At the turn of the year, the SKWAWKBOX published exclusive legal advice from a highly-qualified barrister that the move by the Birmingham Labour board to disenfranchise thousands of Labour members was entirely unlawful.
Hard-line right-wingers had ruled – allegedly in breach of party rules and procedures – that only members who had joined Labour before July 2015, two months before Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, could vote in selections of next year’s council candidates – at one stroke ruling out huge numbers of pro-Corbyn members from the selections for as long as 6 years.
On Saturday night, the Guardian announced that Jeremy Corbyn had stepped into the process to ensure that the gerrymandering measure was overturned, so that any members joining by the start of this year will be entitled to vote:
The paper reports that Corbyn was ‘warned’
that, in effect, he would be overruling decisions already taken by the local party.
Which, of course, was exactly what was needed. The West Midlands has been a bastion of the right-wing old guard clinging to control of party mechanisms in the hope of frustrating Labour’s new status as a genuine, inspiring alternative – and protecting far too many dire MPs.
The SKWAWKBOX applauds this show of resolve by the Labour leader, whose strength and electoral surge in spite of attempts to undermine him by laughably-termed ‘moderate’ MPs including many from the West Midlands, plus the support of the vast majority of Labour members, entitles him to take whatever action is necessary to ensure that Labour operates democratically.
And not just in the Midlands.
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