Labour MP Ivan Lewis announces bid to be Manchester’s mayor

Former Labour cabinet minister Ivan Lewis announced his intention to be the party’s mayoral candidate for Greater Manchester. 

Lewis, who is MP for Bury South, is now the second person vying to be the Labour frontrunner, following Manchester’s police and crime commissioner Tony Lloyd, who announced it a week earlier. 

Announcing his running at a constituency meeting on Thursday night, he said he believed ‘radical change’ was necessary “to reconnect economic growth with social justice and begin a new era of politics”, according to the Guardian.

With strong links with the Jewish community, he has criticised the Labour leader  of “very poor judgement” in failing to speak out against anti-Semitic rhetoric, before Corbyn agreed to meet him to discuss the issue of anti-Semitism on the left.

Ivan Lewis previously served as a minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments, and as a shadow secretary under Ed Miliband, but lost his front bench seat under Jeremy Corbyn by text message.