Lucy Powell: Mancunian streetfighter taking on key role in Labour campaign The Labour party is not immune to conservatism, especially when parliamentary pecking orders are decided. So when Lucy Powell was recently given a seat in the shadow cabinet and a pivotal role in next May's general election campaign, it is not surprising that older, mostly male noses were put out of joint. Powell, 40, was elected MP for Manchester Central in a byelection two years ago - recent enough to rile those MPs who measure credibility in time served. The elevation was part of a mini-reshuffle that was meant to bolster Ed Miliband's position amid headlines depicting a party lurching between despair and panic at his dismal performance. At first, the team changes looked to have made matters worse but Powell quickly calmed things down. She took to the radio with a sturdy defence of Miliband and a denunciation of his "cowardly" critics. She then tackled her own critics in a meeting of Labour MPs, acknowledging wariness of her status as an upstart rookie but rebutting it with an account of her years of campaigning commitment to the party and its leader. Both interventions - live on air and behind closed doors - showed the traits that friends cite as proof of Powell's qualifications for a senior role: plain-speaking fearlessness, loyalty and drive. She's got a healthy impatience for procrastination and bureaucracy. She is forthright without being unnecessarily combative," says Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, for whom Powell worked as shadow childcare minister. When she says she is going to do things, they got done. Powell was given the childcare brief within a year of arriving in parliament and quickly made Labour competitive in a vital policy area that had been dominated by rivalry between Lib Dems and Tories. Her recommendation for the job was partly experience campaigning in the field (informed by having young children of her own). But also, Miliband knew Powell as an ally since she had run his leadership campaign in 2010 and helped run his office as acting chief and then deputy chief of staff before becoming an MP. That period helps explain the wariness of some Labour figures. Many of those who despair at Miliband's position trace the problems back to autumn 2010. The allegation is that not enough thought during the campaign went into what to do in the event of victory. The coronation was followed by a period of stasis, in which Miliband looked overwhelmed and unprepared. Instead of defining himself, he allowed enemies to define him. Part of the responsibility for that miscalculation, some argue, can be heaped on Powell. The defence is that the leadership contest stirred up resentments, especially between rival supporters of the two Miliband brothers, and that it is impossible to be involved in such a race without making enemies. Besides, Labour figures more senior than Powell were jostling for position. Most, including Miliband, were struggling to get to grips with the realities of opposition. It is not surprising that Miliband, again feeling besieged, moved this month to call in one of his closest lieutenants from the early days. Trust is in short supply at the top of the party and Miliband's inner circle is sensitive on the question of who really "gets" the leader and what he is trying to do. Powell is one of the select original believers; a founder member of the club. In that respect, her role goes beyond the job description of shadow Cabinet Office minister and vice-chair of the election campaign. She presides over the morning "grid" meeting in the leader's office, involving the main players in the media and shadow cabinet teams. But she is also informally responsible for rehabilitating Miliband as a candidate, restoring some of the dynamism and confidence that went missing after 2010. Powell's encouragement played a major role in Miliband's fightback speech on Thursday and his pledge to spend less time in Westminster and more time travelling the country meeting voters. Unlike some of her demoralised colleagues, Powell is convinced he can still connect with voters. She is also prepared to take to the airwaves to translate the message herself, if required. Lucy's belief that Ed is the right person is absolutely 100%. There's no artifice or pretence," says Sir Richard Leese, the Manchester city council leader who has watched Powell's campaign in her home city. She comes with commitment. She's not a soft touch, she's not going to shy away from telling anyone, including Ed Miliband, what she thinks. That combination of forthrightness and tribal loyalty is a common thread running through Powell's biography. She grew up in a staunch Labour household in Moss Side, Manchester, delivering leaflets when she was eight years old and counting down the days to her 15th birthday, when she would be old enough to join the party. She went to a local comprehensive school and studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. Friends there dubbed her "Iron Lady" in ironic tribute to the college's most famous chemist-turned-politician. Ros Wynne-Jones, the Daily Mirror columnist and university friend of Powell, recalls: "When I met Lucy at 18 she was already a force of nature, especially surrounded by the stuffiness and intellectual snobbery of Oxford. Unmistakably Mancunian, highly opinionated. After Oxford and then King's College London, Powell worked briefly in Labour's Millbank headquarters and, after the 1997 election, as a parliamentary assistant. The next step was as campaign director for the pro-EU organisation Britain in Europe. There her Labour tribalism had to be submerged in cross-party collaboration, which did not come naturally, according to Lib Dems and Tories who dealt with her. "Sometimes her instinct for a fight got her into trouble," says one. But mostly she picked fights with the right people, people who weren't pulling their weight ... she inspired a great deal of loyalty, working people hard but backing them to the hilt. Another thread in accounts of Powell's story is an aversion to dithering. It is said she would rather make one or two mistakes amid a lot of action than do nothing for fear of error. "She has confidence in her judgment and is good at taking decisions," says Gloria De Piero, the shadow minister for women and equality. That may be quite normal in most walks of life but is actually quite rare in politics. It is something that many Labour MPs would welcome more of in the Miliband operation, which is routinely charged with chronic equivocation. No one doubts that Powell will bring some executive urgency to the table. Less clear is whether she has the diplomatic skills to manoeuvre through the cluster of egos that orbit a party leader. To make room for Powell at the election-planning top table, Miliband shunted aside Michael Dugher, a former spokesman for Gordon Brown, whose relations with Douglas Alexander, overall chief of the campaign, were fraught. Dugher's day-to-day trench warfare was often conducted independently of Alexander's strategic operation, giving rise to mixed messages, confusion over priorities and mutterings about uncertain loyalties. The plan is that the two campaign functions - daily combat and forward-planning - will now be better coordinated. "They are integrated when they used to be separate," says one member of the team. But confusion over responsibilities and tangled chains of command may be a permanent feature of Miliband's operation. The dysfunction, say disillusioned MPs, is a symptom of the way he does politics, doling out parcels of power in multiple directions in order to keep the peace. The effect has been a fragile factional truce that passes for unity but also inhibits decisive action. No one doubts that Powell is the kind of person who could shake that up, but that doesn't mean she'll manage it when surrounded by more seasoned veterans of Labour power games. That also helps explain some of the grumbling at her appointment. Influence over a party leader is a precious commodity and Powell has more than most. But after a period of self-doubt, veering towards self-destruction, there is a clear appetite in Labour to move on. As one shadow cabinet fan of Powell says of Miliband's naysaying colleagues: "They all complained that Ed was surrounded by north London intellectuals who knew nothing about the real world. Well now they've got a no-nonsense, working mum from Manchester, so what are they still complaining about? What members and activists want above all is an end to infighting and a more consistent focus on attacking the Tories. That, say Powell's closest friends, is where she is in her element. "She is a streetfighter, in the best possible sense," says Wynne-Jones. She is a streetfighter who hates injustice. Born Manchester, 10 October 1974 Career Studied chemistry at Oxford and King's College London, during which time she had a Saturday job at Topshop. Worked at Labour party headquarters, then as a parliamentary assistant to Beverley Hughes MP. Later worked for Britain in Europe, the pro-EU pressure group, and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, before contesting Manchester Withington in the 2010 general election. Low Point Losing that 2010 election to the incumbent Liberal Democrat. High Point Winning the neighbouring Manchester Central seat in a byelection two years later. What she says "I'm a Mancunian, I'm a woman, I'm a mum - I'm all those things and there aren't many Mancunian women mums in parliament ... I feel that, yes, I should represent those, but I also feel that I'm a better politician because I do represent those things." Total Politics magazine, May 2014 What they say "She's a solid Labour loyalist and a passionate Ed Miliband advocate but she's not there not to challenge. She'll challenge him, the party and the system. Tristram Hunt, shadow education secretary