Members scream set-up as party shapes up to impose candidates selected by right-dominated NEC – and doesn’t even bother informing shortlisted hopefuls
The Labour party has disgraced itself yet again as a right-stacked panel has barred all three prospective candidates from the selection contest to become the party’s candidate in the Liverpool mayoral election.
A panel stacked with right-wingers made the decision and the party has just emailed members – without even informing the candidates.
The move makes real the fears of many members that the strong campaign of left-winger Anna Rothery would cause the party to abort the whole process – blocking the popular councillor who would have become the UK’s first black woman mayor if elected. Howls of outrage are already heard in the local party.
Another candidate had serious question marks over her track record, but Rothery’s supporters believe the party’s decision is a naked – and nakedly racist – move to block the strongest candidate because she was a left-winger and supported Jeremy Corbyn’s reinstatement.
The party shortlisted the three and has humiliated itself, at the same time declaring war yet again on its members.
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Hah! Didn’t see that coming, did we?
Disgraceful behaviour!
Members will rightly feel disgusted at the behaviour of the party here.
SW should try to find out who is responsible for this atrocious decision and make a point of loudly publicising his findings.
My party has become an instrument of the centrists’ war on its members and social democracy (aka democratic socialism). The centrists and Labour right weaponise everything. They have gone too far this time. They are psychotic.
Damn them to hell!
“They have gone too far this time”.
You say that as if it is something new. The truth is that the elitists have been targeting left activists for years to keep them out of positions of influence, and remove them form positions held.
They tried to stop Corbyn’s second leadership election by banning his supporters from voting, but when that didn’t work they removed Ken Livingstone, Christine Shawcross and Pete Willsman from the NEC, Chris Williamson from parliament, and numerous councillors and parliamentary candidates so as to get one of their own in against the wishes of local party members.
To coin a phrase, it’s a “pattern of behaviour” that just continues.
They have gone too far this time.
Nope.
They’ve seen what the toerags can get – and have got – away with (With or without stammer’s refusal to prosecute and/or oppose).
They’re pushing their limits, and people are still paying for them to do so.
As a Liverpool member of the Labour Party I will refuse to vote for any candidate foisted on our City
There doesn’t appear to be anything barring the previous candidates from re-applying
Semantics, since they haven’t being invited to reapply.
Apart from the ‘interview’ bit where they can decide to reject any left leasing candidate 🙁
Don’t be naive, they would have been informed of the decision to restart the process rather than the decision being rushed out without mentioning it to them. They’ll have excuses handy to stop them standing.
https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/northwest/news/2074427-labour-party-reopens-applications-for-liverpool-mayoral-candidates
“The Labour Party has reopened applications for its Liverpool mayoral candidate. And it is understood to have blocked the three previously shortlisted candidates from applying for the role.”
For the love of God, Steve- you know perfectly well there could be no possible motivation for reopening the selection process than to prevent Rothery-the candidate the overwhelming majority of the Liverpool Labour rank-and-file supports- from being the candidate. And you know full well that Starmer and evens will insist on imposing a Blairite, against the will of the rank-and-file- and that they don’t care that such a decision guarantees that Labour will lose the mayoralty, and probably to a LibDem-Tory coalition candidate.
If you aren’t simply paid to do what you do, how much longer ARE you going t go on defending the Starmer/Evans war against the Left? How much more damage has to be done before you’ll say it’s too much
Are you really going to be ok with it if, as now seems virtually certain, Keir has reduced the differences-from above, and at all times against the wishes of the rank-and-file- back to “it’s enough to get something CALLED “a Labour government”? to drag the party back to the useless, unforgiveable days of “it’s ok when WE do it”?
Do you want Labour’s existence as a party to mean anything at all? Or are you just fine with lowering politics, once again, to nothing but empty tribalism, to nothing at all but “it’s OUR turn”?
And does it not matter to you that the polls show that the voters don’t WANT Labour to blur the differences again? That they don’t want two small-c conservative parties again, differentiated solely by necktie color?
‘As a Liverpool member of the Labour Party I will refuse to vote for any candidate foisted on our City”
Well said!
I suppose we should wait until the centrists and Labour right psychopaths finish their anti-socialist and anti-democratic shenanigans to see which (if any) sensible socialist candidates are eventually shortlisted.
But if (as I suspect) none do and the Labour brand is only afforded to despicable “moderates”, then, yes, a Green or independent candidate should receive our support and endorsement.
Every day, a commitment to stay and fight becomes more necessary and less pleasant.
Scoundrels!
I can’t see Scousers putting up with these nefarious acts.
It looks like Starmer and cronies believe the people of Liverpool will vote Labour no matter who is the Labour candidate. The rationale been for who else can they vote?
It would have been far more humiliating if wrongdoing had come to light after the election.
We already know about possible wrong-doing on the part of one of the candidates.
Do you know of any wrong-doing on the part of the other two?
One is, currently acting Mayor, in place of Joe Anderson. The other is Anna Rothery.
And of course, you can guarantee to us right now that all the replacement candidates will have squeaky clean records…..?
We already know there is no wrongdoing on Rothery’s part, so here deselection is completely unjustified. And there is no valid reason for you to keep trying to deflect by claiming we don’t know what this is about.
Labour NW is well known for being on the right but the answer is simple, Anna Rothery who is backed by Corbyn should stand as an independent.
Absolutely she should. A chance to show what people think; with a victory the habit could spread.
Do Evans and Starmer, really, think it a ‘good’ idea, to take on the people of Liverpool.
If so, they’re more amateurish than I, first, thought.
Kinnock- who still doesn’t get that what he did to Liverpool, and his purge of socialists didn’t gain Labour a single vote anywhere in the UK in ’87 or ’92- probably put the idea of targeting Rothery in Starmer’s head.
Kinnock is going to spend the rest of his days believing that Labour can only win if it’s a socialist-free zone.
We probably saw it coming, George Peel, but maybe we did not think that the party machinery could/would sink that low.
Sabine – this was the “triumph of hope over experience” ( Oscar Wilde). We should have realised that there are no depths to which this crowd will not sink
They’ve only just begun. The Party will be unrecognisable in a year. Exodus but where are the socialists going to park their bums?
Can the existing candidates reapply? The letter does’t say that they cannot. Of course they may be allowed to reapply and then not be short-listed. We will see.
Lewis Minkin, at many points in his book, ‘The Blair Ascendancy’, refers to a coup by New Labour leaders and staff, not as a one-off event but as a process. That is what we are seeing here. It didn’t end well for Blair and Brown.
Paul, good post. Ta.
They are not allowed to re-apply
I can believe that but can you quote from the letter please.
It’s in the ‘black box’, in the article above, Paul.
Paul -The previous candidates have not been invited to apply but that’s a long way from being barred from applying
It has now been confirmed that none of the three local individuals who had been shortlisted by a selection panel earlier this month are now being invited to apply for Labour’s reopened selection contest.
https://labourlist.org/2021/02/liverpool-mayor-selection-reopens-with-no-previous-candidate-invited-to-join/
The Labour Party has reopened applications for its Liverpool mayoral candidate.
And it is understood to have blocked the three previously shortlisted candidates from applying for the role.
https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/northwest/news/2074427-labour-party-reopens-applications-for-liverpool-mayoral-candidates
Until further notice, we can assume on that basis that they probably have been barred.
That would appear to be the meaning of “an alternative shortlist” but the scum don’t like using direct and obvious language, they prefer disguise their meaning just like they disguise all their other sectarian activities.
Forensic legalise?
tcliverpool, have the previously selected candidates given any reason as to why they cannot reapply? This is very heavy handed.
I believe the already selected candidates if barred from re-applying could take the case to court. This is a case that could be won.
Sorry ” no invited to re-apply” that has the same meaning as don’t bother to apply you aren’t going to be shortlisted.
There may be a valid reason for one of the Candidates, being removed from the list, but not the other two, one of whom is, currently, stand-in Mayor while Joe Anderson gets himself sorted out.
Ana Rothery? We can only surmise, at this stage.
Do the left have a war chest? If not then why not? It’s bare Knuckle time. No guards, no gloves and there is definitely no ref.
They have been asked to choose from an alternative list
The Right’s shamelessness will surely be their undoing in the end. If they are allowed to continue they will destroy the LP completely.
No shock here, anyone with a single braincell knew the outcome – now, lets see if the Left actually fightback, it being Liverpool.
Ken Livingstone is the example to follow. He took on the Party with Frank Dobson as candidate and despite Dobson been popular, Livingstone won and was reinstated into the Party.
In this case perhaps best to use a victory in Liverpool, for the SCG to leave the Party for good. It would prove that splits from the left can win. It is the splits from the right that are a lost endevour.
Maria – Unless they can retain their seats in the next GE it will prove nothing apart from the futility of their gesture.
Under FPTP any breakaway ‘socialist’ party is doomed to failure without PR. You just don’t have the numbers in sufficient concentration to get MPs elected.
You could be right SteveH, but I believe you could be wrong 50/50.Trade Unions like the RMT and others will give funding to a break away group of some 30 socialist MPs. and of course they could have over a 100K members ready to support their electoral effort.
What we need is to concentrate in defending those seats and ensure that we don’t lose a single one. The Labour Party finances aren’t what they were so it would be difficult for the official Labour Party to run a campaign against incumbents that will have the funding when the LP most likely would be in the red by them.
I agree with you that we need PR or at the very least STV.
SteveH, your oft-repeated assertion re FPTP relies on past experience – like “without mass canvassing and a huge infrastructure no party can win.”
Just because something has always been the case doesn’t mean it always will or must be – these are not physical laws, they’re effects of human interaction and motivation.
There are children’s toys that become fads overnight, flourish for a while and then disappear just as quickly. Previous fads are no guide to future ones.
Corbyn’s phenominal rise and electoral failure, Change UK’s utter destruction, UKIP’s successes, Brexit, Kinnock snatching defeat from the jaws of victory – all prove my case not yours.
They prove that, where human behaviour is a factor, expressing certainty just invites the gods of randomness to fuck you up.
David – That sounds like a good plan, let’s all ignore the lessons of history
Here’s an extract from a recent report by the LCER – THE MANY, NOT THE FEW Proportional Representation & Labour in the 21st Century
The societal impact of Proportional Representation FPTP has a well-documented and explainable bias towards right-wing parties. On average, countries which use FPTP, including the UK, have many more conservative governments, while those with PR have many more progressive governments. Looking at the UK: • If the 2017 election had taken place under a system of PR, we would almost certainly have a Labour-led government now rather than a right-wing coalition. • If the UK had used PR throughout the modern era, the Labour Party would have been in government significantly more often. Most voters backed parties to the left of the Conservatives in 14 of the last 15 general elections. Yet the Conservatives have governed 55 per cent of the time since 1964, usually as a majority. In keeping with and as a result of this, political scientists have identified causal relationships between proportional democracies and the outcomes the Labour Party wants to achieve. These are statistically significant and accompanied by credible explanations of causality. Societies with proportional systems exhibit: • Lower income inequality. • Greater likelihood of being welfare states. • 4.75 per cent higher social expenditure, on average. • Fairer distribution of public goods. • Better environmental controls. • More effective action on climate change. • Lower likelihood of armed conflict. • Better long-term decision making. At least 80 per cent of developed countries use some form of PR. They have a strong tendency to perform better as democracies than those with majoritarian systems like FPTP. • The countries independently assessed as the top performing democracies all use PR. • Countries with PR have 5-8 per cent higher voter turnouts. • People in countries with PR record higher satisfaction with democratic institutions, regardless of whether their preferred party is in power at the time. • PR enables better gender and BAME representation in politics. Every country with more than 40 per cent women in its main legislative chamber uses PR
You can find the full report here along with other useful info.
https://www.labourcampaignforelectoralreform.org.uk/Further_reading
PR leads to weak government, mediocre policies and vastly extended time to legislation.
We need radical change, not the kind that makes Tories 30% happy, UKIP 10% happy and LibDims 3% happy.
Fuck that shit, the only answer is socialism – by hook or by crook.
Frankly I don’t give a fuck about democracy and never really have – it’s as much an obstacle to a secure socialist outcome as is the lumpen nature of the electorate.
It’s ridiculous to imagine they have the slightest clue what society needs – they don’t even see through “trickle down theory” ffs.
Fuck the ‘lessons of history’ you idiot – it was history got us into this shit.
The planet’s broken and you think the people who broke it are the best bet to fix it. Duh.
David – Orwell warned about people like you. The far right and the far left, 2 sides of the same coin. Authoritarian control.
Well said! The nonsense talked about ‘democracy’ here and in the US is a sham because here it limits the winners to two possibles and is heavily weighted to secure a Blue government with an occasional Red/Pink one to make it look good. It is so often said an elected dictatorship and that has never been seen so clearly as now with Johnson who does exactly what he wants.
Paul – https://skwawkbox.org/2021/02/23/breaking-labour-nw-throws-liverpool-mayoral-selection-into-chaos-by-barring-all-3-candidates-from-contest/#comment-176756
It depends what ‘alternative shortlist’ means.We will see but I fear the worst.
Central offices list, decided on their being Balirite placemen (or women).
I have said this before, but will repeat it again. Starmer is the most dangerous man in British politics.
They cannot re-apply – Labour Party has told them so.
This New Labour reborn and proud of it.
Hands up who remembers H’Angus the Independent Monkey Mayor of Hartlepool (2002 – 2013)?
It was Mandelson’s seat at the time. You think that Mandelson would advise Starmar ( Sargeant Wilson like) that stirring up the locals in Liverpool of all places isn’t “Awfully wise”.
I can’t see it ending well for Labour. There will be a few more gable ends of the red wall crashing down before May is out
The heart of Blairism/Starmerism is contempt for the membership and utter contempt for the electorate. They act in this way because experience, they believe, has taught them that the only response from their victims will be grumbling and impotent anger.
This, they believe, is the national ‘character’: putting up with anything, making the best of what is intolerable, never giving up but constantly retreating, albeit in ‘good order’. What the Labour Party needs and will have to have before it begins to benefit the working class, is its own revolution.
How can Labour take over the country if it can’t even impose democracy in its own ranks?
It is now almost a century since the first Labour Government, and much more than a century since labour began to assert itself at Westminster but the relatively few achievements of successive governments, elected in the face of massive media, Establishment and secret police opposition, are negligible. Almost every one of them, from the Taff Vale judgement and the subsequent Trade Disputes Act to the NHS, even Indian social democracy, either has been wiped out or is close to being so.
Ken Livingstone fought the Blairites as an Independent Labour candidate. Maybe LIverpool Labour should invite him-anti semitism smears and all- to contest the Lord Mayoralty. Maybe Chris Williamson or George Galloway would take the helicopter trip. Best of all sister Rothery could do the job.
Labour’s first task is to conquer the party; nothing more is possible until that is done, and to impose socialist principles on all its agents, from elected councillors and MPs (including Lords) to the most junior functionaries.
The biggest mistake is not seeing what a ‘Paper Tiger’ centrists really are, like all bullies, sabre rattlers and flag shaggers, they couldn’t fight their way out of a nursery
Trust me I’m an advisor
Time to give the members a choice
You would appreciate Lewis Minkin’s book, ‘The Blair Ascendancy’. Overlong but full of awful detail. I can only manage one chapter at a time.
Do you think that Jock the Hat can convince himself to stand? He might have to appear on the media. Could he do that? It would mean him having to move and appear on the telly bemoaning the lack of air time his organisation is given. He knows everything about everything. I know this because he has mentioned it. Up the pope.
Yes, and Labour had to strike out from under the mantle of the Liberals back when it started, and went on to replace them as the second party in pretty short order. This, in part, when there wasn’t even universal suffrage, so too much is made of FPTP being an impenetrable barrier . So when Starmer’s creature who haunts these pages tells you it is impossible under current electoral rules, you may depend his motive is not concern for the Left and the left behind ordinary people, but the well founded fear that a proper party of the Left would quickly destroy any chance the Labour neoliberals would have of taking over from the Tory variety, and then move on to replace them.
Oh dear John – We both know you’re talking La-La Land nonsense.
Any Labour member who supports an independent candidate will be expelled; this will strengthen the New Order in the Labour Party.
Doesn’t matter who the candidate is…The people of the city aren’t arsed about the
sinecureposition.It will show in the turnout.And before the wee fella starts it WILL show in the referendum (One that he thinks his labour party ought to be congratulated on for allowing the people to hold one in two years time – good of them seeing as the people weren’t even consulted in the first friggin place but labour went ahead and accepted the tory bribe anyway)
As Maria Vazquez says, the party will rely on the lackadaisical ennui of the electorate here. Those that would vote stammer if he was a candidate…Sadly there are plenty of them still about….The steve h: ‘If you don’t vote labour you’re a tory’ type – people who wouldn’t know their arses from their elbows even if you handed them a diagram.
Don’t forget, they still voyed the liar kennedy for plod commissioner…TWICE.
Like the plod commissioner, the mayoral position was never wanted by the locals; and they’re really not arsed about it. Scrub it. Scrub it now.
Sticky Toffee you puddin
This time we will do unto them what they have done unto us
Starting with the Bastard offspring of Thatcher
There is no going back
RaV
Except you won’t.
You think this is the rock on which the right perish? Fuck me… They’re not gonna bat an eyelid and continue to purge the left with nonchalant (almost) impunity.
And you won’t because the left didn’t purge anyone from the right when they had ample opportunity and were given a plethora of valid reasons to do so.
Any gains the left may have made under Corbyn have been thoroughly negated and made into losses since; aided and encouraged by those who acquiesced to the stammer/fatberg antisemitism/second referendum shithousery.
The ‘rescue’ of the party by the left is no more than a pipe dream.
A little bird told me that well placed, influential people of all stripes and diciplines have begun the blueprints for mayoral supervisors. Sounds terrifying. No more tapeworms but one big, ugly squid. I would like to thank that Attenborough bloke, the one in the jungles and oceans for my green tinged post.
Crunch time now for the Labour Left. Their bluff is being called. Either they stay in the Labour Party, neutered and accept the Labour Right rule the roost. Or they can leave and help form a new organisation, ALL of whose members will have to prove they’re socialists or fuck off. We can then fight without one or both hands tied behind our backs or alongside backstabbing, treacherous scumbags..
2:58 Stay and accept right wing rule or leave & build anew.
4:14 Remain and Vote. There is no going back.
Which is it, Doug?
I’m hoping Liverpool might be the tip of the spear that surgically removes Starmorrhoids.
Members are clearly subordinate to the PLP and party staffers
Shouldn’t it be the other waty around…
According to the Liverpool Echo previous candidates need not apply. Anna was probably doing too well, had a chance of winning the nomination. Pitty no one on the left is willing to fight back.
As I stated last week you could see the set upcoming as soon as they cancelled the election hours before the vote and played these usual right-wing cult games from New Labour 2.0.
Why is anyone surprised any longer these Tory-lite scum? They believe they are only there to hold onto power at any excuse or reason will be jumped on to keep hold of power and make sure only a true-believing cult member is ever selected.
Right-wing cancer spreads that’s why I keep on telling people Labour is dead we just have this cult now and it’s not to be trusted…
This is a disgraceful situation
Time for the Ken Livingstone Protocol
If a candidate is imposed by the party ( for want of a better word at the moment), then Ms Rothery should be supported as an independent left candidate.
Scousers have the character to see through schemes like this. They will not be duped.
Labour have clearly replaced a man with a plan, at the top, by a clot with a plot !
If any of the candidates that have been thrown out would care to consider standing as an independent mayor I am happy to provide some funding. Liverpool deserves better than a bunch of B.Liarites calling the shots.
labour what a waste of space
The right wants a showdown. They know that this is a significant event.
You’re correct. This is the litmus test for the deselection of Labour socialist MP’s for 2024 GE
Keith has put 2 fingers up to Liverpool with this latest shite. How about Anna stands as a Socialist Independent Candidate?