The Forward Momentum (FM) change slate has won all of the places on Momentum’s National Coordinating Group (NCG) elected by Momentum members, defeating the continuity ‘Momentum Renewal’ campaign.
‘Renewal’ had been organised by a cadre of north-west ‘fixers’ close to founder Jon Lansman to fight off the FM challenge and had been described as a front for ‘business as usual‘ to protect the existing Momentum establishment.
The news means that Momentum is unlikely to endorse founder Jon Lansman in the NEC elections and should result in a far higher chance of a unified left slate for that contest. Insiders had said Lansman had stepped down from the NCG slate in return for Momentum’s support for the NEC.
Now it’s up to FM to justify the support it has received from Momentum members and drive through real change and democratisation.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This site is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here for a monthly donation via GoCardless. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
‘A Political Party within a Political Party’……beware! Momentum unaccountable.
Hehe, Therein lies its power. Now we just need the SCG to realise the wisdom of realigning itself into a distinct entity WITHIN Labour – a bit like the Co-operative Party minus the centrism.
Bingo Exactly ! qwertboi and I hope they see it too.
I can’t tell if you are being serious or it’s satire , very funny tho if it’s satire
That’s good isnt it
The left is on the move
Rejoin, recruit and vote
SIMPLES
Doug, this is not the time for flippancy or humour. Regards
https://media1.giphy.com/media/PYEGoZXABBMuk/200.gif
Won’t stop the stitch-ups.
Well lets give it chance first Toffee shall we, and see what happens . Unless you are ref to stitch ups in Labour and not within Momentum ?
Test will be not having Lansman on NEC Slate
If Momentum did not exist some one would invent it, they have a very important part to play in future of the party
Pray God they dont fuck it up again
Nice to see the dishonest ‘continuity Lansmannism’ posers defeated. But isn’t the post Lansman Coup Momentum NCG carefully structured so that all sorts of old cronies of Lansman, wearing various self-appointed ‘hats’ (like Lansman himself at first , sitting bogusly on the Leadership body by virtue of his totally unelected ownership of the now defunct ‘Left Futures’ blog !) , can outvote the elected positions ?
Don’t hold your breath for the new elected people to change the dire moralistic Left Liberal politics of Momentum – they are all still a bunch of uncritical pro EU , pro unlimited Freedom of Movement, supporters , and all of em supported the disastrous Remain and 2nd Referendum, position that lost us the 2019 General Election and smashed the Corbyn Surge. So Momentum, under even its new , supposedly ‘democracy-favouring’, new NCG members still hasn’t got the socialist politics to win back our lost millions of working class voters – and in the now ever-more tightly controlled totally Right Wing dominated and led, Starmerite, neoliberal Labour Party, the ‘Left’ of the Party, particularly Momentum members are just about to face their ‘1980’s Militant-style’ mass expulsion moment, as the Starmerite purge of the Left gathers ‘momentum’ ! Too late to introduce ‘democracy’ in your careerist ranks now , Momentumites – the entire cowardly , Left Liberal, not socialist, politics-infused ‘Corbynite’ game is over and lost – and the Labour Party is permanently fucked as a potential vehicle for Left advance. I doubt Momentum nowadays has even 10,000 subs-paying members – as comparted to its circa 40,000 heyday. What a tragically lost opportunity Momentum was – and both Lansman AND Jeremy Corbyn (who approved his coup) bear total responsibility for that.
Wasn’t the “Corbyn surge” mostly young people, and weren’t the young mostly pro-EU?
Well – we can agree on that one. Unfortunately, such a real movement doesn’t suit Ha’Penny’s preference for sclerotic old farts going nowhere in particular fast – his definition of ‘left’.
No, it is a long disproven (patronising) MSM myth that the ‘Corbyn Surge’ was mainly composed of ‘naive young people’ . You surely know that by now , McNiven ? It is true though that most younger Labour Party ‘Corbynites’ do appear to be uncritically pro EU, and were overwhelmingly pro Remain, and 2nd Referendum, and for unlimited Freedom of Movement , and therefore a key reason that Corbyn capitulated to the Right’s suicidal ‘Remain’ position eventually – and hence Labour lost the 2019 General election. And that is true whether those younger members were on Labour’s nominal ‘Left’ or ‘Right .
But why the surprise at that – Labour’s overwhelmingly professional occupation, higher educated, middle class , Left Liberal politics saturated membership, including most ‘Corbynites’, reflected the superficially ‘woke’ moralistic , but actually self-interested posture of their sub-section of the wider UK proletariat – an elite privileged social grouping within the wider class that personally BENEFITS from the unlimited labour supply and travel and insider job opportunities of the neoliberal EU – unlike the mass of the poorer working class , who were, and are, massively under-represented in the Party membership generally, and the ‘Corbyn Surge’ Left Liberal intake in particular. Momentum COULD have provided the political education to convert many of the Left Liberal Corbynista intake into socialists – but Lansman and his claque didn’t want a politically educated Momentum membership – just a passive voting block and canvassing force.
A supposed ‘Left’ that is mainly composed of the smug, privileged middle classes , saturated with actually merely Left Liberal, identity politics ridden, politics and outlook , can never be a force for radical socialism
A bit rich to accuse me of calling the young naive, which I didn’t, and then call them naive yourself. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at that from you.
What is naive is blaming the EU for Thatcher & Reagan’s obsession with Hayek.
It was their deregulation that created the massive expansion of unearned wealth that all the world’s rich investors saw and demanded from their own governments – the EU was a follower, not a leader of neoliberalism.
Investors drive the migration of skilled labour, not governments, not even the EU.
By demanding ever greater returns investors drive corporate managers to save the cost of training indigenous populations, pushing that cost onto poorer nations in the same way they push the cost of warehousing onto smaller suppliers with JIT. The same way Tesco oppresses dairy farmers and every other supplier – it’s all symptomatic of growing domination by the richest over the people and over governments – with no plan or even concept of the consequences beyond increasing their personal wealth.
You must be as aware of all that as I am – why do you insist on continuing to blame the EU for the greed of the 1% when we have a more right wing government more in thrall to the super rich than any other EU member?
The UK and US are the twin hives of neoliberalism.
Don’t even mention Greece – the Tories would have thrown the Greek people under a bus at the first hint from the City – long before the EU did.
Look what they’ve done to us ffs.
You really need to read my posts properly, McNiven. It was the MSM that constantly lied that the ‘Corbyn Surge’ membership boost was mainly naïve young peopleunder 25 – in order to be able to claim that only the young and gullible could be expected to buy into Left politics and policies. In fact the average age of Labour Party members before the Corbyn Surge in late 2015 was 51 – and the average age of the membership in 2019 was STILL 51 ! All that happened during the Corbyn surge was that a lot of older , middle class, professional background, but slightly more radical Left Liberals joined the Party , diluting the more Right Wing , Blairite, existing members.
Your paragraph saying that :
‘Investors drive the migration of skilled labour, not governments, not even the EU.
By demanding ever greater returns investors drive corporate managers to save the cost of training indigenous populations, pushing that cost onto poorer nations in the same way they push the cost of warehousing onto smaller suppliers with JIT. The same way Tesco oppresses dairy farmers and every other supplier – it’s all symptomatic of growing domination by the richest over the people and over governments – with no plan or even concept of the consequences beyond increasing their personal wealth.’
is NEARLY all true, EXCEPT that the reason ‘governments or the EU’ DON’T even attempt to control and pre-plan the movement of labour supply into and within their borders is BY CHOICE, laddie, because they have bought into neoliberal globalism 100%. That is the entire point of the difference between an interventionist Left-leaning economic strategy, and Blairite /Tory/neoliberal laisse faire capitalism globalist economic policy . The timid ‘Corbynista;’ economic policies weren’t particularly radical, and they had already abandoned the vital plank of nationalising the banks immediately after the 2015 Leadership contest, but it did contain at least some concept of state-led economic planning to defend UK industries and workers from the malign forces of capitalist globalism. That you seem to think a government (and certainly a huge economic bloc like the EU) CAN’T plan labour supply , and related mass training of European workers , (rather than pinching skilled workers from poorer states), within a comprehensive Left economic strategy, simply shows you to be nothing more than a Left Liberal, McNiven – in ideological thrall to the power of the capitalist market place. Socialists have a rigorous analysis and a radical alternative strategy that goes well beyond the capitalist market place. Do some reading laddie.
I see – so it was just you and the MSM calling the young naive then – understood.
Your comments are a bit too déjà vu to stay awake to the end and your attempted condescension being limited to repetition of “laddie” smells of chalk and geography teachers (why do you all think leather elbow patches are badges of intellectual achievement btw?)
WHICH “interventionist Left-leaning economic strategy” would that be then?
You geniuses put brexit over and above a Labour government – that was so stupid it was almost comical.
Brexit only works for the many if Labour is ALREADY IN government, numbnutz.
With the Tories in government brexit loses us what little employment protection there was, whatever tax recovery the ATAD might have brought and the protection of being in a big, powerful trading bloc able to keep Trunt’s tiny sticky fingers in his pockets instead of in ours.
Still, at least you and the heartlands won the referendum. Good work.
How are all the brilliant new trade deals coming along – I expect Surgical Truss is doing LOADS better than the uncunning Fox, eh?
Oh… are the crops being left to rot in the fields this year have you heard – or are we importing foreign labour as usual?
Still no sign of conscription of the young and unemployed into the New Land Army then?
Any time now.
I think that Landsman did his job to absolute perfection.
Depends on your point of view ?
You know w what I mean. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Regards
The unconditional pro EU Let Liberal, McNiven , has the sheer brass necked cheek to say of the ant neoliberal EU pro Brexit socialist Left :
‘You geniuses put brexit over and above a Labour government – that was so stupid it was almost comical.’
I think you have suffered some sort of severe memory loss and logic collapse about the 2019 General Election, McNiven, We actually lost pretty much all of our vital 80 seat traditional Labour , Leave-supporting heartlands, in the disastrous 2019 Election, precisely because you Labour Right wingers and Left Liberals alike forced Corbyn to abandon our original principled, huge working class Leave voter-retaining, 2017 Manifesto pledge to ‘Respect the outcome of the Referendum’, ie to LEAVE’ ! To blame those of us who repeatedly warned that to betray this pledge and adopt Remain and 2nd Referendum, would guarantee a huge epochal Labour defeat, is a bit rich even from a bozo like yourself, McNiven. But then, as you have no idea about socialist as opposed to EU-loving Left Liberal politics, or the role of comprehensive economic national planning to challenge the malign power of the global capitalist markets, trying to explain anything to you is a fruitless task. Keep on basking in your smug ignorance you sad lad.
You mean we’re internationalists and anti-racists, John? And- just like the majority of the WORKING class (who you evidently despise), voted remain? And understand that Brexit is a nationalist, racist project?
Denham just can’t help himself with his self-justifying straw men…
Yes skwawkie, FM now has to prove that our support is justified, but you can bet your last penny that Jon Lansman will not let it rest.
His ownership and personal control of the Momentum brand paperwork and companies house registrations means that FM should pre-empt him and quickly supersede his technical control of these things
Egos like Jon’s are like those of Tom Watson and Peter Mandelson, their sad owners easily weaponise them and they become malicious and unbelievably malign.
Well done Forward Momentum. Quickly distance yourselves from Lansman’s companies house registration and copyrighted branding.
Thanks to any skwawkies in the Yorkshire,Nort East and Scotland region who helped get my wife reelected. A clean sweep is a magnificent result.
Dear Skwawky,
Thank you for making my morning. I laughed so much reading this I think I’ve pulled a muscle. Keep up the good work.
Best wishes,
Sir Keir
“Now it’s up to FM to justify the support it has received from Momentum members and drive through real change and democratisation.” and yes Skwakbox so it is incumbent upon ALL the Alt Left media to get behind and support FW as well… its a two way street , the members never were the issue it was one man and his gang .
Yes, if momentum is going to become more democratic then it should become whatever the members make of it. It’s been a flawed vehicle but hopefully now we can use it to unite the left and consolidate any power we have left.
This is what LabouList has to say on this subject
“What does this mean for Starmer and the wider party? There were many more public office holders in Renewal’s slate (a point of contention in itself). The Labour leader can be cheered that they have lost: Momentum is now less intertwined with Labour in parliament and local government. Whether these results are good news for the leadership overall, though, depends on how effective you reckon the new Momentum is going to be. Bluntly, you can argue that this is good for Starmer because the left is spread more thinly. But you can also conclude that Momentum will be tough on policy. Forward candidates are strongly opposed to any watered-down positions on migrants’ rights, a Green New Deal or democratisation such as mandatory reselection. To think of them as ‘soft Momentum’ is wrong. And they are determined to organise.