Former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale’s departure has put the pro-Corbyn Alex Rowley in immediate charge as acting leader of the Scottish party – and the SKWAWKBOX can reveal that this also means that he replaces Dugdale on Labour’s UK NEC (National Executive Committee) with immediate effect until a new leader is elected.
This means that Rowley is unlikely to step down in order to contest the leadership – though it is not yet clear whether he would seek to stay in post and stand in the hope of taking the position permanently.
According to senior Labour sources, Rowley’s accession gives Corbyn a window of effective control of the NEC by 18 votes to 17 – and the Labour leader’s team does not intend to waste the opportunity.
At the very least, the altered NEC mix should allow the confirmation of current deputy Chair Andy Kerr as Chair, in line with usual practice – right-wing members of the NEC were looking to break precedent by trying to leapfrog Kerr into the Chair’s seat in order to strengthen the right’s hold on the NEC executive.
Unite’s Jennie Formby would also be confirmed as deputy, giving Corbyn – and the vast majority of members – a majority representation among the officers for the first time since Corbyn became leader.
These moves will represent the absolute minimum informed Labour members will want to see. While the 18-17 majority should hold for the above, the mix is more complex with larger matters.
But if it can be held together, Ms Dugdale’s resignation could give Corbyn and his allies far greater influence over the agenda for Labour’s conference next month in Brighton – and potentially an opportunity to remake the party in line with its leadership and membership and to secure permanent access for the party’s left to any future leadership contests.
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It is time for Iain McNicol to step down as the General Secretary of the Labour Party and be replaced by a person who has the confidence of the membership and the leadership of the party.
Iain can either do the decent thing and deliver his resignation speech at conference, or he can suffer the humiliation of being removed from the post.
It is entirely his decision.
It was time for McNicol to step down on the day he started.
Or in 2015 when he lead the coup in getting many members either banned or suspended from voting his reckless time is over and must be the next on the hit list
Good news and a positive change so far , thank you Kezia for standing down and hopefully the example will be followed by others shortly ( yes that’s you McNicol )
Good news on the leadership and NEC side. Agree it is time for McNicol to go which ever route he chooses.
The right have smelt the coffee at last. Kezia says the party is in a better state now than when she took over. I would not agree with that statement. However Jeremy should move quickly to secure the NEC and move McNichol and a few more to stamp his authority on the party. Then we can go after the tories and win our people back.
“Kezia says the party is in a better state now than when she took over.”
Despite – Not because – of her. She’s hopefully the first of many. Expect those that do manage to cling on (for now) to crank up the disruptive, self-serving rhetoric. Such is their wont.
I’ve got that wrong, haven’t I? Labour were the main opposition in Scotland when she took over, weren’t they?
‘Better state than when I found it’ , indeed. :/
Off you pop, dugdale.
MARVELOUS!
A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, SLOWLY SLOWLY CATCHY MONKEY!
THE “MODERATES” AS THEY, LIKE TO BE CALLED SHOULD CHANGE THEIR TACK OR SHIP OUT!
PREFAIRING THE LATTER!
A, FOR INSTANCE, I CLEARED MY SOCK DRAWER OUT, NO PAIN AT ALL!
I NOW DON’T BOTHER, SOCK FREE FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE I WAS A BABY!
IT’S VERY LIBERATING INDEED!
LET US ALL CLEAR OUT THE RIGHT IN OUR PARTY FOR THE GOOD!
WE CAN GO FORWARD WITHOUT CONTRADICTION FROM THOSE WITHIN AND ATTACK THE ENEMY!
THE TORY PARTY, ALONG WITH THOSE WHO ARE ONLY IN IT FOR THEMSELVES
I see gobshite Jess Phillips is already mouthing off in the Guardian demanding a woman only list for the replacement.
Give it a rest Phillips and let the membership decide who us best NOT YOU you gobby ENGLISH MP .
To people like Jess Phillips and Harriet Harman, gender is everything.
To such people, a woman who supports austerity, wars and nuclear weapons will always be preferable to a man who opposes such horrors.
have you seen this, posted yesterday:More bad news I’m afraid. As well as all the admins for The Ragged Trousered Philanderer being locked out, I got notification today that Jihadi John’s Day Off is being unpublished . I’ve also lost access to Exposing Zionism UK: Free Palestine, another page which has 90,000 followers. Fortunately in this case there are still some admins left, but they don’t have the privileges to add new admins. The clamp down on “internet extremism” by Theresa May was the top priority in the Queen’s Speech after buying the votes of the DUP having failed to win the election. The government has been in urgent “talks” with social media providers in the weeks since and it now looks like GCHQ can shut down dissident left wing pages on request at the drop of a hat, which is why you’ve seen so many left wing and Scottish Nationalist pages being closed down in the last few weeks. The Ragged Trousered Philanderer was hugely influential in the weeks before the General Election, outperforming every other political page, left and right including the official Labour Party page, Jeremy Corbyn’s page, the Momentum page and the Official Theresa May and Conservative pages put together. In the final week before the election it had a reach of 26 Million. That’s why pages like this are so dangerous.Unfortunately it now looks as though they can shut down pages and ban admins from Facebook with the touch of a button.That’s why I’m calling it a day. There’s absolutely no sense in building up a following of a quarter of a Million spread over 6 pages if the government, via GCHQ, can get Facebook to shut down pages and ban admins. I’m not sure if the same things are happening on twitter and other social media sites, but I can’t see any way forward when it comes to influencing people through social media. During the election, the establishment realised that it had lost its stranglehold of Billionaire media baron controlled propaganda, and they were terrified. If an ordinary working class laddie like me can set up a network of media sources with a following of over a quarter of a million people in my spare time, they must’ve been shitting bricks. And it wasn’t just me… there were scores of people doing this. This is why the government are using the guise of protecting the public from extremist content to shut us down.All that remains is for me to thank you for following my pages over the last three years. I hope you’ve enjoyed all the jokes and memes and videos.So longJJ**note** I have no idea why the page is still visible and i’m still able to post. This happened before. You have to remember that this is the 4th version of the page, the other 3 being shut down by FB. The last time, it took a few days before they shut it down after announcing it had been unpublished. Unfortunately this time they have banned all the admins for The Ragged Trousered Philanderer making it inaccessible, even though it’s visible and the admin accounts are visible. The only reason this admin account survived is because it wasn’t an admin on TRTP.