership favourite Andy Burnham, whom Mr Danczuk brought to Rochdale in 2007 to open the Unique Enterprise Centre and support his bid to become Rochdale's MP.

Mr Burnham has the backing of the Unite trades union but many on the 'right' of the Labour party, including Mr Danczuk, are wary of the unions calling the shots, and alienating the electorate, with the next Labour leader as they did with Ed Miliband.

In his analysis of Labour's General Election defeat, Mr Danczuk said: "All too often we fell back on a lazy and simplistic left-wing prospectus that focused exclusively on taxation, public sector spending, criticism of markets and more red tape and regulation. Some of this is important, but as long as its divorced from aspiration then it continues to reinforce the impression that Labour is a shrinking party, wedded to a 35 per cent strategy and increasingly the home of public sector workers and Lib Dem refugees.

"We have to reach out much further than this. A party that doesn’t speak the language of millions of people’s hopes and ambitions will not earn a legitimate mandate to govern the country."