A former MP has said that it is "patronising" to think traditional Labour voters want the next leader "to have ovaries, or a northern accent".
Former Darlington MP Jenny Chapman, who lost her seat to the Conservatives at the General Election, is backing Sir Keir Starmer to succeed Jeremy Corbyn and said the shadow Brexit secretary has the qualities the party needs.
“I spent the last couple of months talking to folks on the doorstep in Darlington and getting very clear messages back, as you can imagine,” said the former Brexit minister.
“What people are saying is that they want a leader that they feel could be the prime minister.
“It was about, ‘do I trust this person with my mortgage, with the future, with my children, with my pension?' And I think that Keir has the qualities that they’re looking for.”
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Nobody on doorsteps of Darlington said the next leader has to have ovaries or a northern accent.
"I think that’s such a patronising attitude to think that presenting someone who speaks the northern accent means you’re going to win support in the north.”
Her comment comes after Emily Thornberry admitted three months before the election that she was worried about Mr Corbyn’s neutral stance on Brexit and feared it could cost the party.
In an interview with the BBC in September, due to be broadcast on Tuesday evening, the shadow foreign secretary said the position would “make it more difficult” to win an election.
“What worries me is that every single interview he does will all be about Brexit,” she told the BBC documentary, The Brexit Storm Continues.
Asked at the autumn party conference whether Labour could win a public vote with a neutral stance, Ms Thornberry added: “I think it makes it more difficult.
“That’s why I’m really pushing this because I want Jeremy in Number 10,” she said, according to a clip previewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester said the Labour party was in the in a “pretty dark place right now” after its worst general election loss since 1935.
He said under Jeremy Corbyn leadership had been “thwarting” its traditional voters’ views on Brexit.
“We’ve always been a coalition between traditional supporting working-class communities and let’s say a university-educated liberal left,” he said on the Today programme.
“Labour has not been speaking to both sides of that coalition for some time.
“And, actually, with the position taken on Brexit at the recent election, it was almost as if they were thwarting the views of people who had been our traditional supporters.
“Labour has got to speak to both sides of that coalition.”
He refused to say whether an emerging leadership successor had his support.
He also issues a warning to Boris Johnson that he could not simply offer infrastructure improvements that were “decades away” to keep his new Northern voters on side.
