This morning I had the privilege to be at the special conference for the announcement of the result of the leadership contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith.
As you will know by now, the result was emphatic, with Corbyn gaining a decisive 61.8% share (313,209/506,438/654,006) of the votes in spite of the efforts to weed out around 250,000 mostly Corbyn supporters by suspensions, expulsions and simply not sending them a ballot.
But there was a significant little passage of events that you will have missed. I was seated directly behind deputy leader Tom Watson and party General Secretary Iain McNicol, within easy touching distance (if I had wished:
As he prepared to read the results, NEC Chair Paddy Lillis said he would read out the overall result but would also show the results by voting constituency (full members, supporters and affiliates).
After reading out the overall result, there was a look – missed by the cameras as they cut to Corbyn and the crowd – between McNicol and Lillis, the latter then referring to the split of votes among constituencies being on the screen but not reading them out as was done at last year’s announcement. Those results were therefore on a screen for those present to see, but not shown to those watching via the cameras of BBC News etc.
When you see what those figures showed, it’s not hard to understand why McNicol and co wouldn’t want them broadcast to millions of people. Here are the broken-down results:
There are two major reasons why the party machinery doesn’t want those figures on show.
Firstly, they show that Corbyn won a clear majority in every category, whereas last year the only one in which he (just) failed to win was that of full members, where he polled 49.5%.
Today’s result shows that – in spite of constant character assassination by both ‘coup’ MPs and the media and the disenfranchisement of massive numbers of members, Corbyn’s support among full members has increased by no fewer than 8.5 points.
Which leads us onto the second reason – the numbers show the truly staggering extent of the systematic efforts to deny votes to those who were considered likely to support Corbyn. But that is something that definitely needs the light of scrutiny, so here’s another graphic to make it crystal clear:
This shows that my ‘conservative calculation’ earlier this week of 121,000 denied a ballot was indeed overly conservative.
Even excluding from the member count the 128,000 denied a vote because of the arbitrary imposition by the NEC of a 12/1/16 cut-off, the members who could have voted and didn’t are almost 138,000.
The registered supporters count is also higher than the 57,000 I estimated.
Given that registered supporters had to pay £25 to register, we can safely assume that all of those would have voted given the chance. Not absolutely every member would necessarily have voted if they could, but in such a contentious contest, the percentage would have been very high.
But let’s be cautious and say only 80% would have and couldn’t, because of suspensions or because they simply didn’t receive their ballot (a situation we already knew was high).
That means over 172,000 would-be voters were unable to participate in the election – of which the vast majority would incontestably have voted for Corbyn – almost as many as Smith was able to win in total and far more than his share if the 128,000 12/1/16 voters had not been excluded.
The scale of the gerrymandering by Labour party officials to try to undermine their own leader is simply huge. But not as huge as the fact that in spite of it, Corbyn was still able to increase his majority and achieve a clear win in all sections of the vote – and he deserves massive kudos and congratulations for that.
Yet I bet you won’t see this in the mainstream.
Thank you so much for that. Will keep it close to hand ready for the onslaught of arguments from those who still are struggling to accept the hand of unity and make the LP even greater than it is now
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It is now the time to elect the NEC and the PLP members because it is ovious that both of these commitees are too in favour of the right wing Blairites of the new labour party.The people have spoken today that they dont want new labour they want old labour back
What the f**k. Are we now living in Stalin’s Russia? Is our democratic choice only available when it runs in line with the elitism shown by so many so called Labour M.P’s. We voted for them to do our bidding, not their own.
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No surprises here, it’s just mind boggling the amount of people who couldn’t vote in this election.
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Read this: staggering!
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The corrupt behaviour by Labour Party Officials presiding over and controlling the vote for the Labour Leadership is absolutely scandalous. Those responsible for such corruption should be expelled from the Labour Party forthwith. To allow them to remain is a cancer that will continue to do damage to the Labour Party and it’s democratic process. The individuals who deliberately dis-enfranchised the bonafide members of the Labour Party, both old and new, in order to circumvent the will of such members and dishonestly and fraudulently alter the vote, should be arrested and tried for such crimes.
Wikileaks are offering £20,000 to anyone who can spill the beans on the dirty business that must have gone on behind the scenes.
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As Mac said after the Chicken Coup, they’re no effin good at it, they couldn’t fix a raffle if Smiff had the only ticket. Once JC has sorted the PLP out he’d better start with McNicol and the cabal that is the Labour Party machine, handing out a few P45’s would help!
And oh what a difference it’ll all make…..Not
….and that’s Democracy a la Socialism? How can we ever expect to see a fair voting system in this country?
You said:
“Corbyn’s support among full members has increased by no fewer than 8.5 points.”
That should be: 9.5 points
Now will they plough through the votes and eject all that voted for JC? 61.8 should be 91.8 given the unprecedented electoral fraud perpetrated by the party officers. Even with their undemocratic intervention it is an overwhelming victory for honesty, integrity and truth. What will be the next dirty trick?
How long will we have to wait?
Or do we now get to focus upon stopping the vile Tories from stripping the UK of assets, stealing rights from the people, sanctioning the most vulnerable, causing and perpetuating poverty, selling arms to tyrants oh and bombing children, women and yes non combatant men too!
Oh I forgot there’s no such thing as British war criminals are there??
So yes happy with result but sadly due to experience am still a tad cynical of potential ongoing sabotage from certain factions.
Absolutely.
I was one of those labour party members disenfranchised by the arbitrarily imposed cut off date….I would have voted for Corbyn. At least he won, but the PLP are still trying to pretend that they know best for the country…all who believe in a more just party must remind their MPs to listen to the people of this country. Hi
Jonesy the biker poet -Your comments echo some / most of my concerns, I’ll be amazed at the level of arrogance if an attempt to purge 91.8 is made !!! & I’m very concerned about the next step by “party officers” to disenfranchise the majority mandate that has endorsed JC as leader of the Labour Party – and most importantly the policies he represents and that have been endorsed by his majority vote.
A majority vote “even with the undemocratic intervention”/s’ as you point out, JC’s majority vote is extremely rare in itself given the ‘trend’ for want of a better description, throughout UK politics of endorsing marginal ‘majority’ votes as firm mandates’ for governance.
I am very concerned about these issues -and those LP representatives who choose to use their current mandate to ignore ! the 100’s of 1’000’s in the streets, who have stepped out to listen too, or are in support of JC’s leadership, because *finally their voice and relative experience of being disenfranchised & excluded from basic human, societal, educational, & economic rights at every turn, is being heard and represented.
Rightly or wrongly if it is at all possible, within the LP rules (??) – I think the constituency LP’s where applicable need to step up -and if necessary command dissenting representatives to pay attention to the direction of political & economic change being endorced by JC’s leadership votes and those unheard and unrepresented potential votes of the 100’s & 1’000’s evident on the UK streets by their physical presence, during JC’s campaigning this summer.
Either way given the current political and economic direction and climate -and that of the past 40 odd years, coupled with the “marginal advisory, Brexit” vote, the reactionary tone of which incited the murder of Jo Cox MP -and has *legitimised un-educated multi-striped prejudices, including the rise of dangerous and pernicious racism, *paying lip service to the principals of enfranchisement and democracy under these conditions and circumstances is totally and completely unacceptable.
In my humble lay person’s opinion, the time for sitting on the fence and looking on to see what happens next has gone, the current political and economic legacy and atmosphere is much too close to the pre WWII climate and conditions for my liking.
Essential reading, thanks!
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Whilst the NEC have played a dirty game in this election I think you are reading these figures incorrectly. The 138,000 includes all those who are not up to date with their subs, maybe not on the electoral register and MOST OF ALL, didn’t choose to vote (for whatever reason). Elsewhere I’ve seen a figure of 3,000 quoted for those actively turned down – along with 5,000 who didn’t receive their ballot. The numbers rejected for political – anti-Corbyn – reasons are nothing like the figures you assume
Here’s an extract from wiki about what happened last time:
“The number of those rejected would eventually reach 56,000,[85] around 9.1% of the 610,753 considered eligible to vote at the start of the contest.[86] According to the party, 45,000 of those were rejected for not being on the electoral register.[87]”
That includes registered supporters I believe, so not quite the same, but shows it wasn’t all about gerrymandering. Again, I’m with you, the party hierarchy have done everything they can to manipulate this election, just not to the extent you suggest.
60,000 people paid specifically to vote and didn’t. If any at all simply didn’t bother, it would be a tiny number. So that doesn’t explain the vast shortfall of 1/3 of those who paid.
It’s possible, though unlikely that existing members that were opposed to Corbyn have warmed to him. But what we do know is that a) there are lots of new members who have been attracted to the party because of him; b) that moderates have left in their droves. So the figures aren’t really all that surprising, are they?
‘Moderates’ are leaving in droves after this latest victory, but they stayed long enough to vote against it
True, but he’s still a stupid discredited socialist fud.
Happy to approve this comment for what it says about you rather than about Corbyn
Just for the record. I am a registered supporter who paid £25 but then didn’t vote. I suspect that I am not the only one.
Much as I like JC I don’t believe he can win a general election. I remember the despair during the 1980s as the Tories won election after election. The more I saw of Smith, the more I disliked him. He came across as untrustworthy and smug.
And so I didn’t vote.
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Thank you for this. Staggering but not shocking
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It was on the homepage of their website though??
Of course. They can’t hide it completely, but they definitely don’t want it on the MSM
I was suspended and there for my vote not included .This is not a democratic party unless we get rid of the oligarchic elite ….that think they can dictate to the membership .they are not the party …..we are!!!
Me too for “unspecified social media comments” on “an unspecified date”. I received my vote after 5 phone calls 1.5 days before cut off date. I voted. One hour later, after I had shared on a pro Corbyn sire, I got an email telling me I was suspended. Not acceptable. No time to appeal. Labour’s Compliance McCarthyite Team are now saying that the cannot respond to DPA requests with the 40 day statutory period. Not acceptable. Sadly whilst Mr Mcnicol is in post it is unlikely that any of this will change. He, it appears, considers himself “untouchable”.
Sadly your experience seems all too typical.
JR Emery
>
This is an interesting article and sheds some useful insight. However it goes wrong here: “Given that registered supporters had to pay £25 to register, we can safely assume that all of those would have voted given the chance.”
I will refer to a quote from one of the most important films in modern history: Under Siege 2. “Assumption is the mother of all fuckups”.
With no evidence, you proceed to make a run of assumptions, and then conclude some rather conclusive conclusions based on these assumptions.
I’m only calling you out on this because I was eligible to vote in this election, and I would have voted Corbyn, but I didn’t vote. There may be many more like me, which means it’s better to base analysis on evidence rather than assumptions.
Nobody – or a vanishingly small number of people – would pay an exorbitant sum to be able to vote and then not bother doing so. Certainly not one third of those who paid.
Sure but do you not agree that this is quite a leap “we can safely assume that all of those would have voted given the chance.” You put ‘all’ in bold too. I think it would have made more sense if you’d tried to argue a realistic percentage, based on the eligible:voted ratio for the 2015 contest for example.
No. Who’d pay the hugely-inflated £25 and not bother to use their vote? It’s not realistic to suggest any more than a tiny few – people who died/were in a coma, perhaps, but no significant numbers.
I’m neither comatose or dead and I didn’t vote 🙂 I’m not saying this error (or what I view as an error) completely invalidates the rest of your message – it doesn’t. However I’m just cautioning to beware of the mind projection fallacy – because as I say – I fit the criteria that you find inconceivable. This at least leaves the door open for the possibility that there may be others like me.
TomTom – you say “I was eligible to vote in this election, and I would have voted Corbyn, but I didn’t vote.” That sounds rather ..erm.. unusual – So you paid your money to vote and you wanted to vote Corbyn but just didn’t bother. That’s like going to a shop paying £25 for a load of goods then just leaving them on the counter and walking away – most of us haven’t got 25 quid to waste in that way. Was there any particular reason why you didn’t bother to vote? It just doesn’t make much sense.
Just a correction: last year he did win the vote among members as well. He had three opponents and with 49% he still won almost as many votes as the rest of them combined.
He didn’t win an outright majority, which was the point made.
He won last year with 59.6% actually
He got 59.5% of the vote in 2015 so he did win an overall majority easy to find just google it!
“I bet you won’t see this in the mainstream”.
Is that because it’s bollocks?
No. Next?
Why do you think it could be bollocks? Or are you of the opinion that the mainstream media is unbiased and reports accurately?
The BBC also tried to get reactions from people leaving after the results were announced. It painted a picture of glum dismay that Corbyn had won and was not representative of the overall vote.
I mean, in all honesty, if you was a Corbyn supporter you would most likely want to stay behind for a few minutes and celebrate. If you was a Smith supporter you would, after Corbyn had made his speech, want to exit the auditorium in disgust.
Typical BBC to stoop this low and naïve of anyone who believed that it was anything other that another calculated attack on Corbyn.
If you were, not if you was. For God’s sake, learn to speak properly.
Well spotted and thanks for sharing xx
You are really stupid to read anything into these numbers. Owen Smith was a catastrophic choice to run against Corbyn and the smart ones knew it and steered clear. It is only when Labour is obliterated in 2020 that a new leader will have a chance and even then, such is the arrogance and idiocy of the hard left that Corbyn may well win again. In the next ten years no Labour Government will be in place which means no support to the most marginalised in society, no investment on the NHS and no sharing the spoils of wealth equally. Well done Jezza, very principled.
So 60,000 people paid £25 to vote and then didn’t bother? Lala land, mate.
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You’ve won the fight for Labour. Well done. You can stop bleating about that now. You need to start thinking about how you are going to win the fight for the country.
That’s already underway and has been for a long time. Don’t believe what you read in the papers or hear from MPs with an agenda. A vast increase in membership is a better place to do it from than anything the ‘moderates’ can offer.
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I’m a unsure of the full members calculations.
If you discount the 128k denied a vote (which, by the way, probably accounts for a significant amount of the 122k registered supporters), that gives a max eligibility of 423k full members, and therefore a turnout of 67%.
I can appreciate the argument that registered supporters exist primarily to vote, but is 67% that surprising for full members?
In the current circumstances and in view of the underlying 95% participation level, yes
Actually, since commenting this morning, I read your previous article on this subject, and wished I had earlier. If I understand correctly, about 18% of the 423k “full” members didn’t even get a vote, never mind use it.
Indeed!
Great to see the underlying overall support for JC across all types of members. Exposes the enormous lie I have seen posted elsewhere that 5million(??) Labour Party members who joined before the arbitary cut off date were denied their “Democratic” vote duexto the “surge in entyists”! Where do these people get their figures from?
Jeremy increase among members (not gerrymandered much) was 9.5% – a pretty strong vote of confidence in the transformation from a Blairite centralist Party. And the affiliated supporters’ vote of 60 : 40 implies the “working class” is just as strongly supportive. Both despite the intensive hostile Press!.
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