abour’s election walloping has triggered a period of soul-searching for the party and a new leadership race. In the post-Jeremy Corbyn world, the stakes are high for a party that has seen its traditional working-class support collapse in its northern heartlands. A new leader who moves too far to the Right to head off the Tories could alienate the young, urbanite voters that have flocked to the party since Corbyn took over. But a failure to rehabilitate the party’s moderates and centrists could leave Labour ripped apart for a generation. So what happens next and where do Labour go from here? Here’s everything you need to know. How is the Labour leader elected? Labour’s process for electing new leaders is famously idiosyncratic and a bit esoteric. In recent years, party members have surprised Westminster by sending in to bat Ed Miliband, who was widely considered second-favourite to brother David in 2010, and the backbench Marxist Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. Only an MP with the support of more than 10 per cent of the party’s MPs and MEPs can get on the ballot of members. Interestingly, the rules have changed since Mr Corbyn was elected to include support of trade unions or affiliate groups. Now, prospective leaders need nominations from either five per cent of constituency parties or at least three affiliates (at least two of which being trade union affiliates) which make up five per cent of affiliated membership. This means that the grass-roots members, especially trade unions, now have much more power in the process. Who votes? Labour members pick their candidate based on a one-member, one-vote system. It means that all members, affiliated supporters and registered supporters — from the shadow cabinet to the newbies — have a vote of equal value. The party has about half a million members. How does the voting process work? Members vote via post or online and choose a candidate using the alternative vote (AV) system. They rank candidates in order of preference. If there are more than two candidates, the one who is first to secure more than 50 per cent of the vote is the winner. If no candidate does this in the first round of counting, the candidate with the fewest first preference votes is knocked out and their votes are reallocated based on the second preferences. And so on until a winner is chosen. Famously, the AV system helped Ed Miliband to beat his brother David in 2015. Ed was a far more popular second-choice candidate than David, and clinched the job. Are there joint ballots? No. It looks like flatmates Rebecca Long-Bailey and Angela Rayner will be joining forces to some degree, but they must be elected separately. The votes for leader and deputy leader happen at the same time. This means that the next leader could be stuck with someone they don’t want as their deputy. How long does it take? The ballot opens on February 21 and closes on April 2. When will it start? The nomination process has begun. MPs and MEPs are nominating their preferred candidates. From January 15, constituency parties and affiliates will get to nominate. When is the winner announced? April 4. What"s the deadline for joining? Last time, Labour’s deadline was just under 48 hours before ballot papers were sent out. The party changed the rules in 2018 to say that members must have joined “not less than two weeks after the approved timetable is announced and not less than three weeks before the deadline for receipt of ballot papers, with no qualifying period of membership prior to the freeze date.” So new members who join now, or up to two weeks after a timetable has been announced, can vote. How much say do the unions have? A lot, and their say is even greater since the last leadership vote in 2016. The route to nomination by affiliates allows the big unions to ensure that their candidates are on the ballot. Of the 12 unions affiliated to the Labour Party, the “big five” (CWU, GMB, Unison, Unite and Usdaw) can cross the five per cent nomination threshold on their own. So, candidates who aren’t popular with the major unions will have to get support from smaller unions and societies and try to squeeze enough support to get on the ballot. What this means in practice is that if the larger unions back the same candidate it will shrink the opportunities for other candidates to get on the ballot. The candidates Sir Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit secretary (odds: 4/9) Rebecca Long-Bailey, shadow business secretary (4/1) Lisa Nandy (6/1) Jess Phillips and Clive Lewis dropped their bids are failing to get enough support from members or unions. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, was knocked out on February 14 after not getting enough backing from local parties. Read more about the candidates here. A poll of members on published on January 2 suggested that Keir Starmer is the clear frontrunner and would comfortably beat Rebecca Long-Bailey in a final round run-off. What is in the new leader"s inbox? The new leader must straddle the divides in the party (and its voters) between Left and Right, Leave and Remain, left-wing puritanism and pragmatic centrism. They must consolidate the legacy of Tony Blair"s government and appeal to those on the left of the party who would expunge Blairities as Tories in red rosettes. At the same time they must reconstruct the ruthless election-winning machine that earned New Labour the kind of whopping majorities that Boris Johnson can still only dream of, all while convincing members (and MPs) of increasingly distinct and incompatible ideologies to set aside differences after a rancourous post-election autopsy. Then, they must come up with a set of policies that are progressive enough to appeal to the Left but not so frightening to the City that they destroy the party"s economic credibility. On top of that, the new leader must banish the anti-Semitism that has tainted the party"s reputation and prevent Brexit splitting the party in two. Best of luck, eh?