Delay in publication of left ‘slate’ means nominations going ahead as a free-for-all, risking divided left vote
A continued stalemate after yesterday’s meeting of CLGA – the alliance of left organisations that usually recommends a ‘slate’ of candidates behind which left-wing members of the Labour Party can unite – has meant that there is still no guidance for members on candidates for Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC), even though the local party nomination process is well underway.
Momentum caused consternation at last week’s meeting by springing a list of demands on assembled delegates and delaying a decision. The matter was meant to move forward last night, but no progress has been made.
While CLGA hopes that agreement might still be reached, many present feel that Momentum is going to go it alone and issue its own slate of candidates – with a huge risk of dividing the left vote and allowing the right-wing candidates backed by long-time anti-Corbyn groups Progress and Labour First to sneak in through the middle.
In the hope of leaving room for an eleventh-hour agreement, CLGA member group CLPD has issued only one name in the interim – Oldham-based Labour veteran Mohammed ‘Mo’ Azam, who served on the NEC in 2005.
Azam is widely respected on the left and has served the movement in a variety of roles.
The deadline for CLP (constituency Labour party) nominations is 15 February. The SKWAWKBOX hopes to publish additional names soon that the left can support for the remaining CLP representative place and for the NEC’s BAME section member.
Momentum has not responded to a request to confirm whether it will agree a unified slate or issue its own.
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Lansman strikes again , just what is his game I wonder ?
Beginning to think him and his private run Company \Momentum is becoming a liability now rather than an aide to the Leftwing , maybe time to dump him and his Company , Revolution anyone ?
Revolution?
Well – the election indicates the result would be a right-wing putsch with the willing assent of the SunMail duggies in the ‘Labour Heartlands’.
The revolution I refer to is that of booting out a supposedly leftwing demigod called Lansman ,,,,
I’ll certainly second that. He’s well and truly blown any radical credentials during the last year, and sold out good people.
What is RLB doing contaminating her campaign with him?
Revolution may be the only recourse left to us but unfortunately Brits don:have the mindset of the French and will probably just go along with the shit even though most of us will suffer big time!
true
https://paris-luttes.info/?lang=fr … tells it like it should !
I’d revolt tonight if I could be sure it wouldn’t turn into a killing spree. Hard to stop once I get started though…
Utopia on the back of events you could never tell your kids about would be hard to celebrate.
Maybe it’s because there’s so much worse suffering in other countries that we don’t kick off?
Wouldn’t it be incredibly self-indulgent to revolt in protest at a standard of living half the world dreams of?
International socialism’s my only faith – what moral superiority could it claim if the hungriest didn’t get first suck on the teat wherever they live?
Humm the French don’t seem to have any problem with the justification of such , they certainly don’t have an issue with being the 5th richest and still standing up for their rights and standards . Nor should that be an excuse to allow those hard fought for rights and standards to be denigrated because ” there are other areas of the world far worse off ”
Much better to drag everyone upwards rather than downwards don’t you think David ?
The French do give good riot, it’s true.
Dragging anyone downwards was entirely your own invention – you certainly didn’t find it in anything I wrote.
David , “Wouldn’t it be incredibly self-indulgent to revolt in protest at a standard of living half the world dreams of?” ….implies to me that one should be grateful for what we’ve got and not “kick off about it “
Any figure in mind for the number of deaths you’re willing to accept in this revolution?
Or did you actually mean civil disobedience rather than pitchforks and Molotov cocktails against guns and tanks?
A propos of revolution, the “Left” members of the NEC have spent the Corbyn years not being Left. As a result Corbyn’s “democratic revolution” never happened.
There were modest piecemeal reforms on leadership nominations and resolutions to Conference. But the major crimes against party democracy of the Kinnock-Blair era remain unreversed – the ridiculously elitist “stakeholders'” structure of the NEC, the refusal to countenance open selections and the supplanting of Conference through the National Policy Forum.
The practice seemed to be for the Left never to push anything which would upset the Right too much. Result: there isn’t much for a renewed right wing leadership under Starmer to sweep away!
And of course Lansman reproduced the deliberately undemocratic bogus ‘stakeholders’ category in Momentum’s post Coup ‘Leadership body’ , so that the actual paying Momentum Membership are always outvoted by Lansman and his old cronies ! In fact for a couple of the early years of Momentum Lansman himself was on the Momentum national council body supposedly ‘on behalf of’ the then extant ‘Left Futures’ discussion blog – which Lansman owned, and which had no democratic representative structure whatsoever on behalf of those who published articles on it !
The idea, much currently put about by Lefties trying to look on the bright side of the current Labour disaster, is that ‘never mind Jeremy’s four years as Leader shifted the politics and policies of Labour forever to the Left (or at least a wee while ?) ‘ . SOOOOOO WRONG, folks, the entire post 2015 ‘Corbynist’ Left lurch is not only over, but not a scintilla of it will remain from now on, not only if a right winger like Nandy or Starmer becomes Leader, but even if the weak, opportunist, Long Bailey, and the good, socialist, but rather dim , Burgon, become Leader and Deputy. The PLP Right , triumphant from smashing Jeremy , and the mildly reformist Left agenda, via their major role in engineering our Election defeat by forcing the suicidal Remain policy into the Manifesto, and wrecking the Party’s credibility, will simply not work with any Leader that doesn’t immediately take Labour back to a warmed-over form of NATO-loving, Trident-hugging, Tory-lite, Blairism.
J Penny ,, Sadly I have to agree with you and the answer is ????
Rob, the first step to devising a possible solution to any problem is , first to accept there IS a real problem, then secondly to understand the problem. The Labour Left seem to just about grasp that we are in deep shit, with the likely return of a Right wing Leadership, or the return of a new Bailey/Burgon ‘Leadership’, that the now exultant PLP Right and Centre will not accept until they are ground down to toe the old neoliberal Tory-lite Blairite ‘line’.
But there is as yet no widespread recognition by what passes for the ‘Left’ in our membership or PLP, of what has gone wrong. Most still seem to think staying in the neoliberal EU straightjacket is the best thing, the moral thing, the woke thing, to do – and see the fault for our defeat entirely lying with our now deserting old ‘heartland Leave-supporting’ working class ex voters – for being racist, stupid, old, ‘gammons’ , unwoke, unreasonably not keen on competing for their jobs and wages with an unlimited EU-sourced labour supply, etc. I’m afraid unless what passes for the Labour ‘Left’ does do some socialist analysis (rather than smug Left Liberal posturing) of how we got here, there is no route out of the current collapse of the Labour Left back to a asligtly warmed over version of corrupt, opportunist, Blairism .
The Labour Party has now reached (via our 2019 catastrophic defeat and loss of most of our heartland voters forever) and passed it’s cathartic ‘PASOK Moment’ of terminal decline . It will take some time for the 500,000+ post 2015 membership to dwindle back to the circa 180K 2015 levels, and a while for Labour’s control of most of its traditional councils across England and Wales to be lost too. But the process of permanent decline is now underway , with a Right /Centre dominated PLP, and the quite likely puppet of the Right, the new Leadership, incapable of offering any policy opposition to rampant Johnson-led extreme free market Toryism.
The nominal, ancient cliche, ‘solution’ is of course to give up on the endlessly fruitless, time-wasting , hoary myth of ‘winning Labour to socialism’ , and to try to form a new radical socialist Party which can offer real radical resistance to the dire years of globalist Toryism ahead. But I don’t see many even broaching the question that that is the potential ‘answer to. Or, more importantly, see the existence , in the service industry dominated , de-unionised, financialised , economy that is the UK today, of the politicised working class, and radicalied middle class, class forces that would be required to be ready for a wider struggle against the Tories and all their works, to make a new radical Party any sort of possibility. Ken Loach’s stillborn pre Corbyn Surge ‘Left Unity’ Party project never grew beyond 2,000, and was filled with all the ‘usual suspect’ middle class London-centric bubble personalities that haven’t had a new idea in 30 years, and in the main are just rapidly ageing moralistic Left Liberals , not the woke radical socialists they fondly imagine themselves to be. These are the tiny, extraordinarily sectarian, mutually hostile to every other grouplet, ‘Leftie bubble inhabitants’ that have buggered up every extra Labour Party new radical Party formation initiative of the last 40 years at least. So I have no more idea than you do what the ‘answer’ is, but at least I think I understand the problem.
Jpenny , I think I do understand the problem in fact I have previously said that there is rapidly approaching a point where Labour needs to split and a new Democratic Socialist party created. That point I think will be driven by who the new Leadership is and how the bastards in the RW PLP react, and the defining point will be how Conf reacts/ policies agreed by it.
Rob, I think we are in basic overall agreement on this – the real area of divergence between us is that , I sadly think that the overwhelming Right and ‘centrist moderate’ dominated PLP, triumphant at their destruction of Corbyn as Leader, will simply not accept anything less than a total return to some version of opportunist right of centre neo-Blairism – so the sabotage of the Party will continue until the ‘Corbynista’ members are driven out/expelled, and a ‘Leader’ acceptable to the Right is in place (or with Long Bailey, reduced to submissive compliance).
So I think the game is up for Labour already.
For once I can agree – on the uselessness of the National Policy Forum.
‘Open’ selections, however, are not a magic formula. I’ve always been in favour of selection taking place before each election, but exactly same inertias and pressures operate. It’s a delusion to think otherwise.
Beyond that, the delusion that there is such entities as ‘THE left’ and ‘THE right’ is naive bollocks, much as it flatters some to feel uniquely persecuted and righteous.
So what exactly would you classify Corbynisim Vs Blarisim then RH ?
Open selection is a start somewhat better than the crap we have now , i.e nowt
You miss my point, rob. That the philosophies of Corbyn and Blair are antagonistic is beyond dispute. That each represents the totality of each side of the antagonism is, however, not the case. There are differing takes on the conflict.
All I’m saying is what is now generally accepted – that the old one-dimensional left/right description of political views is simply inadequate on its own as a means of defining things.
On the selection issue – there is nothing preventing the deselection of MPs now – it just requires a bit of effort and organisation. All the rest is just sour grapes when it doesn’t pan out.
The naive reactionof some at the results of recent attempts was just a symptom of the delusions of some in the Party about the nature of the Party. There isn’t a thwarted massively popular ‘left’. Coalitions have to be built. On the ground.
I’d like all candidates for the NEC say that they will go all out to introduce democracy to the Party and ban the JLM from having any part in disciplinary cases. The JLM was/is instrumental in the witch hunt.
And the LFOI , I ‘d ban all of them , the only truthful grp is the JVL , and whilst we are at it , I’d ditch all those MPS who are members of the Co-op party to , you are either 100 Labour or not ! and having divided loyalties between the Co-op party who are not Democratic Socialist but the opposite SD then leads to the constant undermining we saw in the Corbyn coups
A sad indictment of ‘so-called’ left wing members is they have to be told who to vote for. Is that because they are unable to think for themselves or enjoy being told what to do!
Not accurate. CLGA has not released any names. Component parts of CLGA are seeking nomination of various candidates.
The acid test is, would it get rid of the Pantomime Dame
Unless you attend meetings you cannot vote, for why,
580,000 members, how many vote, who should we vote for, how many of us voted for TWatson and Momentum slate,
Your a fucking anti semite and a racist,
200 vexatious claims of anti semitism,
On what planet is that individual not sacked on the spot
You dont have to like each other, but you do have to work together, the job comes first