Something stinks in Birmingham. Local Momentum members are reporting that Birmingham Labour’s board has voted to bar any members who joined after July 2015 from voting in the selection of candidates to stand for Midland Metro Mayor next year and for council seats in the 2018 local elections.
In other words, any members who joined after Jeremy Corbyn’s candidacy for Labour leader was announced will have no say in who represents Labour in their area until the following council elections – which are not until 2022 – six years from now.
This means around two-thirds of members, overwhelmingly Corbyn supporters, will be disenfranchised, maximising the selection chances of right-wing candidates committed to undermining Labour’s return to its real roots.
The West Midlands are a hotbed – or, if you prefer, a cesspit – of odious, right-wing MPs, including of course Tom ‘Anaconda’ Watson. It appears that the blight is not only at the MP level and that local officers are prepared to lose elections if it means preventing pro-Corbyn candidates being selected.
Because, of course, if local functionaries cynically disenfranchise two-thirds of members in order to shoehorn in candidates the two-thirds have no faith in, they can hardly expect those members to spend time and money campaigning for those candidates, with potentially disastrous results.
A local Momentum group has written an open letter to the board which gives further detail.
In the opinion of this writer, the right-wingers in Birmingham have shown that, for all the Progress/Labour First faction’s bleating about ‘electability’ and Corbyn’s Labour being ‘a party of protest’, it is in fact they who don’t give a fig for winning and who are perfectly ready to sacrifice electoral success and the well-being of those who need Labour in power, for the sake of their own small-minded and self-centred interests.
It is also this author’s opinion that each and every Birmingham Labour representative who has participated in or backed this move, up to and including local MPs, has brought the party into disrepute and worked against its interests.
And should therefore be immediately suspended and then expelled after due process – which is a lot more than the ‘party within a party’ proffered to Corbyn supporters in the run-up to the last leadership election.
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Reblogged this on Sid's Blog and commented:
Dictators never win a marathon!
Bitter is their path!
Tower Hamlets Borough Labour Party is in “special measures” they are not allowed to choose their council candidates either.
Excellent – the sooner Corbyn and his acolytes are defeated, the better. He is a cancer within the body politic.
Not worthy of an answer.
You seem to have your head on the wrong way round, Neoliberalism is the cancer that has provided us with the rampant inequality and the wonderful world of austerity. Thats just a fact, so dont bother to argue
I prefer cesspit, yeah.
The right wing is in a desperate save my personal gravy train mode. They have to be removed immediately.
Can they not complain to the NEC?
I suspect at least one NEC member is involved in it.
This is a very important issue. Am I alone in expressing the disappointment that some people and groups are acting with apparent impunity? I know that Jeremy is not, unlike his internal opponents, peevish or vindictive, but things like this need to be stamped on, and the perpetrators put back in the box. On the other hand, hopefully, I might be missing something, or, perhaps there is something happening behind the scenes.
Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
If Corbyn can’t or won’t do something about the Labour traitors then he will alienate those who voted for him in good faith, they won’t vote Labour. These self serving right wingers care only that they keep their MP salary and nothing else. Currently the Labour Right are defrauding two thirds of the membership who are contributing to the party and should be facing removal from the party.The may have the numbers but Might is not Right and Right is wrong.
What is the procedure for Withdrawing the Whip from an MP?
From http://www.w4mp.org/library/guides/parliament-guides/whos-who/whips-and-their-work/
“Most MPs, most of the time, pose no trouble for their party’s whips. However, issues of discipline arise from time to time, on a scale from an individual MP’s doubts over a prickly issue to a large scale revolt among backbenchers. At the extreme end of the scale, when an MP disagrees with the action of his or her party, he or she may ‘resign’ the whip – in other words, leave the parliamentary party and be no longer subject to its rules. Similarly, if an MP elicits extreme disapproval of their party’s leadership, the party leader may ‘withdraw’ the whip, expelling the MP. In both cases, the MPs remain in post but become effectively independent, no longer expected to follow the whip. Aside from rebellion, personal actions or comment may cause an MP to resign the whip or have it withdrawn. The decision to go to war in Iraq generated a number of such political casualties, with Clare Short and Robin Cook both resigning the whip in protest and with George Galloway having the whip withdrawn after making comments to the press deemed to have brought the party into disrepute. .More recently, former minister Denis McShane had the Labour whip withdrawn following a referral from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to the police.”
“Local Momentum members are reporting” That should have been your first clue that it’s probably made up bollocks.
Probably not. Like Corbyn or not, He has never lost the basic principles of what the labour party was formed for. Labour needs to remember it’s roots. Learn the lessons about the worst of the Blair Brown years, The good bits came from labours original principals, the rest from greed.
nasty unfortunately we have to copy their selfserving deviance and insist on pain of expulsion that they obey the constitution and rules
Reblogged this on Declaration Of Opinion .
Isn’t this in contravention of the Labour Party Rule book 2016? Which states 6 month membership is the qualifying period to vote for local government candidates and 12 month membership is the qualifying period to be a candidate.
Relevant sections are:-
Appendix 4 NEC Procedures for the selection of local government Candidates
I. Shortlisting and selection
ii. Shortlisting and selection meetings – general
g. States that members who have been a member for at least 6 months are
eligible to participate in selection meetings.
D. Qualification of nominees
ii States nominees Requires 12 at least 12 months’ continuous
national individual membership of the Party
Reblogged this on MAL's MURMURINGS and commented:
why are time-servers so hostile to passionate commitment?
Isn’t this in contravention of the Labour Party Rule book 2016?
This states 6 month membership is the qualifying period to vote for local government candidates and 12 month membership is the qualifying period to be a candidate.
Relevant sections are:-
Appendix 4 NEC Procedures for the selection of local government Candidates
I. Shortlisting and selection
ii. Shortlisting and selection meetings – general
g. States that members who have been a member for at least 6 months are
eligible to participate in selection meetings.
D. Qualification of nominees
ii States nominees Requires 12 at least 12 months’ continuous
national individual membership of the Party
Yes. But getting the NEC to act on it when at least one person associated with it is likely to be on the NEC is another matter, sadly.
which of course again confirms my point that the NEC is more 12-12-10 not 18-17 so all the over-excited debate on “the NEC is close” is pretty irrelevant as people are now clearly learning from its ongoing behaviour
The Party is being deliberately corrupted. The NEC has become ineffective. Jeremy has to stamp his authority on these cretins and remove the whip. He could start by directly interfering with the Birmingham branch. Then the others.
There is something rotten in the city of Birmingham, and Jeremuy really does need to get of his arse and start calling for the removal of this lot, its damaging to even the most stalwart supporters, and I am one so I know what my action will be.
If this lot arent tackled shortly I will be cancelling all subs to Labour and Momentum
Hi Tony, Although your actions would play into the hands of the right wing plotters I fully understand and sympathise with you. I was suspended and will not return until McNicholl and those on the NEC and PLP who were responsible are kicked out. They think that it only affects a vote for the left. Our MP is not of the left. However this action has cost them at least 40 votes from immediate family who are disgusted at the way I was treated. They are not all Corbynites in fact most are centre. but the party has lost valuable support.
Reblogged this on L8in.
Corbyn needs to rule , take back party, members voted for change twice
Any update on this story. If a freeze date of 2015 was agreed 6 months ago, then the next part of the process is a letter sent to members (including new ones) telling them about it and asking them to apply to stand. It is strange that no such letter so far has been sent out
Nothing since the barrister’s legal opinion that was published on the blog.
Is there any update on the challenge to all the suspensions by the party in the run up to the last leadership election. Why has McNicholl not been fired for his financial mismanagement of the last General election.
To answer the last question first, I think because he’s helped keep the NEC balance tight and unlikely to kick him out. As to the first, I know one woman had initiated a legal challenge but haven’t seen anything on it in ages.